Question for our American members.

North America has an easy rule to remember:
Age before Dec 31 = 5 + Grade number

Unless someone skips a grade, or fails one, but that works as a rule of thumb.

Goodgulf

... except for a couple things. In some places the cutoff is earlier (often 10/31), and some parents, in places that allow it, start children near the cutoff (often boys) a year late to improve chances, academic and athletic.

Wow, that triggered a memory for me! My mother did the opposite. Since I was born on December 1st, she could have gone either way and I distinctly recall most school officials she talked to recommending waiting. She didn't. As such I was ALWAYS the youngest in my class and anything that was age-dependent always put me behind everyone else.....from volunteering at a hospital to driving a car. To her point though, it did not put me at a disadvantage academically, though I do think it might have in every other way. I wonder how different things might have been for me if on the day she made her decision, she opted for the recommended advice?

My ex-wife and I decided the opposite for my daughter, would would have been fine academically in either case, but, despite being essentially the oldest child in her grade, was pretty much always the smallest child in her grade and last developing.

njrick
Oddly enough, while the youngest, I was always the tallest. But my coordination lagged. (Think of the 'last picked for the team' stereotype and that was me.) Go figure. Human variation never ceases to amaze.

I agree with waiting. Boys born in December are far more likely to be labelled as ADHD. Let me see if I can find support for that...

From https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3328520/

Boys who were born in December were 30% more likely to receive a diagnosis of ADHD than boys born in January. Girls born in December were 70% more likely to receive a diagnosis of ADHD than girls born in January. Similarly, boys were 41% more likely and girls 77% more likely to be given a prescription for a medication to treat ADHD if they were born in December than if they were born in January.

But other than a few areas that do that, 5 + grade level = current age is a good rule of thumb.

Now I'm thinking of adding a twist to a story... Something about someone being a year older than expected because of being born in December. Maybe being over 16 or 18 and making that age level the cutoff point for CP in a school? That could be interesting.

I was born in December, long before ADHD was conceived of. I was held back a year, as it was customary to do. I have an IQ of 153, and stereotypically have neotony in spades (some speculate that neotony (posessing youthful characteristics well into adulthood) goes hand in hand with a high IQ as youthful minds are more naturally plastic to learning and memorization. That neotony isn't just possessing of youthful features, but also possess a more receptive and pliable of a mind).

I was going to be advanced a couple grades because I was hyperintelligent, but my mother decided to restrain me further, so I wouldn't be "lost" in dealing with older boys, and older boys issues (puberty for instance (of which I started at 8 or 9). So that I wouldn't grow up too quickly). But I was a fighter and scrapper and used to pick on my (6 years) older brother's friends. And either they ignored the little kid, or kicked the stuffing out of him, but he always bounced back for more. The fears were my mothers, and it was insufferable that she tried to instill them on me. My dad, from year 5 told me if I ever started a fight, or picked on someone younger/smaller than me, he'd kick my butt in, but he never said boo to me about picking on someone older and bigger than me.

So, basically, either unintentionally, or inadvertently (oversight vs accident), my parents and "the system" brought me up to be adversarial. I'm not a kid anymore, and I accept responsibility for my own actions without blaming mommy and daddy, but I have to admit there are lingering effects from the way I was raised that affect my personality.

...I'm not sure if I lost sight of the sub-topic of schooling and the affects of age placement in the schooling system of boys born in december.

I’m a little confused. So in the US, although the school year begins in September, the cut off date for age is December? In England (not sure about Scotland) where the school year starts in August, you start school the September after your fourth birthday. So a birthday on 31 August means you could start at 4 years and one day and a birthday on 1 September means you could start at 5 years old. I’m a summer baby and the practice back when I was 4 was to keep summer babies at home till January then have them join the children who started in September, which seemed odd to me even then. I remember saying but I’ve missed a term of school, how does that help?
Oh, and with the cut off dates thing, in my daughter’s reception class (that’s what we call the first year at school before year 1) there were two brothers who were not twins. One was the oldest in the year and one the youngest.

Our cut off point used to be end June. I had a friend in a grade below me. Her birthday was July 1. She hated being the oldest kid in the class.

Had a similar situation to what Katiepie described while I was growing up. One girl was 11 months older than her twin siblings and all started in the same class. The brother twin, though, was found to be too immature in K to move to 1st grade, so that he was held back a year so that he was in the same grade as another sister who was yet another 11-12 months younger.