5 posts tagged “boys”
white is such an utterly ridiculous colour for a school uniform to be worn by 6yo boys!
The school has a really big focus on teaching children to be kind to the environment. Yet, here I am using heaps of bleach every day just to keep these stupid white shirts looking relatively clean. After yesterday's effort (he had been doing painting at after school care while wearing a smock), I think I might as well give up! I have kept one shirt all pristine in its plastic wrapper and will only wash it this weekend in preparation for next week's school photo day. After that, all bets are off as far as I am concerned.
The school year in Australia starts in late January/early February and, in the state where we live, children may (but are not required to) start school if they are turning 5 by the end of July of that year. My children are both March babies so I send them to school when they were almost 5 years old. An obvious thing to do, you would think, but not so. In recent years there has been a huge trend, particularly from middle class parents, to hold children, particularly boys (thanks Stephen Biddulph*), back from starting school until they are already 5 (or in same cases already 6). This can mean an 18 month spread in age between the oldest and the youngest in a particular class.
This was not such a problem in our old area as most families there tended to send their children as soon as they were eligible for school. My son's kindergarten class last year contained plenty of children who were not yet 5, including some who weren't turning 5 until July. This included quite a few children who hadn't been exposed to much English before starting school.
Now that we have moved to the new school (in a much more affluent, middle class area), my children are finding themselves much younger than the majority of their respective classes. This was quite noticeable at my daughter's party the other week as there seems to be a huge difference in maturity and development between girls who are not quite 10 (as some of my daughter's friends from her old school were) and those who are almost 11. Academically, however, my daughter seems to be managing quite well and on the surface at least, she seems fairly well equipped to 'mix it with the big girls' socially. She does get quite anxious about school and playground interactions at times though and I wonder if this is or is likely to be excarberbated by her being younger than her peers. She is also unhappy about the fact that, on their upcoming school camp, they are to be divided into study groups based on the year they were born rather than their class. This also happens in sporting competitions and usually means that my daughter is placed with students who are a year below her at school.
I haven't had as much of an opportunity to observe the children in my son's class but I know that he has been having trouble settling in and making friends this year. The one boy we have had over to play was head and shoulders above my son in height and was interested in entirely different things. My son is also finding the amount of homework and the concentration needed to get through it each night quite a challenge. I also suspect that he is on one of the lower reader levels in the class as his reading is just on what is expected for a child finishing Kindergarten. I am not too bothered about that though as I know my daughter's reading 'took off' about mid-way through Year 1 and she started doing really well academically in late Year 2/early Year 3.
What I am more concerned about is him feeling behind the rest of his class and having continued difficulty with friendships throughout his schooling. I am wondering now whether I should have joined the rest of the middle class and held him back from starting school when he did. I actually did contemplate this back in the year before he started school but was assured by his pre-school teacher and others that knew him that he was ready for school on all the usual measures. I also spoke to his teacher at the end of last year about whether she thought he should repeat kindergarten and she said no because he was where he needed to be for a child at the end of kindergarten and that she thought he would get very bored doing kindergarten again. It is quite possible that this boredom could translate into longer-term boredom with school and learning in general. In fact I have noticed from my own teaching that is very often the younger children in a year level who seem to excel academically by the time they get to high school, even though they might be socially well behind their peers.
I will be interested to hear what his current teacher has to say when we go to our first Parent/Teacher interview at the new school. She has already had to modify his homework after I wrote a note saying that we were having difficulty getting through it all as he was just to tired to concentrate on it. She didn't seem too perturbed by this though and I have found that teachers in general seem less supportive of the idea of 'holding children back' from starting school than a lot of parents are. It must make it immensely challenging for teachers to have such a wide spread of ages in their classes.
*Stephen Biddulph is the author of the very un-scientific and very ideologically driven but extremely influential Raising Boys and The Secret of Happy Children.
I can't speak highly enough of these Rascal books for encouraging reluctant readers. My son was never particularly keen on his 'home readers' in kindergarten nor in reading himself (much preferred being read to). However he recently selected a box set of these Rascal books to buy with his Christmas book voucher from his uncle. They are cleverly designed to look like novels from the outside when in fact they are picture books with vibrant, detailed illustrations and very little text on each page. They also push all the right buttons for an almost 6 year old boy, eg, dragons as pets, dragons that fly and poo on people, boy and dragon conspiring to trick dad etc etc. My son's favourite is Rascal and the Cheese which he has (voluntarily) read aloud to all of us on a number of occasions (only briefly interrupting his reading to laugh at the illustrations). He has even made an offer to his teacher to bring it into school and read it aloud to the class (who I am sure will find Rascal's antics just as hilarious).
As a follow on to the pink princess post, this one is on boys clothes and how boring and/or horrible they are. From about size 4 upwards, they all seem to be in dull solid colours such as black or navy and if they have any adornment, it is usually something like a skull and cross bones or a monster truck or something like that. My son doesn't even like things like that and gets quite despondent comparing the girls and boys ranges when we go shopping. I can't sew to save myself or I would make him some clothes with stars or animals or dinosaurs on them (just a few of his favourite things). I recently asked another mother if she would like to sew some simple pants for him for payment and she said she would be happy to. I went out yesterday and took photos of fabrics I thought he might like. He has chosen the two dog footprint ones. I think they will look really cool. My husband is not so sure.
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