Is it better to graduate at 17 or 18?

[FlockOfSillies]

FWIW, I loved graduating early (I started K at 4 and graduated just after turning 17), especially from college. But socially, I had a rough time in elementary and jr. high. I was near the top of my class, and the other kids hated me for it. It didn't help that I was an oddball to begin with.

 

I did the same thing when I started my oddball dd in K at age 4, and sometimes I regret it, since she sticks out like a sore thumb in grade-based activities. Fortunately, those don't dominate our daily life, and my dd is much happier and has more friends than I did at her age.

 

If your dd will be 5 in K, then she'll be with her age-mates, and she'll be graduating "on time" at nearly 18, instead of nearly 19.

[LibraryLover]

I never let my hsers interests and abilities affect anything but their interests and abilities. If they want to go to college at 17 or 19, awesome. If they want to go off at 19 or 22, awesome.

[musicianmom]

I'm usually the weird one in these discussions, but it's my philosophy that if a person is old enough to get married without a parent's permission or be drafted into the military, they shouldn't be sitting in a high school classroom having to raise their hand to go potty.

 

I graduated shortly before my 17th birthday (summer birthday). Yeah, it was difficult socially, but I think I would have had difficulty anyway, so I was better off getting out of there as soon as possible. I shudder to think that based on today's prevailing wisdom, I would have had to spend an extra TWO years in high school! :001_huh:

 

BTW, I have a relative who teaches high school, and she sees a problem with overly mature students. It doesn't always have good results. Sometimes it causes them to be a fish out of water.

[DawnM]

I won't know until they are closer to high school age.

 

Right now they are all graduating at 18 if I put them in PS because of the state birthdate requirement.

 

But, if we choose to do some dual enrollment stuff in high school, they could potentially go to CC much earlier than 18. I am not sure they will be ready. We will see.

 

Dawn

[Kari C in SC]

I haven't had a chance to read all of the responses, but here are my two cents. I think it depends on the kids and to complicate that further - it may change several times for that specific kid. My oldest went to public school until 4th grade. He wasn't ready for K when he started and he had a March birthday. He just wasn't ready. Then there is my next child. She has an October birthday. She was so ready to learn the summer she was 4 years old going on 5. I started her in K. She soaked it all in. She did great with all of the on level stuff until about 4th grade/5th grade. We moved, her brother left for the Army, etc. Here I sit planning her stuff and I am officially calling her a 5th/6th grader next year. I can't label her as one or the other - so she is just going to be both. She may graduate at 17 or maybe she will take an extra year in high school. I just don't know. I do know that a lot of her friends are either in 4th or 5th grade this year. So, if I push the 6th grade thing all the way till graduation - she will miss out doing some high school things with her friends. I know that some don't think high school is about socialization, but I firmly believe that is a HUGE part of it. Once you leave high school, you may have college and then jobs and the real grown up world. For our oldest we wanted to make sure he had plenty of time and opportunity to just be a teen and have some good memories. Now, that he has left home - I realize that I feel no reason to push my dd to be done with school essentially a year earlier than if she had been in public school. It goes too fast and I am not really wanting to push it any faster than it needs to go.

 

That brings me to my youngest. He will be 5 on September 30th. I was all prepared to just wait another year to start any "formal" K stuff with him. Yep. I was good with having another year of just letting him play and be a little one. Well, he is starting to read without my help. This was a new one for me because my other two had to be taught how to read. He is pretty much demanding I teach him to read. So, we will do K stuff this year, but I am not calling him a grade. I will register him next year when I am required to and most likely call him K then. Good luck!

[KristenS]

Going by PS ages (which is what I do so far), both my kids will graduate at 18 if we do no skips, because they have winter birthdays. But they are also advanced, so I can foresee skips being an option down the road.

 

I have a summer birthday and graduated at 17. But was 18 when I went to college, because of my birthday. I never skipped or anything. It made no impact whatsoever (except there is actually a rule that requires many colleges to get permission slips from parents of kids under 19!!! for field trips and things ... we were given the "don't tell and we won't ask" advice about just faking the signature... sigh.).

 

If your kid graduates early but isn't ready to go away from home for college (and that's the college of choice), there's nothing wrong with a year of community college or a gap year of internship or volunteer work.

 

The best advice I here is make the choice that benefits the child's needs NOW and worry about later problems later, when you can be sure it really is a problem. You can't tell this early how a child will be when they reach those ages.

 

For us, that amounts to registering by PS age guidelines, to go with placement in Scouts and other activities, and just teaching ahead. As we approach high school level material, we will start re-evaluating that so we can prep the transcript appropriately.

[AngieW in Texas]

My dh and I both started early. My birthday was end of September and his was mid-October. The cutoff here is September 1st. I was still 17yo when I graduated and did fine. I liked that I was the youngest in my class every year.

 

My dh skipped 8th grade, so he was actually still 16yo when he graduated. He had a full ride scholarship to Rice, but turned it down because that was only 4-5 hours from home. He went to RPI in New York instead. He didn't last a full year there. He left in the middle of spring semester with a huge student loan debt from those two semesters. He regretted turning down the full ride scholarship to go halfway across the country. He also thinks he was too young to go away for school. He thought he would have been fine one year later at 17yo, but 16yo was too young.

 

Our oldest and youngest will both turn 18yo before graduating, but our middle dd will still be 17yo. Her birthday is one month after the cutoff, but we put her in the higher grade. We wouldn't have done that with either of our other two girls if they'd had the same birthdate. She wants to go to a college that is close by and would rather live at home than go away. She may choose to do cc for all her core classes and then transfer.

[Mommy22alyns]

I graduated at 17, turned 18 a couple of weeks later. I don't think my age in comparison to everyone else in my class ever mattered one bit.

 

It's really too early for me to think about how old the girls will be when they graduate. They're asynchronously advanced, so it's going to be a little more complex.

 

It's just something that really, truly depends on the child. If I waited until Becca was 6 to "send" her to K, she would have climbed the walls out of sheer boredom and annoyance. But other kids might do just fine.

[LynnG in Arizona]

It's just something that really, truly depends on the child. If I waited until Becca was 6 to "send" her to K, she would have climbed the walls out of sheer boredom and annoyance. But other kids might do just fine.

 

That's about how I feel regarding my 3.5 year old. She is already anxious to do school and is trying to figure out how to read. I can and will wait until she is 4 years 10 months to start kindergarten with her, but it seems like overkill to wait until 5 years 10 months just because she happens to have a late October birthday. I really can't imagine doing two more *full* years of pre-school with her.

 

Yes, I know that we can work ahead and call it whatever grade we wish to. But there are definitely other factors involved, and I do reserve the possibility of sending her to school at one point. So even though I know we can change her grade in the future, I would rather take my best shot of making the decision now.

 

Too bad we don't live in a country where the school year starts in January. That would be perfect for us. Or, like I said . . . I should have just timed my pregnancies better, for January/February/March babies. :)

[stripe]

Too bad we don't live in a country where the school year starts in January. That would be perfect for us. Or, like I said . . . I should have just timed my pregnancies better, for January/February/March babies. :)

Funny. How do you think that's advantageous? January babies are often seen as "late" -- cut off by one or two months from others.

 

I am considering structuring my academic year this way. Not sure if that's too bizarre though.

[LynnG in Arizona]

Funny. How do you think that's advantageous? January babies are often seen as "late" -- cut off by one or two months from others.

 

I am considering structuring my academic year this way. Not sure if that's too bizarre though.

 

To each his own, of course, but in my mind the average, typical child with a January/February/March birthday fits squarely in the middle of the academic year. They can start kindergarten at about 5.5 years, and graduate high school at about 18.5 years.

 

I'm assuming that the parent of a typical child with one of these birthdays probably doesn't have a lot of angst in terms of which year they "belong" to. I'm sure there are exceptions for children with academic or social issues, but I think in general this holds true. JMO. :)

[stripe]

Thank you for that very helpful comment and for being so kind as to reply. :) I really appreciate this advice.

[BillieBoy]

These have all been very interesting perspectives from a question that I ponder frequently. I was 15 when I started my senior year of high school. Academically I could have graduated the year before but my boarding school did not allow early graduation; I was able to get several college credits before I graduated at age 16. I was very socially and emotionally mature. Even though at the time I thought I would die of embarrassment having a nun drive me to college, I turned out okay.

My DD has also been blessed with accelerated learning abilities. Like all of you, we school in a classical method that follows the trivium. I feel she is getting an even better education than I received. However, she too is on track of not only graduating at 16 but of hopefully having her associate degree at that time too. I occasionally worry that I am pushing her too much, but her testing and retention show different. I’m not sure what evaluating her “emotional maturity†actually means. Five minutes ago she jumped off the back of the couch with a towel around her shoulders shouting something in Latin. She knows her multiplication tables but doesn’t remember to put the milk away after getting her cereal. Yesterday I found a smelly, mouldy, and wadded up bathing suit under her bed.

I guess what I am saying is that I don’t think academic acceleration or deceleration by one or two years (according to public school norm) is that big of a deal. The great thing about homeschooling is that there is no peer pressure about being older or younger. As long as they are going at a pace suitable for them and one that allows them to be kids (however weird they may be). OMGosh, our dog just walked by in a tutu……

[TC5]

My oldest son is "supposed" to start 4th grade in a couple of months because he finished public school 2nd grade a year ago. Academically, 4th grade is no problem. He was always at the top of his class in ps. But I have really been wishing lately that we could drop the whole grade-level mentality and somewhat subconsciously think of him as a 3rd grader again. He won't let me REALLY call him a 3rd grader again.

 

He has a late-October birthday, so he'll be 17 when he finishes his senior year of high school. I'm hoping he'll be able to take a class or two at a community college when he's in high school, and I'll worry about his readiness to leave high school later.

 

But I want more time with him now! I want more time with him in the grammar stage, since I missed so much of it with him in ps. Also, curriculum choices would be a lot easier if he were only 2-grade levels above his brother instead of 3, as they are just 2 years apart in age. So I guess it's fairly selfish. He probably will be fine to enter the logic stage in a year, so I shouldn't really stop him. :001_smile:

 

Good luck with your decision.

Teonei