M&A - 3/26/2013 20:25 We went to parent teacher conferences tonight for our 5 1/2 year old son that's in Kindergarten. He's a handful. He tries but he can't control his need to talk and gets distracted easily. He micromanages everyone in the class room and spends so much time worrying about the other kids and teacher that he can't focus on doing his own stuff very well. Some days he can do a whole homework packet (4 days of homework for every week of the month, we get it a whole month at a time) in a day and others it's hard to get thru one day of the homework from the folder. He's very smart and he loves math and can read level 1 readers. His teacher told us tonight that she's recommending we think about holding him back. She's worried that the expectations of 1st grade will have him struggling next year. I asked her if we really worked hard on the reading if that would make her feel more comfortable about him going to 1st grade and she said "no". She's more worried about him not being able to stay on task and get distracted. My birthday is mid sept and I was always annoyed that I couldn't have been born just a couple weeks earlier so I could be in the older class. I was pretty mature compared to the other kids in my class in HS. His birthday is 7/11 and I don't really think it's a stretch for a 5 year old to succeed in Kindergarten. I was told by his PS teacher that we should hold him back because a lot of kids the year before were held back an that he would be 2 years younger that them. Personally I thought that was ridiculous that I should let other parents decisions affect ours. We have a 3 year old that was born on 8/11 too so this isn't our only one to decided on. What would you do or what have you done when put in this position? We're worried about him getting held back when he's been in this class a whole year and gone to PS with some of these kids for 2 years prior. I'm worried about other kids picking on him when they get older and remember that he was held back. Kids hardly need a reason to bully others these days and this would be a pretty easy thing to pick on. My husband and I were never in the popular groups and both of us were bullied as I'm sure most kids are. I know it's going to happen but one always has hope that it doesn't have to be as bad as what we endured. I've heard that being held back only really gives them an edge til the 3rd grade and if that's the case is it really worth it to have him wishing we would have made a different decision?