Transitional Kindergarten vs Kindergarten for advanced 4YO

I feel like I have to post this response every month or so for parents who have the same concern. 

Here was my experience with TK: It is an excellent program that basically amounts to your kid getting an extra year of kindergarten. Yes, at times, it can be tiresome for a child with academic advantages, but if you are in a good school, you can talk to the teacher about giving your child more challenging work. The more important piece of the puzzle, and one that many parents with academically-advanced children forget about, is your child's emotional development. It may seem like you need to push, push, push to have her placed in a higher grade, but she will then be the youngest and under a ton of pressure to behave in ways that may not be developmentally appropriate. 

My experience was this: When kinder started for my child, I was very irritated that she was doing kinder "again," even though I had been shown how different the curriculum was. She complained that she was bored. However, when I spoke to her teacher about putting her in first, she said, "Do me a favor, come to the school and watch her along with the other students. Look at her attention span, watch how she behaves, see if you think she would do well if she were dropped into a first-grade environment." I did as she asked and I also asked a friend of mine who volunteered in the class to also watch the same thing and give me her honest impressions / reality check. At every point, my child was developmentally in line with her cohort. Kindergarteners walk around school like little peeping chickens, looking around, still getting a feel for the place. A year later, in first graders, they are laser-focused by comparison.

Things are not perfect for my daughter; it can be as difficult being towards the oldest in the class as the youngest. There are struggles either way. But this thing of trying to push your kid ahead, or even trying to skip a grade? I really recommend you drop it. It's not good for your child's emotional health. And they district will NOT go for it -- they did this in our parents' generation and often had disastrous consequences trying to rush kids through emotional development that they need time to process. 

Please don't try to push her ahead. You can't do it, and it's not good for your kid or her classmates. 

Is your child reading chapter books by herself already?  Is your child able to understand and do all 4 math functions?  If not, please understand that there will be kids in kindergarten that can do those things in your public school.  In good schools, the teachers are able to differentiate and keep kids challenged and learning no matter what their incoming abilities.  School is not a race.  Unless your child is profoundly gifted, do your child a favor and follow the age guidelines.

I have two kids with late summer/fall birthdays and we "held back" both of them. Over the years I have questioned this decision on and off, as all parents do. But my oldest is going to graduate from BHS next month and it's become clear that we made the right decision. So much development happens in just one year! As we navigated through the college admission process, he showed maturity, confidence, and thoughtfulness. Compared to the previous year, it was striking. I can now say with confidence that he is ready to leave the nest (sob!). By giving him the "gift of an extra year," we allowed him to mature at his own pace and find his own way. Getting along with other people, learning how to deal with frustrating situations, and having fun are just as important as academics, if not more so. FWIW, my kids were early readers (chapter books in preschool) but guess what? Turns out most kids are all caught up by 3rd-5th grade. Children don't all develop at the same rate, but they all usually do the same things: crawl, walk, run, read, etc. Same goes for emotional development.  Let your kid enjoy her life. 

I think it sounds like you have a good principal and you're on track. My daughter turned 5 in late November of the year we had her in TK. I had thought going into TK that we would move her midyear to K because she's so smart. But she took some months to adjust to the school setting and start focusing. By May, she was testing in reading at a 2nd grade level, so we had an SST meeting with our home school's principal, who approved accelerating to 1st after the completion of TK - skipped kindergarten. Acceleration is entirely at the principal's discretion. My best advice is to get her in TK, and then yes, if her performance justifies it, meet with the teacher and principal after her 5th birthday to discuss midyear acceleration, or what it would take to approve skipping kindergarten by the end of the school year. I personally think it would be a very rare 5 year old who would be able to skip both TK & K to jump right to 1st - there's homework, etc., and a lot of expectations about classroom behavior in first grade that TK/K teachers don't have. However, skipping K has worked out great so far and I recommend that year in TK to any parent whose child has a fall birthday.

Thank you for all your responses.  Just a point of clarification, I meant skipping TK to K or skipping from K to 1st but definitely not skipping from TK to 1st.  I would definitely not want this because this would be too much.  For me skipping TK to K is reasonable.  Sorry for any confusion. 

Think about how things will be different when she is in 3rd, or 4th grade. Social emotional differences between a 2nd grader and a third grader are big! I wouldn't want my daughter "aged up" any more that we already do to young girls. Hope that makes sense - just thinking about it from the perspective of a 3rd grader who is starting to deal with lots of social, emotional issues of tween girls.