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Wondering whether to keep your child in kindergarten for a year?
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A new study has found that those born in December - the little ones of the yearbook - are twice as likely to be diagnosed with a learning disability as those born in January.
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Sunday, 16 May 2021, 07:28
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Upgrade to first grade or leave another year in kindergarten?
A boy writes in a notebook (Photo: ShutterStock)
At this time of year many parents, especially for "small" children relative to their yearlings, are debating whether to keep the child in kindergarten for another year, or to raise him to first grade with his classmates.
Age differences among those of the same year can be significant, especially at a young age where even a difference of a few months can be significant for development and emotional maturity.
Now into the set of considerations that goes into this dilemma also comes a new study that finds that the youngest children in the class are more likely to be diagnosed with a learning disability.
According to the study, those born in December, who are the smallest in the yearbook, are twice as likely to be diagnosed with a learning disability than those born in January.
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To the full article
The study was conducted in Finland and includes data from the education system regarding children born in the country between 1996 and 2002 - these are about 400,000 children, about 3,000 of whom were diagnosed up to the age of 10 with some kind of learning disability (difficulty reading, writing or arithmetic).
Relative age has a known effect on school performance. A frustrated child learns (Photo: ShutterStock)
"We have also previously known the effect that relatively young age has on school performance, but there have been no previous studies addressing the link between diagnosed learning disabilities and students' relative age and this is why we chose to focus on this aspect," said Dr. Bianca Arnius of the Center for Child Psychiatry. Turku in Finland
In past studies, children born in the later months of the year and therefore a few months younger than their classmates born at the beginning of the year were at increased risk of suffering from psychiatric disorders, low academic achievement and bullying.
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The link between learning disabilities and attention deficit disorder
Many of the children diagnosed with learning disabilities are also diagnosed with ADHD.
In the present study, the researchers separated children diagnosed with the two disabilities (learning and attention and concentration) from children diagnosed only with learning disabilities and found that attention disorders did not affect the relationship between the month of birth and the chance of learning disabilities.
"This finding surprised us. Children referred for specialized care usually suffer from complex problems. We did not expect such a significant effect on the relative age of children on the chance of developing a learning disability, given what we know from past research on the relationship between relative age and ADHD," said D. R. Arnius.
Teachers should also be aware of the impact that a child's relative age has when assessing his or her learning abilities.
Class teacher (Photo: ShutterStock)
The researcher further explained that the psychological diagnoses used in the process of diagnosing learning disabilities give more weight to the relative age of the child, than the methods used to diagnose ADHD.
The study emphasizes that parents, medical staff and teachers need to be more aware of the impact that a child's relative age has, especially when it comes to assessing his or her learning abilities.
"There is a risk here of both underdiagnosis and overdiagnosis - the younger children are diagnosed at such high rates that it may ignore the difficulties of the older children in the class and may deprive them of the help resources they need," she said. It may be necessary to change the referral policy for diagnoses of learning disabilities so that the relative age of the child will have less weight in them.
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