When I was pregnant with ‘Frogmella the bump’ (yes, too much Harry
Enfield in our youth) who turned out to be Eldest Son, any existing parent
rolled their eyes when I said that it would be a summer baby. We hadn’t planned it so –after years of being
on the Pill, I assumed that when I stopped taking it on my honeymoon that it
would probably take a good few months or years to conceive. It took exactly two weeks. I returned from my honeymoon in November and
began married life by throwing up every morning for five months.
In fact, I was quite looking forward to having a summer baby. Frogmella was due to pop forth about mid
August time and I had visions of my floating around in a white linen dress and
a large straw hat (I have no idea why, I look terrible in hats) pushing a pram
in which a gurgling baby clapped its chubby little hands at the blue skies and
the dappled sunshine on the trees. The
reality was that by the end of July I had stopped counting after 5 stone
heavier, it was sticky and hot that year, and the unbearable pressure of baby
wedged so far down the uterus meant that I wasn’t floating anywhere – just
waddling like an overweight penguin. And
the only linen dress that would fit me resembled a teepee.
And so it was that I was relieved when Frogmella emerged, a week early,
and a boy. It was not an easy birth,
albeit a natural one – and afterwards I just managed to feed my son before I
was rushed into surgery due to complications, leaving a stunned G with a 2 hour
old baby boy and no idea of what was happening to his wife. Baby and I emerged four days later on the 6th
of August, blinking in bewilderment at the sunshine outside. And he grew, lying gurgling in the pram in
the dappled sunshine, as I slopped about in some joggers, illusions of stylish
mummy out of the window.
It was when we were looking at schools that we realised the implications
of being born in the summer for our son.
School terms start in September in the UK, in the academic year in which
you turn 5, which spans from September 1st to August 31st.
This in effect meant that as an early
August birth he had only been 4 for a couple of weeks when he joined, and was nearly
a year younger than most of the kids in his class. This had an impact from both
a social and an educational point of view.
He had terrible separation anxiety – the first day it took 2 gap year
students, 3 teaching assistants and a Head of Year to prise him off me. Things
that seemed obvious to a September born child took another couple of months to
click with my son. In sports he would
get frustrated, being uncoordinated, clumsy and just not getting the rules of
games. And he was tall, and so people would forget that he was young, and get
frustrated when he couldn’t ‘verbalise his feelings’. And as parents who knew no better we would
get worried when we saw that the others in his year were on more advanced
books, or maths questions, or spellings.
As someone who was brought up in Kenya, our school year started in
January, which is my birth month. In
theory that would have made me the eldest, but I was shunted up a couple of
years into a class with kids who were 2 years older than me. At the age of 10, I was with other girls who
were more developed physically and socially than I was. It was a relief for me to come to boarding
school and be with peers my own age.
There is a movement by educationalists which encourages the schools to
perhaps delay the starting age of summer children so that they are not so
disadvantaged. Under this movement
parents will no longer be discouraged by local schools from placing a 5 year
old summer born child in a reception class with 4 year olds. It means that in
theory the summer babies will have a chance to catch up.
But would that have worked with my son?
In Infants school there is no doubt that there was an enormous difference
in ability between the range of ages, but there was the same difference between
the genders. Girls seemed to just Get It, whilst the boys bundled like puppies
in the corner of the room. In Junior
school the eldest kids, regardless of gender, were the most eloquent and seemed
to have an innate confidence which my son took a while to possess. And now he’s reached Secondary school?
In the middle of taking some GCSE’s a year early, he has adapted to the
pressure and knuckled down to work. In his
school year sports he is one of the top rowers, the best sprinter, and is in
all the A teams. The first term that he
joined he was chosen out of the year to make a speech at his Year Awards night.
At 6ft 1 he would look out of place in the year below. He still has slight
confidence issues every now and again, but has learned to sit back and
watch. Years of having things explained
to him has made him immeasurably patient with his younger brothers, as he helps
them with their homework. And I have
learned to step back now, and not fight his battles for him as the youngest in
the year, because he no longer needs me to.
There are times when the parents in my antenatal class have all wished
that they had kept their child back a year. And none of us would want to repeat
the blood, sweat and tears that it sometimes takes to keep your child focused and
confident when he can’t make sense of the world around him.
And there is no doubt that all parents deserve to have a choice. That gurgling child that lies in the pram, little
chubby hands working to catch the
shadows of the leaves in the sun, deserves it.
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