“Nobody ever was successful because they were the youngest in the class,” said Betsy Newell, director of the Park Avenue Christian Church Day School.

Ouch. I'm not saying my present-day successes are specifically due to the fact that I was consistently the youngest person in my class until high school, but it certainly didn't hurt. There's apparently this big trend in New York to keep kids in pre-school and avoid kindergarten until they're six years old. Now, I know I'm not a parent, but every kid is (obviously) different, so I think these blanket statements that being younger/smaller than your classmates is inherently detrimental are just wrong. You have to know your kid. You have to weigh the cost of them being younger/smaller against the cost of them being bored by hanging back another year. I know I've said it before, but I started kindergarten three months before my fifth birthday, and I could already read short books on my own and could count pretty high. I remember very distinctly being very bored the first half of the year and growing frustrated with my classmates. I can't imagine what it would have been like if my parents had waited another year. My brother, on the other hand, was much more hampered (probably because he's a guy) by his small stature and so my parents didn't start him as early, to give him a chance to grow a bit more and be a little stronger emotionally. Of course these decisions are very child-specific. So I guess I can understand the frustration of some parents with seemingly arbitrary cut-off dates for at what age their child must start a given grade, but these blanket statements by educators are, frankly, offensive.