After years of debate, a decision

We've finally reached a decision, one that's been years in the making. Mark and I have chosen to keep Gus back a year and have him do 4K rather than kindergarten in the fall.

All along, several factors had tipped the scale in favor of holding back our youngest. With a birthday of Aug. 18, he's just two weeks shy of the age cutoff for kindergarten. We knew that boys with late-summer birthdays often benefit from an extra year to mature. Then there's the biggest one: he's Gus - bursting with energy.

Still, making this decision hasn't been easy for us. Gus is incredibly bright in some areas, while he lags in others. He knows all the uppercase and lowercase letters cold and is doing a lot of pre-reading. His writing and fine motor skills do not match those of his peers, however. To make matters more complicated, looming large for Mark and me is the regret we still feel for not having Ben tested to enter kindergarten early. Doing so may have saved us the difficult choice to have him skip second grade. Doubt plagued us. What if Gus turned out to be another Ben?

However, our conference with Gus's preschool teacher on Tuesday night cemented it for us. She was in agreement with our thinking, pointing out that it may well be pretty difficult for Gus to sit still all day in kindergarten next fall. She reassured us that she'd held back her own son and daughter, who have summer birthdays, and both she and her children were happy with that choice.

The world of education has changed significantly since I began elementary school. What is 4K now was my kindergarten. Kindergarten standards have become much more rigorous. We don't want to send Gus into something for which he's not prepared, and neither do we want to saddle a teacher with a boy who's just not quite ready to be there.

As parents, we can never be 100 percent sure we're making the right decisions for our kids. When it was Ben's time, we made a good-faith choice that turned out to be the wrong one. In the end, though, Ben has managed to thrive and maybe even build some character.

Each of my kids is different from the next. Since we can't predict the future, we'll proceed, as always, with great hope that we're doing what's best.