Читать книгу The Complete Parenting Collection - Steve Biddulph, Steve Biddulph - Страница 55

Brain differences have one huge implication – that of deciding when boys should start school. Read this next section carefully if you have a small boy: it may make a huge difference in his life.

At the age of five or six, when children start serious schooling, boys’ brains are an astonishing six to twelve months less developed than girls’. They are especially delayed in what is called ‘fine-motor coordination’, which is the ability to use their fingers carefully and hold a pen or scissors. And since they are still in the stage of ‘gross-motor’ development, developing the nerves to their bigger arm, leg and body muscles, they will be itching to move their bodies around – so they will not be good at sitting still. In fact, until they finish their gross-motor development, they will not gain fine-motor skills. For boys, one leads to the other. (Girls do it in reverse: their brains go straight to finger coordination, and they often need help in body strengthening by bouncing on trampolines and playing basketball or swimming.)

The other delay boys experience is in using words well. This affects being able to tell a teacher what they need, answer questions in class, and communicate verbally with other children. Many boys at five are still very young socially, and not really ready for the demands of a school environment. In talking to early childhood teachers, from country schools in outback Australia to big international schools in Asia and Europe, the same message comes through: ‘Boys should stay back a year’.

For all kids, boys and girls, the calendar is a terrible way of deciding who should start school. Kids vary so much, and with a once-a-year intake some will always be young for their year. New studies from the UK show that kids who are young for their year actually do worse in school right through. Staying back for a year in these cases can be just the thing to make school more of a success in the twelve years following. It’s important to treat every child as an individual case and to think about each, not in terms of ‘how old?’, but rather ‘how ready?’ In boys’ cases, the answer is often: not yet.