Study: Children Who Are Forced to Start Kindergarten May Suffer Long-term Effects

It is not right for parents to force their children to start kindergarten just because every kid their age is already going. They have to make sure that their child is ready in every aspect. In a recent study, it was mentioned that children need to be behaviorally and emotionally ready before their parents send them to school or they may be at risk of struggling with their grades.

The study's author, Deborah Gross, a professor of mental health and psychiatric nursing at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, said in a university news release, "In 2015, kindergarten teachers rated more than half of students behind in social and behavioral skills needed for learning, and it's painful for the children who want to succeed, but become frustrated and hopeless," US News reported.

For the study, researchers followed more than 9,000 public school students from kindergarten until the 4th grade. Results showed that those who had difficulty keeping up with social-behavioral development when they started kindergarten were 80 percent more likely to be held back in the succeeding years. Children who weren't ready to go to kindergarten were also 80 percent in need of one-on-one kind of service and support.

According to medicalxpress.com, the study revealed that young children who were slow on their development by the time they started kindergarten were seven times more at risk of being expelled or suspended from school. Researchers also found that boys have a higher chance of being socially and behaviorally unready for kindergarten and who have a much higher possibility to go through all three difficulties in the fourth grade.

"These results are important," Gross said. "They show how critical social and behavioral skills are for learning, how early the struggle begins for young children, and how important it is to address the problem of social-behavioral readiness well before children enter kindergarten," she explained.