Kindergarten This Year - Yes or No?

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i wont try to tell you what i think you should do, but i can tell you about my family's experience thus far.

with our oldest, he started kindergarten right after turning 5, barely making the age cutoff. he is not dx asd but he has some social issues and at the time a severe speech impairment. he has always been interested in being social. he ended up repeating kindergarten due to maturity issues, which we were fine with. we would make the same decisions with him again.

our youngest has classic autism with a speech impairment. his receptive and expressive language is good, but he has a profoundly severe impairment in intelligibility for which he gets therapy. when he was 3 1/2 he started preschool through the Head Start program and he is now half way through his second year. when he started, we were expecting a lot of issues, even though we didnt even have the asd diagnosis yet, we just knew he was "different". he had the meltdowns, crying melting spells, refusal to potty train, transition problems, trouble sharing and turn taking, etc. he surprised us and did beautifully, he had absolutely no behavioral issues at all. this year has brought more issues for him, not really behavior issues, but issues due to the other kids in the class. he is one of the oldest kids and its a two year program so there are kids in there that just turned 3 a month ago. he has issues because they are so young and dont do what (he thinks) they are suppose to, which makes him upset. he also gets sensitive to noise, so the class has some noise canceling headphones like you use at rifle ranges that he can wear if he wants to.

prior to Head Start, he had never played with another child besides his brothers, nor spoken to one, by his own choice. a year and a half later, he still has never played with another child =) he does however speak to them at school now, although its to tell them when they are doing something wrong. he will parallel play beside them sometimes, and will allow them to play with the same objects he is playing with also sometimes. a few months ago at mcd's he went right up to a little girl and asked her name! he didnt stick around to find out the answer, but it was speech directed towards another child. all of these seemingly small things are big developments for him, and i dont think they would have happened without the day to day exposure to other children that he gets at school.

my son does get a lot of positive socialization through school. no, its not with the other children, its with his teachers and the other adults he sees every day. like a lot of autistic children he is more drawn to adults, engaging with them for his play or conversation instead of with the other kids. he has learned to trust other adults outside our family and has thrived in the structure that school gives him that he cant get in our chaotic household.

given the decision over again, we would make the same one. school has been great for him in so many ways. he has access to speech and occupational therapy there as well. the first year his speech went from 3 word phrases and rarely speaking to complex compound sentences and starting to initiate conversation with others. some of this was normal development but a lot was simply exposure (was not the therapy, that didnt start until years end).

the kindergarten decision is a big one, and we see it pretty frequently on here. a lot is going to depend on what your circumstances are and what is available to you, as well as the individual childs needs. something else to consider is the home environment where the child would remain if not in school. for us, my SO is the stay at home and leaving an autistic child in the care of an autistic adult is a less desirable atmosphere than school. not because its a dangerous situation in any way, but because the autistic adult cant give our son the structure and even conversation that he really needs for growth. this isnt a simple decision of public schools being evil or the child not wanting to socialize, you really have to take the entire family and all the school options into the picture.