That more and more babies are born prematurely is an irrefutable fact. In Catalonia, for example, it has gone from 2,600 premature births in 1994 to more than 4,300 in the last year or 5,700 in 2008. The causes are multiple and much research is being done because being born prematurely leads to problems added health, maturation and also a great expense to health services.
One of the problems of many premature children is that being born too early leads them to school many times without being too prepared for it. In such cases, it might be interesting to wait another year to enroll in p3 (3-year preschool), but many families find an important bureaucratic obstacle that does not allow them to do so. For this reason, the association of families of premature children, with the approval of many teaching and pedagogy professionals, has decided to request the change of the rules, in order to, at least, assess the possibility that it can be done .
"What nonsense, children do everything"
Many people, hearing this news, have given the typical "what nonsense", in reference to the fact that children are supposed to have an incredible capacity to adapt, even when they fall behind. And it is true, children learn to look for life because on many occasions they have no other. However, there are cases in which children do not have a good adaptation, have trouble learning, communicating or keeping up with their peers and, in many cases, end up repeating course later, as a solution to a problem that drags back time.
To avoid this, to avoid the burden, the discomfort in school, to see that you are not able to express yourself in the same way as your classmates, that you are lagging behind and avoid, consequently, a unnecessary frustration Due to a condition that he has not chosen, there are many children who should enter the school in the year in which, instead of turning 3, they meet (or have turned 4).
Brothers in the same course
Think that there is talk of a case in which the older brother is 3 years old, having been born at the beginning of the year and the little one turns that same year 3, for being born the same year, premature. Both of them they go to the same class, to the same course, but one has very different abilities and tools to the other.
And there are cases in which a premature baby is born whose probable date of delivery corresponded to the following year. But not to be born before will learn before doing anything. They are babies who turn 6 months and instead of starting to sit they are starting to try to turn around. They turn one year old and instead of starting to walk they are starting to crawl, or to sit down. And so it is time to enter the school and, although you find older children and smaller children, and some have abilities that others do not yet have, due to the difference in rhythms and age, many premature babies are directly in their queue, for not yet having done the things that, by age, they would have to do.
I share the initiative
So as a father concerned about the education of his children, I share the initiative and yes, I think the rules should change so that children could enter school, to do p3, at 4 years if it is considered a benefit for them. I have a son who was born premature, a little more than a month earlier than he had to. By age, since he was born in January, I have never seen him have less abilities than children of his age, but it is true that the adaptation to p3, with 3 years, was hard, very hard. The question is whether it was because he was born prematurely or because he is a child different from others (for better or worse). In any case, if they had offered it to me, I do not say that I would not have said that I was accepting this solution.
Although I imagine that, if done, it will be taken into account especially with children who were born very premature (below 32 weeks, perhaps) and always after a minimum assessment of the child's abilities, to avoid the opposite, that really did not need it and get bored to go ahead.
