Born at the wrong time of the year

[robo]

Article out that seems to suggest that children born at the end of the school year are more likely to miss out on sporting opportunities.

www.thelssa.co.uk/lssa/sportnation/ASportingChance.pdf

[robert]

Ah, another excuse to add to my list of why I won't qualify for London 2012

[chris]

I've not read the entire thing, but you see a similar pattern in early years classes as well. If you are "older" in your year, you can benefit from having more nursery education than those born later in the year. The effects of this can often be seen in the following years, however, it normally disappears pretty quickly after that.

[dre]

so my disappointing life is due to my August 28th birthday !

[chris]

dre said:

so my disappointing life is due to my August 28th birthday !

It really depends when you entered the school system - you could have been the oldest in your year, or the youngest!

[dre]

youngest - call me a prodigy if you will

[slacko]

Utter carp!

My birthday is in August so I was always the youngest in my class. I was also usually top of my class with my grades and captained my school football teams.

If the individual has a brain or a sporting talent, the time of the year they were born is immaterial.

[dre]

oh thanks

[chris]

I am a July baby, so I was amongst the youngest. I never really got hooked on team sports at school but my dad took me swimming all the time. I then became interested in swimming and was reletively good at it.

Every rule has an exception, but some children might be turned off sport at a young age if they don't see any relative success in it, by always being picked last. This sort of thing could be set in your subconscious from a very early age, perhaps to before you can really clearly remember.

I think it all changes as you get older, for me around 11 or 12 there was a big shift in confidence which reflected itself in better work and more involvement with team games.

[scottg]

We will see both my two are going to be one of the oldest in their years ( sept and oct)

were as I'm a july baby so one of the youngest in my year

[slacko]

dre said:

oh thanks

;D Nothing personal Dre!

I was born on the 24th of August. There were disadvantages of being the youngest in the class, up until mid-teens I was usually the smallest and therefore had to settle for second-tier quality girls.

It was worse for me when my family emigrated to Canada when I was 13. Because my grades were so good they skipped me a year, which meant I was now by far the youngest & smallest in the class.

Like my Dad said at the time - it builds character!