When to Enroll in Kindergarten: Age and Size

Our son will be 5 at the end of June. He is a very outgoing child and seems bright for his age. He can write his name, count to 100, and knows his address and phone number. Even though he is very small, we assumed that we would be sending him to kindergarten this fall.
We have just moved to a new community where the trend is to have boys with summer birthdays wait until they are 6 to start kindergarten. Now I'm afraid that if we send our son to kindergarten this year, his being the youngest and probably smallest boy in the class might mean he would be playing "catch-up" all the time. My husband doesn't think it would hurt to keep him in preschool another year. What's best for him? - Want to Do the Right Thing
Answer: Many parents write telling us how glad they are that their children, especially boys, started kindergarten late, while others support an early start to kindergarten. Teachers also write supporting both views. As far as research goes, there is no strong evidence that younger children do not do as well in school in the long run as their older classmates. The older children do have some advantages in the first few grades. Things tend to even out by third or fourth grade, and the age advantage usually disappears.
More important than the age issue is the question of determining if your son can handle kindergarten. The curriculum is definitely getting more difficult. It can focus so much on paper-and-pencil activities that it can be difficult for very young children to handle. What you need to do is talk to the kindergarten teachers at the school your son will be attending. Find out what kind of experiences your son will have in kindergarten, and the level of social and emotional skills and academic readiness of the other children. Then make the decision based on what you think will be best for your son.