<p>What do you think about the practice of parents who hold back perfectly able, or even gifted kids in kindergarden so that they are a year older than their classmates, to give them a competitive advantage all the way through school? I have seen ambitious parents decide to do this before kindergarden, particularly with boys so that they can be bigger/stronger as athletes, and more mature about the academics, even though their kids were more than ready and able to handle school. This strategy has worked for college applicants to highly competitive colleges, although it is counter to the advice of gifted and talented experts. </p>
<p>Do colleges care? More importantly, should they? I have an opinion but I want to know if it is in the mainstream.</p>
<p>I would think the colleges are happy to see bigger/stronger athletes and more mature kids. </p>
<p>It’s become so commonplace it’s rare to see a 5 year old kindergartner in my town (although I have two kids who are younger than most in their grade - I just couldn’t hold them back when they were ready to go).</p>
<p>In our district even Feb/March birthdays are held back - it’s out of control.</p>
<p>I think that admissions to speciality or GT programs should consider the age of the child and if they are held back or “redshirted.” Even if it is not deliberately to improve eligibility for sports or other programs, it seems to result in an advantage. </p>
<p>It also affects things like ECs and jobs - if a child who is held back gets his license in 10th grade, rather than the more typical 11th grade for our state, then they have more mobility and more access to programs and jobs that might have an age cutoff, which would potentially enrich their application. So maybe the colleges should consider this.</p>
<p>However, since the enrollment cutoff varies from state to state, how would a college know if a child was held back ?</p>
<p>According to the research, age does matter. Being a bit older is an advantage in sports and academics.</p>
<p>But it depends on the kid. </p>
<p>(I say that as a mom who–16 years ago-- had my son tested for EARLY admission for kindergarten. . .and he was accused of cheating on the test!–Starting school “early” turned out to be right for him. Though one of the youngest in his class, he still made NMF. I also have a nephew who was two years younger than his classmates–he got a full academic scholarship).</p>
<p>Okay, so is it conferring an unfair advantage to red-shirt a perfectly capable or gifted kid? Or is this an “All’s fair in love and war and college admissions” strategy? I’ve never seen this discussed in any of the college admissions literature. If not everybody does it from your kid’s high school, then where does it leave the kids whose parents did not know to hold them back? Don’t colleges look at birth dates?</p>
<p>I think it’s probably hard to judge from the outside whether a kid is “perfectly capable”. A friend of mine held her December 31st girl back since she would have been the way youngest in the class. The girl turned out to be so bright that she was just way out of sync socially with her class, and she ended up having to be accelerated up to her “normal” class. Another friend had a gifted but very socially immature boy who would might not have fared well had she sent him “on time”. </p>
<p>I haven’t kept any of my kids back, and I do have a child who has an extremely late birthday and is in the same grade as kids who are a full year older than he is. Maybe they have an advantage, maybe not. I don’t really think anyone can judge, and I doubt a college would either as they could never know what the reasons were initially.</p>
<p>I think age and maturity level are much more highly correlated in the elementary years than they are in the late teens. I’d guess that colleges don’t care very much about age differences of a given graduating cohort.</p>
<p>A neighbor held her S (6 months older than my S) back. His b-day was about 6 weeks before the cutoff. Our kids were very close so I knew him well. They went to the same schools K-12. </p>
<p>I never saw that it gave this kid one ounce of advantage over others. He was an above average student (top 20%) but never one of the top of the class kids, a good cross country runner but not conference champ or anything, took the SAT three times w/ paid tutoring and topped out at 1200/1600. </p>
<p>His mother thought he would have struggled academically if she had sent him the year he was supposed to start sch. His father was a college baseball player and envisoined his S following in his footsteps so thought it a good idea too. </p>
<p>I never saw that it gave him any advantage over others. The girl who was Val. of their h.s. class was 13 months younger than this boy.</p>
<p>My S2 played football all thru h.s. I can see where it might be an advantage in athletics IF the kid was inclined to be athletic.
In the past,there has been some controversy in our area over good athletes leaving the public system and going to a private sch. where they were allowed to repeat a grade thereby giving them more time to grow,improve their game and get more exposure to college scouts.</p>
<p>There are as many reasons to hold a child back as to start a child early. In our town, many low income families send their children to public kindergarten early because they can ill afford the cost of day-care. As a result, we have a two year kindergarten; the children who are ready to move on to first grade are moved; those who are not quite ready have another year of kindergarten.</p>
<p>Then there are the middle-class parents who think that kindergarten has become too academic (The most vociferous parents in this regard were from Germany). these parents keep their children in day-care if they can afford it, so that their children will not be socialized into the world of study too early. I have not heard any of these parents saying anything about physical maturity or college-advantage. But for every parent who thought that k-8 was not rigorous enough, there were parents who remembered that they did not have homework until 7th grade. When S was in daycare (pre-kindergarten) some parents complained to the director that one of the teachers was teaching the kids to read and recognize numbers. The director put a stop to it, even though the kids loved to know that they could distinguish their letters and do some basic arithmetics.</p>
<p>Yes, I have seen this trend out of control in some parts of the country … mostly for athletics. But it really is the parents’ choice.</p>
<p>And YEAH, my 20-year-old HS senior can beat up your 16-year-old HS senior!!! Your kid’s a wuss lady!!! … (Sorry, I got a little over-competitive there.)</p>
<p>I was placed in Kindergarten before I was even five and a half. I graduated one week after my 17th birthday. I truly believe that my parents placed me in school at too young of an age. Not only did I struggle with maturity and academics, I also had trouble relating to my peers and would consistently make friends with those below my grade level simply because I’ve always been the youngest in my grade level. Age does have many factors in education and maturation needed to succeed in school. After I graduated, I took two years off of college to catch up with my peers.</p>
<p>Well–I’ve always thought that holding a kid back sends a message that they’re not competent. Back in the day I went off to college at 16 and came out just fine. That said, you can see on another thread that DH and I recently decided to have one of our kids repeat his junior year of hs. Precipitous drop in grades the last two years, and then a very recent diagnosis of depression. My tendency is to let them stay on grade unless there are extenuating circumstances. With so many kids being held back, I wonder what this portends for future generations. “Kids” entering college at 25?</p>
<p>I have seen athletic boomer parents red shirt their kids, it became obvious in our small town when you went from a spring sport grade based league to a summer sport birthdate based league and all of a sudden half the kids aged up.</p>
<p>I have also seen parents lie on the form for the age based league to keep their kids in a younger group, not from competitiveness as much as from not wanting to see small, delicate kids or late bloomers competing against kids who already looked like teens ;)</p>
<p>I’ve never had a problem with holding a boy (it’s almost always boys) back a year for socialization/maturity reasons. I don’t really care whether it gives them an advantage in HS or sports or college. Someone is always going to have an advantage. Not something I worry about.</p>
<p>S started kindergarten at 4; he turned 5 that October. Strictly from the social development standpoint, he probably would have benefited from being held back a year, but academically, he was way more than ready, and physically, he was already the tallest kid in the class (and continued to be the tallest kid in his class). Despite some issues with his socialization, he made friends in the class and was a sought-after playmate after school.</p>
<p>D went through a public full time gifted program in a system where it was parent’s choice if the birthday was 9/1-12/31. All the boys in the gifted program were held back, and all the girls were put through early.</p>
<p>I’ve never seen this happen here in Toronto. Not even once. Must be an American thing. Cut off date here is 12/31 and we also have junior kindergarten so most kids start school here when they’re 4.</p>
<p>One thing that was evident in my kids’ schools was that the younger kids might do fine all through elementary school, but once they hit puberty there were huge differences in maturity and, in the case of boys, the ability to do math. The brain develops a little later, which is why the top private schools in our city (at the time) recommended keeping the boys back. There are plenty of exceptions, of course, but there is absolutely no downside, in my opinion, to being an older student in middle school and high school. My kids both had fall birthdays and the schools had a Sept 1 cutoff, but my kids wound up pretty much in the middle due to the hold-backs. My son lost another year along the way due to a school switch for 11th grade, and there was no downside.</p>
<p>Interestingly, my impression was that there were many more people in my class at MIT who were young for our grade. I’m a February birthday, and went from being smack in the middle of my high school class age-wise to being one of the older members of my class at MIT.</p>
<p>Better not let that get out or all the crazy ones will be trying to send their kids to kindergarten at age 2 to get them into MIT. ;)</p>
<p>Actually, MIT is one of the few colleges that do not encourage students to remain in high school. S was advised to stay in high school for four years by Harvard, but Marilee Jones (remember her?) said that since he was already taking college classes, there was no point in remaining in high school. He followed her advice and skipped senior year to attend… Harvard. He’s one year and some younger than his roommates, but it did not bother any of them.</p>
Cut off date here is 12/31 and we also have junior kindergarten so most kids start school here when they’re 4.</p>