<p>What bothers me the most about red-shirting is, by allowing so many kids to do this, the school is essentially creating an new artificial standard age. My D was within one week of the cut off. Her preschool teachers etc all said she’d be bored with another year of preschool and send her to K, which we did.</p>
<p>If all the other kids who were in the deadline went when they were supposed to, things probably would have been better. But so many were held back that the actual average age of K was much higher. She was in with kids who were 18 months older, and now in HS they are driving and so forth while many other kids aren’t.</p>
<p>If you have a deadline, I think you should stick with it except in extreme cases.</p>
<p>I’m one of those that kept my extremely bright D1 home for an extra year. We live in SoCal with a Dec. 1 cutoff and her birthday is late fall. My H and I just did not feel there was any rush for her to be in school (just our opinion). </p>
<p>Well next Friday she will graduate college after only 3 years so I guess you could say that in the end she was where she needed to be!</p>
<p>My story: Born January 1 in NYC where, as others have said, the cut-off is December 31. The father of some kid born the same day as me made some sort of argument that the January 1st babies should go to school that year, which, unbelievably, the Bd. of Ed bought. So off we trundled to kindergarten at the ripe old age of 4 1/2. Bad enough . . .</p>
<p>When I was starting 2nd grade, we moved to a district where the cut-off was August 30. So now I was the youngest by months and almost a year and a half younger than my oldest classmates. I can’t tell you how this affected me all through school. My lack of maturity and shorter attention span affected every aspect of my education. I don’t know, of course, how things might have been different had I been among the oldest, but I did everything I could to make sure my kids were among the oldest in their class. And their stories are very different than mine.</p>
<p>I probably should have held back my son (late Aug b’day and pretty much no boys were sent if they had a Sept. or later b’day,) so he was one of the youngest. But he had been in nursery school since he was two and another year of that seemed silly (plus it was expensive.) </p>
<p>I have a late Nov b’day but New Haven had a cut off of Jan. 30th then, so while I was young I wasn’t the only one.</p>
<p>My D has an Oct. 1987 birthday, and missed our Oct 1st cutoff. In her kindergarten class was a boy who was repeating. He had a January 5, 1987 birthday. The next year, when first grade began, a child moved in from NYC with his Dec. 31, 1988 birthday. So you figure the spread!</p>
<p>It would be a rarity where I live. In Ontario, we have Junior Kindergarten and the cut-off for September entry is that the child must have their 4th birthday by Dec. 31st.</p>
<p>DS started in CA at 4 because the cutoff was 5 by 12/1. We then moved to IN with a cutoff of 9/1. Max was only 17 and half of his class graduated at 19 because parents red-shirt their boys for sports. It was tough during PE (especially in a town obsessed with sports) but his academics did not suffer by being the youngest. What teachers report here is that the worst discipline problems in middle school with the red-shirt boys.</p>
<p>I agree with surfcity. It’s a vicious cycle. The more people who hold their kids back, the more it will seem that “normal” aged kids are small and immature. Maybe your 5 year old kindergartener isn’t immature, he’s just in class with a bunch of 7 year olds. In our area with a sep 1 cutoff it is almost universal that any kid born may-aug is held back and pretty common for march and April too. Parents seem to be almost phobic about having their kid be the youngest in the class. When one of my kids was in 4th grade, half of the class should have been at least a grade ahead by age. </p>
<p>I truly believe that there are very few kids who need to be held back for maturity or academic reasons. I don’t think being the youngest should be the sole reason to redshirt a kid. If more districts had NYC like rules, there would only be a maximum of a one year age spread in any classroom and maybe many parents would not feel the need to redshirt. Kindergarten would be for 5 year olds, not for 61/2 year olds. I’ve even heard parents of babies say they will definitely hold the kid back a year. Really?! How do you know how your kid will develop in the next few years? For many people I think it’s just a knee jerk reaction without any real thought put into it. </p>
<p>I know many parents who redshirt say it was the best thing they ever did for their kid, but I’ve seen it backfire too when the kid did not have the stellar results the parents hoped for. </p>
<p>For the CC parents who redshirted, would you have done it if you knew your kid would have been in a class of kids all within one year of his/her age?</p>
<p>D2 has an October birthday. She went to K at 4, almost 5. She had taught herself to read a year earlier, so I saw no point for another year of high school. She is one of the youngest in her class and sometimes struggles socially, but she is happy where she is.</p>
<p>I think you will find that almost every parent who started a young child late or early feels they made the best decision for their kid. And that it worked out for the best.</p>
<p>It’s unfortunate that the most obvious solution – having different cut-off dates for boys and girls – is probably illegal.</p>
<p>My August-birthday daughter was FAR more ready to cope with kindergarten than her March-birthday brother. And I think this is typical. In my era (my kids were born in the late 1980s), almost nobody held back girls, but substantial numbers of people held back boys with summer or fall birthdays. I think that a lot of these parents knew what they were doing.</p>
<p>NYC suburbs here where the cut-off is December 1. Older d was born November 26. Her entire life in school we had a situation where we would be holding her 6 year old b-day party on a weekend and the next day one of her classmates would be having his 7 year old b-day party. I could not have kept her back intellectually. She was ready for kindergarten but had the cut-off been October for example, she would have benefited from being the one of the oldest in the class as opposed to one of the youngest. She has two friends with January birthdays who should have been a year behind whose parents pushed them by sending them to private kindergarten rather than extra year of nursery. One of those girls is now a White House staffer and the other was an Intel finalist.
Younger d is a summer birthday and her year had many summer birthdays so she was right where she should have been.
I also think a lot of readiness in school depends on the placement in the family-younger sibling sees older siblings go off to school, maybe sees a bit more about what goes on… could help them be more ready perhaps.
Also so much depends on class mix overall and how individual classes within school are put together… a collection of mellow kids perhaps, or a class with kids with more problems. Older d’s year had approx 265 students graduating high school - 2/3 boys, 1/3 girls… Younger d’s year had just the reverse- 2/3 girls and 1/3 boys. Older d had lots of friends who moved away to other states or moved to private school.</p>
<p>I skipped 1st grade and had a late birthday and loved being the youngest in the class. Didn’t hurt me as far as I could tell. I did take a gap year before college and another one before grad school.</p>
<p>My older son (March birthday, Dec 31 cut-off) would have been a good candidate for skipping. He was extremely precocious and was bored to death in school. Younger son (July birthday) was smack in the middle of his class age-wise, but always seemed to be about six months behind the program. He might have been better off kept back, though by the time high school rolled around, he seemed to have figured things out for the most part. (Probably some minor LDs were part of the picture.)</p>
<p>I’d really love to see more age diversity in classroom and real testing for school readiness.</p>
<p>Hmmmmn, I guess my parents tried to ruin me : late Nov Bday, started school at 4 in NY, then moved west. I was easily doing 4th grade level work in 3rd grade, so I went straight to 5th grade, graduated HS at 16, college at 20, masters at 22. I had no problems, but that doesn’t mean it’s for everyone. I think it would be harder for boys (though my brother did essentially the same thing, Oct Bday). </p>
<p>Certainly, there can be good reasons for delay on an individual basis, but the idea that a kid starts Kindergarten at 6 so that he can be a sports star in HS is ludicrous to me. It just reminds me of how much we value sports over just about everything else. Still, I remember having that thought when my cousin red shirted her kid (she did do it so he’d be bigger for the teams) and he got a nice athletic scholarship! So, the joke’s on me!</p>
<p>Cross post: "I’d really love to see more age diversity in classroom and real testing for school readiness. "</p>
<p>That’s what I’ve been seeing. It was already fairly common when my kids started school, but now it’s almost the exception for kids to start kindergarten at age 5. If the trend continues, parents will have to hold their kids back two years if they want to “redshirt.” </p>
<p>Athletically, it does make a big difference. Looking at D’s classmates who got athletic scholarships, most were on the older side. But it doesn’t seem to make much difference academically, at least beyond the early elementary school years (when it’s often the older kids who win the coloring contests and such). By middle school, things seem to even out. Interestingly, of the top 10 students in D’s graduating class, all but one were on the younger side (with late spring birthdays), and #3 was a full year younger (started kindergarten when he had just turned 4).</p>
<p>Both of my kids have summer birthdays, so we faced this decision twice, 6 years apart. With my son, after testing and on the advice of the psychologist, we enrolled him in kindergarten 6 weeks after his 5th birthday. If I had one do-over for my son, I would have waited another year. He was very intelligent but suffered in numerous ways as the youngest in his class. There were boys in his grade who were more than 18 months older than him and in comparison, my son was very immature. Fast forward to college, my son had no clue what he wanted to do when he started college, switched majors as a senior and graduated with an engineering degree after 7.5 years in college. </p>
<p>My daughter made the cutoff for kindergarten by 14 days. She was more than ready for kindergarten, so off she went. In the middle of 2nd grade, she became homeschooled for medical reasons. When high school rolled around, and my daughter wanted to go back to a traditional school, we made the decision to hold off for a year, for several reasons. It is a decision I have never regretted, one that my daughter benefitted greatly from. Unlike Jea828’s case, the top 10 in my daughter’s class were all summer or fall birthdays.</p>
It doesn’t matter what the cutoff is, SOMEBODY has to be the youngest in the class. The problem arises with so many holding kids back that now they aren’t just almost a year younger, they are two years younger. But it all evens out by high school. I agree that most of the academically successful kids I saw in high school were the ones who were younger. Most of the ones I saw being held up for academic reasons, never did catch up.</p>
<p>There’s also the social aspect of fitting in when other kids are physically more mature. My son would have been a late bloomer anyway, but he was also a preemie AND had a summer birthday. When he got to sixth grade, there were boys in his class who were over a foot taller and already shaving. He was skinny and short and looked much younger. It was awkward for him (of course it might be at the other extreme too). I know kids mature at different rates anyway but middle school seemed to be the time when the differences were most exacerbated.</p>
<p>I graduated from college at 19. I started Kindergarten at four, skipped twice and finished college in three years. I had no problems going through public school, but when I hit college at 16, most of the people there were older. Of course, the drinking age at that time was 18! The hardest part was when I was looking for a job after graduating. It’s difficult to convince a prospective employer that you have the soul of an older person. At that time in the 70’s, the job market was tight, and companies could be very picky.</p>
I’m sorry, but it doesn’t always even out for high school. It just doesn’t. For the kids who are truly not ready, as opposed to “youngest,” a lifetime patten of problems can emerge. Mathmom, is, as always, correct. Individual determination would be the best thing. And I do think parents should have a great deal to say about the issue.</p>
<p>In 1966, my mother tried to enroll me in kindergarten. I turned five October 4 of that year and the cutoff in our state was November 1. The lead teacher/owner of the private kindergarten (it was all private in our state in those days) told her I’d be better off going to nursery school for a year and starting kindergarten when I was five, rather than be the youngest in my class. My mom listened to her and I’m glad she did, even though I did encounter some problems. I matured early and could have easily passed for 15 when I was 12, so teachers and other adults tried to treat me as if I was 15 and expected me to act like I was 15. By the time my own sons came along, the cutoff had been moved back to September 1 and we had mandatory full-day kindergarten. My oldest is also an October baby and was one of the older ones in his class. My younger one was born in late August and we redshirted. It’s worked out well. Kindergarten is more like first grade was 50 years ago and he was ready to settle down and work. Sports didn’t enter into our decision, but that has worked out well for him too. It really depends on the child, but IMHO, kids grow up too fast as it is and you can’t go wrong slowing them down a bit.</p>
: late Nov Bday, started school at 4 in NY, then moved west. I was easily doing 4th grade level work in 3rd grade, so I went straight to 5th grade, graduated HS at 16, college at 20, masters at 22. I had no problems, but that doesn’t mean it’s for everyone. I think it would be harder for boys (though my brother did essentially the same thing, Oct Bday). </p>