For those of you who don’t know, redshirting is the act of delaying a child’s kindergarten entrance by a year. Some parents do it in the hopes of giving their kid an academic advantage. While that may work at first, it hurts the child in the long-run. Here is my experience.
Our DS was born April 4th, 1993. The cut-off in our area is September 1st, so he missed the cut-off by a lot, and it never occurred to us to have him take the early-entrance exam. We started him at Kindergarten when he was 5 and he did very well. At the end of the year, it was recommended that he straight to 2nd grade, as they thought he wasn’t being challenged enough. We refused. We wanted him where he was, and he went to 1st grade with all his friends. He excelled with ease all throughout elementary school, middle school, and high school, graduating as valedictorian of the class of 2011, and going to a prestigious college. It was college that became a problem. His classes finally became challenging, but because he was so used to breezing through his work with no bumps, he had never learned how to properly tackle challenging problems. He would give up on any assignment that required more than 5% of his brain power, as he wasn’t used to having to use any more than that. He got put on academic probation at the end of his 1st semester and got kicked out of the university at the end of the year. He came home feeling all down about himself and wondering what had gone wrong with him. He took a year off to work and travel and the following year(what would have been his junior year), he enrolled at a local community college, and it was there that he finally learned how to work hard. Last year, he transferred to a well-respected state university, and is finishing up his junior year, doing just as well as he did in high school. He’s going to be okay, but there’s no doubt in my mind that if we had skipped him like we were advised to, he would have been appropriately challenged, and would have learned how to work hard early on, and it wouldn’t have been a problem in college. Moral of the story? Don’t redshirt just to make your child’s life easier, because sooner or later, they will have to work hard and it’s better if they learn how to early on.
Now I understand that there are those parents who want to redshirt because they don’t want their child to go college at 17. Well, in that case, just have your child take a gap-year before college.
Interesting. I do think that many kids who breeze through their school years hit a wall when they get to college, whether or not they have been red-shirted. It’s possible that is why your son had trouble but it may have happened regardless.
I’m sorry things worked like that. I disagree with your reasoning as to why. I think it’s unlikely that your son would have been significantly more challenged had he been accelerated a year in elementary school. What is more likely is that he would have quickly caught up to the academic level of the kids a year before him and then done pretty much the same quality of studying and work.
I have a child who “missed” the cut off by a week. I could have only circumvented it by putting her into a private Kindergarten a year early and then could have switched to public if I chose for 1st grade. I didn’t. She had enough challenges and they greatly increased by 4th grade. She also goes to a district and had teachers that are well equipped to challenge high ability students. She has always worked hard.
I have another child who made the cut off by a week. I chose to “red shirt” her as I didn’t feel she was socially-emotionally ready for Kindergarten earlier. She has done well in 7 out of 8 of her school years so far. I lean towards the rough one being a mix of her own social-emotional development and a poor matchup between teaching and learning styles. She has always worked hard as well.
Academically, both of my kids were reading and doing simple math problems in preschool. I say this not to brag but as evidence that they were academically ready for school before they started.
As they have both participated in gifted programs, I have seen and heard quite a bit about the progress of classmates. There are students there who are underachievers. For whatever reason, they just don’t have the motivation to put in real effort. I haven’t seen a correlation with their age compared to peers. It does seem to afflict boys more than girls at our school.
In the end, we all make the best choice we can make with the information we have available at the time. Is it possible your son would have had a different outcome if he had been accelerated in elementary? Sure. It’s also possible he would have had the same or similar struggles and you would have written to lament pushing him ahead since he was so immature in comparison to classmates.
I reread your post. I should have ended by saying I’m glad your son has found his path.
Here’s an alternative point of view. Our kids were born in November. At 3 years old, our S had taught himself to read. He started pre-school when he would be turning 4. We had to decide whether to have him do JR-K in pre-school or go to K and be one of the younger kids in the school (since our school had no cut-off, as long as you turned 5 in the calendar year, you could start kindergarten). Our pediatrician and the director of the pre-school recommended giving our S the extra time to learn to socialize, so we had him take JR-K instead of starting K.
When he started K, he was one of the few kids who could read and the teachers would always partner him with kids who “needed extra help,” and he was made to be a peer tutor (a role he came to despise). He was easily the kid who grasped concepts readily and could breeze through his work. We went on a trip when he was in 5th grade. The teacher gave him 2" stack of homework and he completed it on the plane ride to our destination and he was ahead of his class for months after returning to school.
Finally, we had him apply to competitive private HS and he was admitted to two of them. We allowed him to choose which HS he preferred and he was there for 4 years. While there, he had to work harder than he ever had, taking all APs and marching band his SR year. He never was valedictorian but did learn to work with and compete with others who were his intellectual peers. In college, he opted to study engineering and it was a good fit for his skill set and he did fine, graduated and is working in his chosen career.
Our D was 2 years younger and we opted for her to take JR-K as well. She similarly has done well by being held back, also going to the same competitive private HS and private U. It gave her time for her intellectual abilities to catch up with her social gifts.
Both kids are grateful they had the extra time to grow socially, intellectually and emotionally by that extra year in pre-school instead of rushing ahead. They and we have no regrets, but it is definitely a decision that must be thoughtfully made considering everything related to the child and in the best interests of each child.
we did not red shirt, we had child enter on time, as one of the oldest in the class. school would not discuss other options-- said “we have never had a parent regret keeping child in the assigned year”. Five years later the school suggested that the best educational environment would be gained by doing a skip ahead a grade. I guess we are the example that proves the rule. Make sure that something your child is doing is hard for him or her to succeed in…otherwise they won’t learn that lesson. some of our issues are similar to the OPs story…I second their opinions
I’m so sorry that your son had to face that hurdle! I don’t think I can’t completely agree with your reasoning as to WHY he struggled so much in college (tracing it back to his entrance timing in kindergarten). Me and 2 of my other siblings were red shirted and we are doing just fine. 2 out of the 3 of us are at boarding schools and the other 2 are middle schoolers at a competive local day school
I think OP kid would have been better served in a more challenging school district or private school. Also, as a parent, you can do other things to challenge them such as summer courses, STEM camps, finding a gifted program, etc.
@additionvector : We have no idea what would have happened if your son had skipped a grade. He might have been more challenged intellectually, but had issues socially or emotionally from being less mature than his peers. He might have simply had a different set of challenges and they might have even been worse. (It is often the youngest, less mature kids who become the target of bullying or who succumb to peer pressure in an effort to win the approval of their more dominant peers.)
You made the best possible decision at the time. And it may well have been the best decision, period. Don’t beat yourself up.
(I skipped grades and ended up cast as the adorable child prodigy by my classmates, who braided my hair during recess while talking about boys and commenting on my perfect grades. They were lovely to me, but never treated me as a peer. My parents switched me to a different school and held me back a grade. I found my peeps and blossomed!)
Absolutely agreed. On the other hand, both acceleration and red-shirting can be beneficial or harmful depends on each child and his/her school environment.
‘Moral of the story? Don’t redshirt just to make your child’s life easier, because sooner or later, they will have to work hard’
For me the advantage of redshirtting is social. A first born younger in the class often struggles socially more than one who is older. From what I have seen second and later born tend to have better social navigation skills if neuro-typical because they’ve navigated the shores of dealing with an older sibling. Being one of the older kids in the class also helps. My sister in law redshirted her already reading just made the deadline kid. Her theory was that there was always an academic skill to work on and you can supplement at home but it’s hrDer to deal with social issues. Of course some of this comes from the fact that I live in an area where kids are very socially sophisticated very young. As one mom not so graciously put it by kindergarten you could already tell who the" mean girls" were. Thanks to very social moms, cliques were fully formed by this time.
Our D attended a daycare center that also shuttled 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds to preK. Since her birthday is 4 days before the state cutoff in mid-September, she started preK as a 2-year-old in late August. We had our choice what year to send her to K, but she was an early reader and working independently ahead of her classmates in preK. We couldn’t imagine what they’d do with her for another year, so we sent her to K as an almost 5-year-old. We heard from teacher friends that she would have problems eventually, although likely not until middle school. We took a wait-and-see attitude. She actually never had problems, although she had classmates a year or more older who did. She is excelling as a college junior now, retaining her scholarship that requires a 3.5 GPA without too much effort. She’ll graduate college before she’s 22.
S has a November birthday, so he is on the traditional timeline, entering K as an almost 6-year-old. He has always done great academically as well, but he had more social issues in early elementary. Things eventually straightened out for him, but he may have benefited from an additional year before K. We couldn’t know it the time because the issues didn’t start until middle of his kindergarten year. And we’ll never know what would’ve happened if we had waited.
So, two kids, two genders, but same parents, home environment, daycare, preK and teachers. Many of their classmates are siblings as well. It all just depends on the kid, and as others have said, we can only do what we think is best at the time.
I think it is very dependent on the child. “Reshirting” as it is called above does nothing to change a child’s intelligence, but it can help some students, typically boys with late birthdays, gain a bit of additional maturity and coordination before starting school full time. I know quite a few kids in this circumstance who have got off to a easier start because they had that extra year. In all of these cases (including some very bright kids, one of whom is at Yale now) the parent’s felt that by keeping the back a year, their kids were with the right group of peers. I also know of people who were never held back who breezed through HS only to hit a roadblock later on. It is all about trying to find the right level of challenge for each child.
Nonetheless I’m glad the OP’s child has regained his footing and is back on a successful path.
Glad he is back on a good path but I have to disagree. Both my boys were redshirted due to being within days of the cutoff and I feel they both thrived and are real leaders in their class. One breezes through much but not all classwork and the other fits right in academically. I found that you can always ask for more challenging work for them when they are younger if they are coasting too much. In my opinion, many of the boys that are on the younger side struggle a bit socially when they hit high school/puberty. I’m not sure redshirting in kindergarten can be attributed to struggling in college. I don’t believe one year makes that much of a difference academically. Even without redshirting kids could be almost a year apart anyway.
@thingamajig That would not have been redshirting because your son was already one of the oldest in the class in his normal year. Redshirting is more for when the child is the youngest in the class and you redshirt him to repeat a year so then he would be one of the older children.
We also have a sample of one…DS was a November birthday and we did elect to NOT send him to K when he was still four years old. We never regretted it…and neither did he.
Your son was fully five when he started kindergarten. That is a huge difference, in my opinion, than kids who are four for a chunk of the K year.
Our state has a December 31 deadline…so we often have kids who won’t be five until sept, Oct Nov or Dec of their K year.
To be honest, I wish the state would,change the deadline to September, 1 so kids would be five before starting K.
I agree with @mom2twogirls. Trying to trace his problems back to how old he was starting kindergarten is a reach. All kids struggle with the balance of how hard to work to get a certain result whether that is in sports, arts, academics, etc. Basically, that is character development. Not everybody has a linear course with that, but it is great that he is now aligning his effort with his ability.
I was never redshirted and though I did hit an academic roadblock, it happened in the beginning of HS when I attended a NYC STEM-centered public magnet. That was a good thing in retrospect as it gave me time to regain my footing well before I started undergrad at 17. I would have hated to have been held back by parents by the mistaken notion that a year would have improved my “social skills” or maturity…especially considering what transpired later on:
By the time I did arrive at undergrad, I went from being the youngest class-clown/academic dunce to being someone Profs and many students…including those older than me looked to for academic and even help with other matters. To this day, it still strikes me as weird that since undergrad, I’ve often been placed in/fell into the older brother/father role for those older than myself.
Also, a cousin who is a few weeks older than me ended up being redshirted involuntarily because his state had an earlier cutoff. Despite coming from an upper-middle class background and graduating from a private college prep school with a far higher HS GPA/estimated class ranking, he ended up having to take an involuntary gap year because he was shut out of all colleges he applied to (including my LAC) and he didn’t want to attend the directional in his home state.
As a result, he ended up being 2 years behind yours truly in college despite the fact he’s actually the older one. Ended up being the subject of some inside family jokes/ribbing by aunts/uncles/older cousins.
I agree that it really depends on the kid. My oldest was just couple weeks ahead of the cut-off in a district where EVERYBODY who came even close either red-shirted or did pre-K. After talking with his preschool teachers we went ahead and had him start regular Kindergarten. He was not just the youngest kid in class, but because of the number of kids holding back there were many kids who were a full two or even almost two and half years older than he was. He was the smallest kid in his class up until a growth spurt his sophomore year. But it was clearly evident that he was right where he should be. He was a class leader, and as he moved into high school it was clear that he was more mature than many of the older kids in his class. He skated by in high school, and was never really challenged, so he didn’t make all the effort he could have. But when he got to college he found his passion and he has never looked back.
The measure that correlates best with success for boys is their height at the end of eighth grade. Being tall builds confidence and that helps with emotional resilience. Our oldest was young for his grade and always struggled with respect from his peers.