Why redshirting for kindergarten is a bad idea:

Ynotgo
Thu, 30 Mar 2017 18:18:33 +0000

Whoa, getting a little steamy here…

I think I’m going to take this back to the OP’s comment about excelling with ease though HS and then hitting the wall in college. “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.”

I think on the redshirting issue, it’s really a YMMV thing. You can’t do a controlled experiment where you put one copy of a kid in the higher grade and another copy of the same kid in the lower grade.

But, you can do things to make sure any kid experiences appropriate levels of challenge prior to college so that they have experience not breezing through.

Of course, there are personality issues, and what worked for DS17 wouldn’t have worked for DS21, who doesn’t (yet?) seem as tenacious personality-wise.

Our experiences are specific to us, but DS17 missed the early December cutoff by less than a month and we didn’t really have an option to put him forward, even though he was reading and doing math prior to kindergarten. Redshirting is uncommon here, so he was one of the older kids in his class. So, I suppose he could have breezed through. But, he (and we) found ways for him to be challenged.

So far he has some excellent options as far as colleges to choose, including a couple where anyone would worry about their kid finding it too challenging. I still worry about it, because I’m the mom. But, some of the experiences he’s had that gave him familiarity with struggle include:

– He would say that he learned to deal with challenge early by playing video games where beating “the boss” of each level got progressively harder and sometimes took days to master.

– Learning to play piano well despite fine motor issues. (And piano helped him with dysgraphia, which probably would have been more of a problem if we’d been able to put him ahead a grade.)

– Learning computer programming and debugging complex problems early on. He recalls me helping him learn to debug in 6th grade and that it was somehow a breakthrough for him as far as critical thinking. It’s something he’s tried to teach others when tutoring.

– Having some elementary teachers who were willing to challenge him and expect more in math and composition. We just got lucky there. Other than my being able to volunteer to help a special math group that included him, that was luck at having good teachers.

– Other than one science teacher, junior high was kind of a wasteland as far as the ability to get challenging classes. He did take some online programming classes that were challenging and was able to take the AP Comp Sci test in 8th grade.

– His high school allows kids to take AP classes early, without the previous non-AP class as a prerequisite. So, we were lucky again there. AP Physics B in 9th was an early challenge that he had to learn to handle. He was able to skip ahead in math to get into AP Calc in 10th, which seemed about the right level. Multivariable was “the wall” I hit in college, so I was happy that he was able to take that in a challenging environment while still at home.

– Dual enrollment classes at a 4-year college have allowed him to take more advanced math and CS courses, including some where he communicated with the professor to test out of a prerequisite class.

– He was fortunate to be accepted to a couple of summer programs where the work was quite challenging. I think that gave him the self-knowledge about what learning environments work best for him. I hope that because of those experiences, he’ll be better able to decide which college environment is best for him.

Anyway, just trying to bring this back on topic a bit…