In my state kindergarten isn’t mandatory and kids don’t have to be enrolled until age 7, so there’s a lot of leeway in parental decisions. Cut-off for K is August 1 and many kids with summer birthdays don’t start school the year they are eligible. This is especially common for boys.
This is a big discussion for S now, as his granddaughter turns 3 in July. Most kids go to two years pre-school, so that would mean starting next fall. He’s not sending her. She’s ready for pre-K. I’m working on my smile and nod
Both Mr R and my best friend were “redshirted.” I haven’t the slightest clue why and neither do they. Their bdays are only 2 days apart and just a few weeks before the cutoff day. On the other hand, my mom fought like hell to get me into K early because I was already reading chapter books but missed the cut off by just a few weeks. I also happened to be extremely tall and looked much older than 4 so I was treated like I was older. They didn’t let me in. I do remember being bored out of my skull in K-8 but I probably would’ve been born with or without the year jump. I also was always easy to find in class pictures because I was literally an entire head taller than the next tallest person. I had a lot of self-conscious issues about that for a while (as not only was I tall, I also developed earlier than the rest of my grade).
I don’t think redshirting is always the answer or always bad. It depends entirely on the kid IMO.
ETA:
Funny. Here it was the opposite. It was the private school that wouldn’t let me jump. The public school was fine with it. The public schools here also allowed the late start for the two boys.
It depends on the kid, but in my experience red shirting can help socially where a kid moves from one of the youngest in a class to one of the oldest. They are likely to become more of a leader.
Regarding challenge, the school may no have been hard enough for him. It is a big problem that top public schools are years ahead of other public schools, but that is how it works now.
I don’t think one can extrapolate their own experience as being the right thing to do for every kid. There are too many variables.
Our oldest son was going to be either the oldest or the youngest in his class. We decided not to put him into kindergarten at the age of 5 (actually he would have been 4 when it started). He was so small, gentle and shy…my husband couldn’t stand the thought of him leaving. His friends were going the next year, so he started with them, as the oldest in his class. Socializing was very tough for him, he was very smart and not challenged enough, so we put him in private schools. He went to one of the best private schools in the country, and was definitely challenged. It cost us a lot of money, but now, after all the things he had to deal with (including Tourettes and Aspergers), he is so confident, happy, and his life is good. I don’t regret it, and can’t imagine how tough it would have been, if he had been the youngest and smallest, as such a shy kid.
S was a late November baby in a district where the cut-off was the end of the calendar year. We met with his nursery school teacher in the spring, and she assured us he was intellectually prepared to start kindergarten, no problem. We then asked where S was, because he didn’t seem to be in the 4 year-old classroom. “Oh, he must be with the 3 year-olds–he likes to spend time with them.” (It was a very loosely structured school where the kids were allowed a lot of freedom.) Duh! In addition, S was small for his age, and I remembered a petite work colleague telling me how her most vivid memory from elementary school was how she was the only kid who couldn’t reach the bookshelf to pick out a book during free reading time. It still bothered her! So H and I decided that intellectual ability aside, S’s small stature combined with his lagging maturity meant we’d be nuts to put him in kindergarten. Instead we enrolled him in a more structured nursery school program, so he’d have a new and different experience. We never regretted the decision, and while he never became a leader of any sort, he sure was the envy of his classmates when he was the first to get his driver’s license!
I think it’s nuts to redshirt a kid solely to give him or her some theoretical leg up on the competition, but there are many elements that go into deciding whether a child is ready for kindergarten, and all parents can do is make the decision as intelligently as possible and then not look back.
All of the above being said, in our area, redshirting isn’t always done for intellectual or emotional reasons. Our secondary schools activities commission allows kids to participate in sports as long as they are no more then one grade behind the class that fits their chronological age. Parents have been known to redshirt sons or have them repeat a grade just so they’ll be bigger and move developed for sports.
It is also difficult to extrapolate what a young 5yo will be like in middle school. Will they physically mature early or late? That can have a big influence on how they fare. For a girl that matures early and is the oldest or one that matures late and is the youngest, middle school can be a big challenge. Same with the boys, but a bit less obvious.
Sometimes the oldest kids become a “leader” in ways that are not so positive. I have seen that as well. OTOH, my young for grade kid (also the youngest in our family) definitely got exposed to things at an earlier age than his brothers. Again, no right answer. If I had had any choice in the manner, all my kid would have had winter-spring birthdays!
Just as obvious for the boys, in my opinion, because of the huge growth spurt and the increase in physical strength with puberty – both of which have a major impact on a kid’s ability to play sports well, something that a lot of boys care about.
Sports is becoming less of a reason to red shirt, at least for the elementary years. Many sports are going to birth date age groups, not grade-in-school groupings. An 8 year old third grader will be on the same team as an 8 year old 4th grader or an 8 year old second grader. When they get to high school they are all back on the high school teams, but a few states even limit that game playing by limiting participation to 18 and under. I think Virginia has a particularly harsh rule and cut off.
My nephews are caught up in this right now. Birth date in Sept, right before the school cutoff. They play hockey which has always been controlled by birthday, but now want to play lacrosse too. Lax was always by grade, but now is by age and the cutoff is Sept 1, so nephews would have to play with the kids in the grade below. With 5th graders. And they are in middle school. Not going to happen.
At least around here, they allow kids to “play up” if they are good enough, but not play down. My son missed the soccer cutoff for his grade, but still played with them even though he could have played a year younger. He played on a highly ranked team, but if he had wanted to go up to a more elite academy level, he may have had to play with the year younger. Soccer has now gone to birth year groupings so would be a mix of two grades. The kids that would be affected would actually be the ones that were red-shirted or missed the cutoff of October, since they could not “play down” to their grade.
The boys seems to mature more slowly. We knew very few that had a full beard in high school and many that retained that baby faced look until late HS, regardless of birthday. It just seems more obvious in the girls. But yes it can be (but is not always) tough for a young for grade boy to excel in sports. Again, impossible to know at K whether the boy will be a football player or a musician.
It is so dependent on the kid. Our oldest 2 kids are July twins. If I were doing it over I would “redshirt” them. He was a little on the immature side and had (and still has) trouble sitting still or being inside. She was extremely shy. The extra year would have been good for both. On the flip side, our youngest by 12 years and with 3 older siblings was a Sept. baby when the cut-off was still Dec. He was fully reading chapter books when he went into kindergarten at age 4 and was very social and outgoing. He was always at the top of his class even though he was almost the youngest. I remember his pre-school teacher recommended we hold him back a year because his small motor skill weren’t great- he had trouble cutting with scissors. We ignored her advice and by the time kindergarten started he was fine.
The only downside-but not so much to us- to letting him start at age 4 is that he did turn out to be our soccer athlete. He was a late grower so when it was time for soccer recruitment, he was a 15/16 year old little skinny kid. At the first try-out he was invited to, I cringed as he got pounded by 22 year old transfers with full beards and lots of muscles. He grew a ton by his senior year and still ended up on the team at his academic dream school, so it all worked out. I would never hold a kid back for sports reasons anyway so it doesn’t matter. We always stressed the academics and told him that if sports worked out, great.
Sometimes, being the younger sibling is what gets a kid exposed to things that are not ideally age-appropriate. I mean, what are you supposed to do when your 4-year-old is in the car while you’re driving the second grade carpool and one of the kids asks, “Mrs. X, what does gay mean?”
we red-shirted our oldest. he was about 6.5 when he started. partly because i was a paranoid first time mom, partly because of speech/eye issues. It was a good thing when he hit middle school; he was one of the biggest kids and that was good for his self confidence. Only con is trying to explain why to his peers now. No biggie; could have gone either way i suppose.
Our youngest went to school at age 4.5. She was ready academically and holds her own being the youngest. HOWEVER - now in middle school we’re staring to see maturity issues. some girl classmates are 1.5 years older; and so developed and etc . . . it’s not the best fit. Con: middle school maturity; Pro: academics; she’s ready.
hopefully it’ll even out in high school for her. I will never judge people on when they start their kids. But boy was it “a thing” back in the day to talk about!
@mathmom, I agree that having my 4-year-old learn what “gay” meant was not a significant issue.
What was a significant issue was when she informed the entire kindergarten, a year later, that there was no such thing as Santa Claus–something she had learned from her older brother. The other parents were furious.
Re redshirting: I wonder whether a lot of trouble could be avoided simply by setting the kindergarten cutoff date six months older for boys than girls.
LOL, I hear you on the Santa Claus issue. You can try to get them to buy into the idea that they need to keep it a secret, but it doesn’t always work.
I think that what would make more sense is to actually use the kindergarten readiness tests they already administer. It would have been a disaster for my older son to have waited any longer, he was already so bored in school.
@Marian I think that would be rather sexist. Like I said, DS was a fast learner, so skipping a grade would have been the right decision. However, DD was born on August 14th, 1994, and she was not a fast learner, but a normal learner, so she started K right after her 5th birthday, and did just as well as DS, except that she had to work for her grades. Therefore, she was successful in college. She graduated last year from an Ivy League and will be attending grad school in the fall. I don’t think it has anything to do with gender, but rather with the individual.
"I think that what would make more sense is to actually use the kindergarten readiness tests they already administer.
Yes to this. Our second son was exactly 6 months from the cut off, so he started Kindergarten at 5 and half. And he should have gone a year earlier. He could read, he was already doing math, all his friends were in the grade ahead of him and that held true all the way through High School. His preschool teachers were in despair over what to do with him, so they let him pretty much do what he wanted all year, which was mostly lie on the circle time rug and read. When he got to kindergarten, he was disgusted to learn that they expected him to do stuff like color matching, so he took to sliding under his desk and reading there. I don’t think he ever checked back in. He always did really well in school, but he was never engaged.
Thank you for all your responses so far. I just want to clarify the title, so I feel like I wasn’t specific enough. I’m not saying that redshirting for all kids is a bad idea. Each kid develops at his or her own pace. The vast majority of kids develop at a normal pace, and should therefore, be sent on time. Other kids develop fast, and should therefore, be sent early(or grade skipped later). Other kids develop slow, and that in the ONLY case in which redshirting should be considered. So what I meant is that it’s a bad idea to put your kid behind where they should be developmentally. So if they’re fast learners, it’s a bad idea to put them on a normal track, and if they’re normal learners, it’s a bad idea to put them on a slow track. Since DS was a fast learner, putting him on a normal track was a mistake, but because DD is a normal learner, putting her on a normal track was the right thing to do. Sorry for not making that clear earlier.
