Funny…we had the opposite reaction in this household. Our oldest was born in November. Our state has a January 1 cutoff for K entry. The kid did three years of preschool. Many years later, when he was in HS, he thanked us for having the forethought to delay his entry to Kindergarten. He recognized that he was right where he should be. It was actually really very sweet!
There is no right or wrong answer, this is a personal family decision and really needs to be based on each child, and each family’s point of view.
It also depends on the local/regional area you happen to be a part of and the school culture. Sometimes it can be heavily weighed towards benefits in one area/school culture and drawbacks in another.
In the NYC area I grew up in and the K-12 environments I’ve been in, there was a far greater stigma to being more than a year older than grade level.
And this was to the point a couple of close friends I knew kept the fact they were born more than a year before grade level…including a couple who’d have been the oldest kids in their grade level even if they weren’t “redshirted” by their parents because they were born in Jan/Feb.
Only found out about it more than a decade after we’ve all graduated college when it no longer mattered as much though it still seems to be a sore point with both.
Only if the issue is one that can be resolved by simply letting a year go by.
I have a colleague who considered holding back her daughter, a summer birthday kid who had difficulty adjusting to the structure of preschool. But in the end, the child went to kindergarten on time.
It turned out that the problem wasn’t immaturity; it was ADHD. Waiting a year would not have helped. Medication did help – and so does the special support she receives both inside and outside of school.
One drawback of redshirting for me, although I didn’t realize it at the time, was the fact that I was an early bloomer. I had to have a bra in the 3rd grade - had I not been redshirted this would have happened in 4th grade and I would have gotten my period in 6th grade instead of 5th. When I was 12, I could easily pass for 15, which meant people expected me to be as mature as a 15 year old, when I absolutely wasn’t. It made for a rough few years in school.
@Bestfriendsgirl’s story reminds me of a family I knew who redshirted their oldest daughter on the grounds of immaturity. When she reached second grade, she began to complain about aches and pains in various parts of her body. The doctor found nothing wrong but said that she would schedule some tests if the problem didn’t go away.
On Parents’ Visiting Day, the mother discovered the cause of her daughter’s pain: the child was spending the entire day crouched uncomfortably at a desk that was much too small for her. The mother asked the teacher to request a larger desk, but the teacher said that the desk the child had was the largest that was permitted in primary classrooms.
The parent had to go up the ladder to the school nurse, then the principal, and finally to the superintendent of schools to get her daughter a desk that was the correct size, and all along the way, people kept telling her that the problem was the family’s fault, not the school’s, because they had held the child back.
Agreed that this is a concern that is acknowledged in the academic literature on red shirting. Sometimes not being “ready for K” is due to maturity but sometimes it is due to some learning issues that could be helped if the child were in school.
Another concern that hasn’t been mentioned here (although I did skip a few pages) is related to equity and achievement gaps. Red shirting is expensive - working parents need to pay for another year of daycare or preschool and not everyone can afford to. In some states and school districts, publicly-funded preschool (e.g., state pre-k) won’t let your child stay for free for an extra year. So the poor kids enter school on time while some middle income kids enter a year later.
@Marian That is actually ridiculous. There were 5th graders in our K-5 that were almost fully grown (ie, well over 5 ft tall and a foot or more taller and 50lb heavier than petite classmates). They were given desks that fit them.
I know some 4th graders that are 5’5" (girls). And I’ve seen heavy kids that would push the limit of a small desk based on overall size.
Parents know their kids best and can make the best decision for their child…without teachers or admin giving them a guilt trip for the wrong reasons.
@leasoap You did the right thing for YOUR child and others will do the best for THEIR child, given all other information to consider, such as local norms, size, maturity, teacher assessment, curriculum, etc.
Yes, of course it is. Every adult in that classroom could see that the child was suffering and could see why. And Visiting Day occurred in November, which meant that the child had been suffering every day for two months before any intervention occurred (beyond the teacher’s request for a larger desk, which her superiors had turned down).
I have brothers who are just under 1 year apart, with August birthdays. My mother sent them both to K when they’d just turned 5 because we’d just moved to a new state with a Sept 1 cut off, but my older brother, sister and I had had a Dec31 cut off, so my mother thought Sept 1 was ridiculous. The school suggested the older one repeat K. Well, that would have put him in the same grade as the younger one, so no, he went on to first grade. Academically? Fine. Maturity? Not so much. Of course what they should have done was red shirt them both. It was very common in the catholic schools in our town to have boys repeat third grade, so my brothers still would have been on the younger side of the class when they reached high school, but academically they were fine so weren’t retained.
There is a family photo taken when one was a freshman in high school and the other heading into 8th grade. There is at least a foot difference and probably 75 pounds difference. Can’t always tell by size.
My husband is a fall birthday…and was the oldest of six siblings. By the time he was almost 5, he already had four siblings. His parents very joyously sent him off to kindergarten. He slogged his way through school. Did sort of OK, but not terrific. At the end of 11th grade, they moved to a different country. The headmaster of the international school there very strongly suggested that DH redo 11th grade, because in his estimation, he really wasn’t ready to head off to college the following year. And so he repeated 11th grade. As DH tells it…it was the best thing that happened because school clicked. Instead of slogging through his last two years of HS, he sailed.
And yes…would,have graduated at the same time as the next younger brother, but that brother also repeated a year…and that brother graduated from HS with #3.
So when our November birthday kiddo decision was needing to be made…it was my husband who actualynstarted the discussion. The kid was a VERY able reader, and knew simple computation as well…but believe me…there was NO kindergarten in the state where he would have fit in. He was social very immature…very.
But that was our kid…and YMMV depending on what your kid is doing. There were LOTS of folks who questioned our decision…because academically our kid orobablynwas doing what K kids were doing…as a four year old. But really…life is much more than academic success.
@Marian That is a commentary on your school and district administration more than anything else.
It is not a reflection on the child. Children come in all sizes, and school staff needs to have appropriate materials on hand. If they don’t understand that, I’d question their decision making ability. Not the child’s needs, or parent making right decision for their child.
I posted this way upthread, but we redshirted one of our kids for a year (Nov. birthday, 12/31 cutoff), which uncovered ADHD and OT issues. School then moved him ahead the following year. Like thumper1’s S, the academic fit in the early years was just not happening, in any way, shape or form. Fourth grade brought a new program and radical subject acceleration with age peers.
S1 and S2 are 15 months apart, and had S1 stayed redshirted, they would have been a year apart in school. Not that it mattered in terms of height – in first grade, S2 was taller and heavier than S1 and has remained that way ever since. Noone would ever guess they are sibs.
Also interesting about a birthday like ^^ (late fall - ie November) is that would not make the cutoff in most states.
If considering going out of state for college, those “not-even-5’s” at Kindergarten will also be 17yos in college, possibly in a state with a 9/1 cutoff where everyone at college is older.
The majority of states have a 9/1 cutoff, I think; and I heard other states with different cutoffs are considering moving it back to 9/1. That date makes the most sense, so kids are 5 before starting school. (or say 8/1 in states starting school in August).
Yes, one of my sons was 17 when he started college. He was just fine. A poor academic placement was far more toxic socially for him than being a little young.
Some of the private schools in this area use a July 1 cutoff instead of the 12/31 public school date. One school wanted him to repeat second grade. That was a dealbreaker for us.
My daughter was 17 for her entire first semester. It’s an issue. Now she’s 20 and it’s an issue as all her classmates are 21 and her boyfriend is 24. It isn’t that she wants to drink with them, she just wants to GO with them.
When she first started school, there were some DOD scholarships she couldn’t apply to because she wasn’t 18.
@twoinanddone But like I said, just because a child starts Kindergarten at 4 doesn’t mean they have to start college at 17. They can take a gap year. Parents should not be redshirting for post-high-school reasons IMHO. It’s too far into the future. The decision of whether or not to redshirt should be based on K-12 concerns. You have no idea what a 4-year-old be will be like when they’re 17 or 20.