Why don’t schools have stronger policies about redshirting?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Same we know everyone’s but we socialize with most of the families.

Uh, huh. Right. There's literally 900 kids at Lafayette. There's 700 kids at Murch. These schools are big. You don't know the ages of everyone. And the desire to explain every little thing by whether someone's birthday is four months before someone else's is just strange.

People won't know for all 700 kids. But they will know for the 100 kids in their child's grade.

They for sure can’t know that unless they are being inappropriate.

I had kids invited to literally every birthday party in elementary, we socialized widely, and I could not have known the birthdays of 100 of them the way anti-redshirters have them memorized. You can only do that if you are inappropriately memorizing and studying kids.

I think that’s a privilege of not having to worry about it because you have an older kid and things come easier- school, making teams, etc

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:The redshirt debate is so dumb. The advantages are highly exaggerated. No one is going to think your kid is super smart because they repeated a grade. And your kid may feel self conscious and embarrassed by being older than everyone else for the rest of their time in school (not to mention being incredibly bored having to repeat a grade).

Lol no. The only people who have a problem are people like OP who think they made a mistake or missed out. It’s all upside for redshirters.

I’ve seen it go sideways in athletics with kids who were used to cruising by being the stars in elementary and when some of the younger kids came out ahead post puberty they struggled not being the best on the team and didn’t have the grit and work ethic to keep up and dropped altogether. I saw that even in 4/5 grade when kids started evening out.

Same for academics.

If you are truly gifted, then redshirting can give you that edge to be a champion. But that needs to overcome the challenge of not being challenged in your grade level program.

If you are not truly gifted, but redshirting for edge, then redshirting is just delaying inevitable lackluster performance.

If you are holding back a year because you aren't mature enough for the original assigned grade, you'll thrive.

Truly gifted kids don't gain an edge by being redshirted. They perform at the top either way.

This depends. Our county’s gifted program for math and English starts in 7th grade. Not only is it very accelerated in material, the pace is also very accelerated- as in it requires 2+ hours of homework per night. Even many kids that test into it can’t keep up. The ones on the younger side tend to lack the executive function skills and maturity to handle such a high volume of work and expectations

Give me a break. Send your kid to RSM and tell me how "gifted" they are. The seven year olds will run circles around your seventh grader.

My kids finished through precalc and 12th grade English through this program by the end of 8th grade. They have winter birthdays. Their peers with late summer/early fall birthdays that didn’t redshirt really struggled in this program and dropped. It wasn’t for lack of intellect.

So weird how everyone always knows precisely how old all the other children are and, not only that, but how literally every single thing can be explained by whether a child is slightly older or younger than the next one.

This is a creepy anti-redshirter thing. As someone who has read these threads for awhile, I’ve seen some awful behavior justified. It is of course entirely inappropriate for a parent to be tracking down the birthdays of seventh and eighth graders in a pull-out program. They should not even know the names of the kids in a standard public school setting, let alone when they were born. But this is something really creepy that anti-redshirt parents do. I remember a thread where someone compiled a spreadsheet of the birthdays of the gifted kids in middle school.

It’s extremely creepy behavior but they justify to themselves somehow.

Nothing creepy about it, my kid gets invited to a few bday parties a month and plays sports with most of the kids. Rosters often have birthdays, the kids talk about it in carpool, etc, It’s not a secret. You may not know if you’re socially isolated

For middle school? Absolutely creepy. Just the fact you are cross referencing sports rosters with class names that you had to dig up on your own (because no middle school math teacher is releasing names) shows how absolutely inappropriate you are. Stay away from kids, weirdo.

Your obsession with it is weird as you hold your kids back for sports. You cannot make your kids smarter by holding them back and you are socially hurting them as they are not with their peers, they are with much younger kids who are age-appropriate and your child isn't if you are basing their behavior and maturity on kids 1-2 years younger.

I didn’t redshirt my kids. I just think anti-redshirters are very creepy with their obsessions with other people’s kids. One of my kids is actually very young for grade.

It's just how people are. Kids talk, parents talk. No one gets to just make decisions and expect everyone else to move and their own business. Once I was picking my kids up from school and some dad o barely know walked up and said "oh hey I hear you guys just bought an EV." I guess one ofy kids had been talking about it, and this guy's kid heard and reported it at home. There is only so much privacy and anonymity within school communities because kids are not very discreet.

And that's how it works with redshirting. A group of 1st graders will be talking about who is 7 already, and Aiden R. will say "I turned 7 in June." And then those kids will all go home and say "Aiden R. turned 7 in June!"

And then that's a piece of info people will reference whenever something happens with Aiden R. If he wins an academic award, if he gets in trouble, whatever. People will know he was redshirted and that will be part of the conversation.

Is it fair? No. Life is not fair. It's very normal though. This is how people are.

Nobody is having these conversations. Just you.

A lot of people are having them. Even if just at home with their spouse. It's just a reality of life. I don't particularly like it but I don't freak out about it either. Gossip has been happening since the beginning of humanity.

Lol. Be sure they are talking about you as well then.

Of course they are! That's the whole point.

If you want to try and convince us that you NEVER discuss other children at your kid's school, even privately with your spouse, go ahead. But I don't believe you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Same we know everyone’s but we socialize with most of the families.

Uh, huh. Right. There's literally 900 kids at Lafayette. There's 700 kids at Murch. These schools are big. You don't know the ages of everyone. And the desire to explain every little thing by whether someone's birthday is four months before someone else's is just strange.

People won't know for all 700 kids. But they will know for the 100 kids in their child's grade.

They for sure can’t know that unless they are being inappropriate.

I had kids invited to literally every birthday party in elementary, we socialized widely, and I could not have known the birthdays of 100 of them the way anti-redshirters have them memorized. You can only do that if you are inappropriately memorizing and studying kids.

I think that’s a privilege of not having to worry about it because you have an older kid and things come easier- school, making teams, etc

PP here. No, you are wrong. My kids are either mid-pack or young for grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Same we know everyone’s but we socialize with most of the families.

Uh, huh. Right. There's literally 900 kids at Lafayette. There's 700 kids at Murch. These schools are big. You don't know the ages of everyone. And the desire to explain every little thing by whether someone's birthday is four months before someone else's is just strange.

People won't know for all 700 kids. But they will know for the 100 kids in their child's grade.

They for sure can’t know that unless they are being inappropriate.

I had kids invited to literally every birthday party in elementary, we socialized widely, and I could not have known the birthdays of 100 of them the way anti-redshirters have them memorized. You can only do that if you are inappropriately memorizing and studying kids.

I think that’s a privilege of not having to worry about it because you have an older kid and things come easier- school, making teams, etc

So deal with that. No need to snipe behind other kids’ backs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Same we know everyone’s but we socialize with most of the families.

Uh, huh. Right. There's literally 900 kids at Lafayette. There's 700 kids at Murch. These schools are big. You don't know the ages of everyone. And the desire to explain every little thing by whether someone's birthday is four months before someone else's is just strange.

People won't know for all 700 kids. But they will know for the 100 kids in their child's grade.

They for sure can’t know that unless they are being inappropriate.

I had kids invited to literally every birthday party in elementary, we socialized widely, and I could not have known the birthdays of 100 of them the way anti-redshirters have them memorized. You can only do that if you are inappropriately memorizing and studying kids.

I think that’s a privilege of not having to worry about it because you have an older kid and things come easier- school, making teams, etc

I was redshirted as a child, though they didnt call it that then. The idea that being a year older will make everything easier, honestly, sounds delusional.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Same we know everyone’s but we socialize with most of the families.

Uh, huh. Right. There's literally 900 kids at Lafayette. There's 700 kids at Murch. These schools are big. You don't know the ages of everyone. And the desire to explain every little thing by whether someone's birthday is four months before someone else's is just strange.

People won't know for all 700 kids. But they will know for the 100 kids in their child's grade.

They for sure can’t know that unless they are being inappropriate.

I had kids invited to literally every birthday party in elementary, we socialized widely, and I could not have known the birthdays of 100 of them the way anti-redshirters have them memorized. You can only do that if you are inappropriately memorizing and studying kids.

I think that’s a privilege of not having to worry about it because you have an older kid and things come easier- school, making teams, etc

PP here. No, you are wrong. My kids are either mid-pack or young for grade.

But is your area one that it has any impact? Mine is.

I actually like the red shirted kids better for social for my kid. It’s made him more mature but we have basketball cuts and only 25% of the kids make it, and he’s the youngest one and 15 months younger than some of the kids so situations like that can be annoying, especially when he’s on the bubble/line for sports. Very good for his age but hard to compete with kids who are a year older and very good for their age.

[Anonymous]

Public schools don’t encourage “on-time” starting because the “on-time” is dictated by sociological factors (younger starting=less daycare=more fair to financially disadvantaged families.)

Private schools tend to insist on starting no sooner than 5, and encourage redshirting of late summer girls and spring/summer boys. When you are only focused on educational considerations vs sociological ones you make different choices.

To be clear I think as long as parents have the option to redshirt in public school it makes sense to allow “on time” to mean younger— that lets those kids with real needs whose parents don’t have the resources to get them start to receive services.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Same we know everyone’s but we socialize with most of the families.

Uh, huh. Right. There's literally 900 kids at Lafayette. There's 700 kids at Murch. These schools are big. You don't know the ages of everyone. And the desire to explain every little thing by whether someone's birthday is four months before someone else's is just strange.

People won't know for all 700 kids. But they will know for the 100 kids in their child's grade.

They for sure can’t know that unless they are being inappropriate.

I had kids invited to literally every birthday party in elementary, we socialized widely, and I could not have known the birthdays of 100 of them the way anti-redshirters have them memorized. You can only do that if you are inappropriately memorizing and studying kids.

I think that’s a privilege of not having to worry about it because you have an older kid and things come easier- school, making teams, etc

PP here. No, you are wrong. My kids are either mid-pack or young for grade.

But is your area one that it has any impact? Mine is.

I actually like the red shirted kids better for social for my kid. It’s made him more mature but we have basketball cuts and only 25% of the kids make it, and he’s the youngest one and 15 months younger than some of the kids so situations like that can be annoying, especially when he’s on the bubble/line for sports. Very good for his age but hard to compete with kids who are a year older and very good for their age.

There will always be someone smarter, richer, better, faster, etc. Prepare your kid for the road.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The redshirt debate is so dumb. The advantages are highly exaggerated. No one is going to think your kid is super smart because they repeated a grade. And your kid may feel self conscious and embarrassed by being older than everyone else for the rest of their time in school (not to mention being incredibly bored having to repeat a grade).

Lol no. The only people who have a problem are people like OP who think they made a mistake or missed out. It’s all upside for redshirters.

I’ve seen it go sideways in athletics with kids who were used to cruising by being the stars in elementary and when some of the younger kids came out ahead post puberty they struggled not being the best on the team and didn’t have the grit and work ethic to keep up and dropped altogether. I saw that even in 4/5 grade when kids started evening out.

Same for academics.

If you are truly gifted, then redshirting can give you that edge to be a champion. But that needs to overcome the challenge of not being challenged in your grade level program.

If you are not truly gifted, but redshirting for edge, then redshirting is just delaying inevitable lackluster performance.

If you are holding back a year because you aren't mature enough for the original assigned grade, you'll thrive.

Truly gifted kids don't gain an edge by being redshirted. They perform at the top either way.

This depends. Our county’s gifted program for math and English starts in 7th grade. Not only is it very accelerated in material, the pace is also very accelerated- as in it requires 2+ hours of homework per night. Even many kids that test into it can’t keep up. The ones on the younger side tend to lack the executive function skills and maturity to handle such a high volume of work and expectations

Give me a break. Send your kid to RSM and tell me how "gifted" they are. The seven year olds will run circles around your seventh grader.

My kids finished through precalc and 12th grade English through this program by the end of 8th grade. They have winter birthdays. Their peers with late summer/early fall birthdays that didn’t redshirt really struggled in this program and dropped. It wasn’t for lack of intellect.

So weird how everyone always knows precisely how old all the other children are and, not only that, but how literally every single thing can be explained by whether a child is slightly older or younger than the next one.

This is a creepy anti-redshirter thing. As someone who has read these threads for awhile, I’ve seen some awful behavior justified. It is of course entirely inappropriate for a parent to be tracking down the birthdays of seventh and eighth graders in a pull-out program. They should not even know the names of the kids in a standard public school setting, let alone when they were born. But this is something really creepy that anti-redshirt parents do. I remember a thread where someone compiled a spreadsheet of the birthdays of the gifted kids in middle school.

It’s extremely creepy behavior but they justify to themselves somehow.

Nothing creepy about it, my kid gets invited to a few bday parties a month and plays sports with most of the kids. Rosters often have birthdays, the kids talk about it in carpool, etc, It’s not a secret. You may not know if you’re socially isolated

For middle school? Absolutely creepy. Just the fact you are cross referencing sports rosters with class names that you had to dig up on your own (because no middle school math teacher is releasing names) shows how absolutely inappropriate you are. Stay away from kids, weirdo.

Your obsession with it is weird as you hold your kids back for sports. You cannot make your kids smarter by holding them back and you are socially hurting them as they are not with their peers, they are with much younger kids who are age-appropriate and your child isn't if you are basing their behavior and maturity on kids 1-2 years younger.

I didn’t redshirt my kids. I just think anti-redshirters are very creepy with their obsessions with other people’s kids. One of my kids is actually very young for grade.

It's just how people are. Kids talk, parents talk. No one gets to just make decisions and expect everyone else to move and their own business. Once I was picking my kids up from school and some dad o barely know walked up and said "oh hey I hear you guys just bought an EV." I guess one ofy kids had been talking about it, and this guy's kid heard and reported it at home. There is only so much privacy and anonymity within school communities because kids are not very discreet.

And that's how it works with redshirting. A group of 1st graders will be talking about who is 7 already, and Aiden R. will say "I turned 7 in June." And then those kids will all go home and say "Aiden R. turned 7 in June!"

And then that's a piece of info people will reference whenever something happens with Aiden R. If he wins an academic award, if he gets in trouble, whatever. People will know he was redshirted and that will be part of the conversation.

Is it fair? No. Life is not fair. It's very normal though. This is how people are.

Nobody is having these conversations. Just you.

A lot of people are having them. Even if just at home with their spouse. It's just a reality of life. I don't particularly like it but I don't freak out about it either. Gossip has been happening since the beginning of humanity.

Lol. Be sure they are talking about you as well then.

Of course they are! That's the whole point.

If you want to try and convince us that you NEVER discuss other children at your kid's school, even privately with your spouse, go ahead. But I don't believe you.

So what, people shouldn’t redshirt bc busybodies gossip? That’s hardly a deterrent since if not thay it will he about something else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Same we know everyone’s but we socialize with most of the families.

Uh, huh. Right. There's literally 900 kids at Lafayette. There's 700 kids at Murch. These schools are big. You don't know the ages of everyone. And the desire to explain every little thing by whether someone's birthday is four months before someone else's is just strange.

People won't know for all 700 kids. But they will know for the 100 kids in their child's grade.

They for sure can’t know that unless they are being inappropriate.

I had kids invited to literally every birthday party in elementary, we socialized widely, and I could not have known the birthdays of 100 of them the way anti-redshirters have them memorized. You can only do that if you are inappropriately memorizing and studying kids.

I think that’s a privilege of not having to worry about it because you have an older kid and things come easier- school, making teams, etc

PP here. No, you are wrong. My kids are either mid-pack or young for grade.

But is your area one that it has any impact? Mine is.

I actually like the red shirted kids better for social for my kid. It’s made him more mature but we have basketball cuts and only 25% of the kids make it, and he’s the youngest one and 15 months younger than some of the kids so situations like that can be annoying, especially when he’s on the bubble/line for sports. Very good for his age but hard to compete with kids who are a year older and very good for their age.

PP here. Yes, there are plenty of redshirted kids. My kids are friends with some of them.

I maintain that what you are doing — tracking birthdays, gossiping about kids, comparing sports rosters, etc. — is highly inappropriate behavior not at all justified by what seems to clearly be your untreated anxiety disorder. My kids are young for grade or mid-pack and I have never done anything like that, nor felt a need to. The entire idea of doing that is repulsive.

I think in all seriousness you need to work on yourself. What you are doing is not healthy, normal behavior, and you are modeling that obsession for your kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Same we know everyone’s but we socialize with most of the families.

Uh, huh. Right. There's literally 900 kids at Lafayette. There's 700 kids at Murch. These schools are big. You don't know the ages of everyone. And the desire to explain every little thing by whether someone's birthday is four months before someone else's is just strange.

People won't know for all 700 kids. But they will know for the 100 kids in their child's grade.

They for sure can’t know that unless they are being inappropriate.

I had kids invited to literally every birthday party in elementary, we socialized widely, and I could not have known the birthdays of 100 of them the way anti-redshirters have them memorized. You can only do that if you are inappropriately memorizing and studying kids.

I think that’s a privilege of not having to worry about it because you have an older kid and things come easier- school, making teams, etc

PP here. No, you are wrong. My kids are either mid-pack or young for grade.

But is your area one that it has any impact? Mine is.

I actually like the red shirted kids better for social for my kid. It’s made him more mature but we have basketball cuts and only 25% of the kids make it, and he’s the youngest one and 15 months younger than some of the kids so situations like that can be annoying, especially when he’s on the bubble/line for sports. Very good for his age but hard to compete with kids who are a year older and very good for their age.

There will always be someone smarter, richer, better, faster, etc. Prepare your kid for the road.

Yah, we do. So far they have always made the cut but they have to put in more effort and practice than other kids due to the age gap. I know it will benefit him in the long run though.

[Anonymous]

It’s not tracking, it’s just a know fact like a kid’s name, their siblings name, what street they live. We socialize, carpool, hang out and know the families. I think you’re isolated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Same we know everyone’s but we socialize with most of the families.

Uh, huh. Right. There's literally 900 kids at Lafayette. There's 700 kids at Murch. These schools are big. You don't know the ages of everyone. And the desire to explain every little thing by whether someone's birthday is four months before someone else's is just strange.

People won't know for all 700 kids. But they will know for the 100 kids in their child's grade.

They for sure can’t know that unless they are being inappropriate.

I had kids invited to literally every birthday party in elementary, we socialized widely, and I could not have known the birthdays of 100 of them the way anti-redshirters have them memorized. You can only do that if you are inappropriately memorizing and studying kids.

I think that’s a privilege of not having to worry about it because you have an older kid and things come easier- school, making teams, etc

PP here. No, you are wrong. My kids are either mid-pack or young for grade.

But is your area one that it has any impact? Mine is.

I actually like the red shirted kids better for social for my kid. It’s made him more mature but we have basketball cuts and only 25% of the kids make it, and he’s the youngest one and 15 months younger than some of the kids so situations like that can be annoying, especially when he’s on the bubble/line for sports. Very good for his age but hard to compete with kids who are a year older and very good for their age.

There will always be someone smarter, richer, better, faster, etc. Prepare your kid for the road.

Yah, we do. So far they have always made the cut but they have to put in more effort and practice than other kids due to the age gap. I know it will benefit him in the long run though.

And what? It’s a cake walk for everyone else? What faulty logic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s not tracking, it’s just a know fact like a kid’s name, their siblings name, what street they live. We socialize, carpool, hang out and know the families. I think you’re isolated.

Honey, we all know you keep creepy spreadsheets of kids and sports rosters. Your hard drive is probably appalling. What you do is not normal, despite your desperate attempts to justify it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s not tracking, it’s just a know fact like a kid’s name, their siblings name, what street they live. We socialize, carpool, hang out and know the families. I think you’re isolated.

DP but I think you’re way overestimating how much normal parents keep track of this. My daughter’s classmate this year was redshirted— I found out casually chatting to her mom at a party months after school ended. I think you care a lot more than other parents and suggest PP might be right about untreated anxiety.