
Chronological age (fetal, due dates etc) does not match point for point with physiologic, intellectual or neuromuscular age. There is a spread and variability. Some fold die at 72 and others at 92 years of age. Senile dementia infect you at 68 and another at 98.
Why must a kindergarten child be 5 years-old ... besides man made regulation and/or law? |
Let me guess...your child was redshirted and is STILL at the bottom of the class. Poor thing...
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Why should kindergarten be for 5 year-olds short of regulation or law? Can you provide a scientific, intellectual or physiologic rationale why you believe so? How do you explain families whose children have never put foot in a bricks and mortar kindergarten building. |
Just as some kids talk and walk at different ages -- different kids are ready to go to school at different times. Parents make too big a deal of all of these things. It's a personal call for the family in consultation with the teachers and doctors. Both my daughter and I were born in December. Contrary to what the book "Outliers" thinks of December b-days -- my daughter & I both did great in school -- we tended to be some of the older ones in the class -- we could drive before many others and read and played sports better.
Do what you like -- ignore some of the really rude posters on this thread. |
we plan to red shirt. end of august bday - wouldn't do it if it was further away from cut off. have parent private school educator (not DC). Say in all their years hardly saw a kid suffer from being older and many many from being younger. That's probably the same kind of 'science' that keeps DC privates from encouraging later starts. |
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I have an August boy, now 4, and was adamantly opposed to red-shirting until recently. For the last year I've been asking everyone I know with kids in early elementary about this and they are telling me there are no summer b-day boys (on the young side) in their kids' classes, but plenty summer b-days on the old side. So suddenly I realized my decision was not whether my child be up to 12 months younger than his classmates, but rather that he would likely be up to 16 months younger, and probably several months younger than the next youngest boy in the class. On the flip side he will be 12 months and 2 weeks older than the youngest kid in his class, assuming someone with an 8/31 birthday is in there. I feel like I am boxed into red-shirting even though it annoys me and it means paying an extra year of pre-school tuition. He is small and, seriously, is less coordinated than his 2-year old sister. To layer on top of this the above-scenario where all the boys are older -- even far older -- than he is, I don't think I can do that to him even though I think academically he'd be fine. I just remember too much about how grade school boys treat the unathletic ones. He's probably doomed to this regardless, but if I don't redshirt him I'm not even giving him a fair chance. (He will never be an athlete -- I'm talking about a fair chance say to kick a soccer ball, however badly, during soccer class rather than whiff it and fall down.) On the flip side, my 2-year old daughter is September b-day and I'm going to be forced (by law) to have her start K 2 weeks before her 6th birthday even though I already know that is crazy. She already goes to pre-school with her brother and I'm sure she can go to K "early" (i.e., 2 weeks before her 5th bday). It's a bad system. I think there needs to be more flexibility for parents AND more oversight from schools. E.g., maybe have some "shelf" of 6 to 8 weeks on either side of 9/1 where the parent can make the call, but outside of that the school would need to approve the decision based on an interview and/or testing and then maybe an absolute cut-off at 6 mos on either side of 9/1. Right now it seems that carte blanche is given to kids to redshirt but in the other direction it is difficult to impossible to make the call to start "early." As a parent with a kid just on either side of the deadline, I feel completely hosed by the current system. I.e., the rampant redshirting is pushing me to redshirt my son even though I don't want to and the "strict deadline" approach is forcing me to hold back my daughter even though I don't want to. |
I am PP who complained about almost 6.5 yo boy in class who causes disruptions, and I could not agree more with PP's above statement. I am not 100% against redshirting, I just think many parents do it for the wrong reasons and it is starting to get out of hand. At some point the school systems (both public and private) are going to need to address this growing trend of redshirting well into spring birthdays, and creating a system as above poster suggested would be a great start. Regardless of what my previous posts have said, I do believe parents have a say in this, but I'm always shocked to hear parents ignore all educator recommendations based solely on the fact that they don't want their child to be the youngest/smallest in the class. Someone has to be, and that seems like such a sad reason to hold your child back in school. |
These discussions on DCUM about redshirting always seem to end up in the same place... with agreement that just sticking to some arbitrary government imposed date like Sept 1 makes little sense, and that it is in fact appropriate for parents and schools (working together) to make a decision for when to start a summer birthday child in K. Every time, we seem to go from "ABSOLUTELY NO REDSHIRTING, EVERY KID IN K MUST BE 5" to this more reasonable stance. I think its important that the anti-redshirting crowd understand that very few people are arguing for redshirting non-summer birthdays... as a kid with say a March birthday that starts a year late is no "redshirting"... they're "repeating" a grade (usually for more serious developmental issues). I like the approach the PP above suggested - parents should be able to decide for a child during a "shelf" time of say July and Aug, school should approve redshirts from say May and June, and anything April or before needs to only been done when repeating a grade is necessary due to more serious developmental issues (and appropriate tutoring/interventions are called for). |
Students with serious developmental issues DO NOT repeat or get held back since the school can /will refer the child to a Child study team and evaluate for special instruction. IDEA, IEP. Special ed. |
Nice summary. I also think it's helpful for people to remember that despite all the heated discussion about it, redshirting is not the norm. I've spent time looking for statistics, and most seem to suggest that only about 6-9% of kids are outside traditional age parameters. And I'd be willing to bet that only a very tiny fraction of that 6-9% are more than a couple months outside the traditional parameters. That means that in an average classroom of 20-30 kids, you'll probably find only 1-2 kids older than the rest, and they'd likely be only a couple months older. |
I am PP who is mostly against redshirting kids, but the truth is I'm probably just against the rigorous Kindergarten curriculum that has shifted over the years from a play-based learning center to one where we expect all kids at the end of the year to be reading, telling time and doing math that was once taught in 1 and 2 grade. It's very sad and to the detriment of everybody. I think if Kindergarten was how it used to be, people would be less inclined to redshirt. |
Work it out with the school. Screw the innane bureaucratic age timetables. These are guidelines not the absolute truth. Let's exercise common sense and judgement. |