Long term affects - good or bad - of holding back from kindergarten

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a second grader and a kindergartner. In my experience, about 80% of the time the kids who are held back are held back to give them an edge. I live in an affluent community and so these parents can afford an extra year of preschool and believe that their child will be a “leader” because he (mostly he but sometimes she) will be the oldest. I don’t have a problem with the other 20% who have legitimate reasons to hold back . But when were deciding whether or not to send my summer boy, another mother actually said to me “Don’t you want him to be a leader? You should hold him back.” She did not ask me whether or not he was actually ready. This is the problem with redshirting!

+1000. What she really means is won't it be easier for my little bully? since she is bigger and older?

You all assume that if a boy is held back, they all become bullies? The biggest bully in my DC 6th grade class is a girl. Queen bee to the max. The boys that seem to have the most trouble are ones who academically can't keep up and or are smaller and feel they can't keep up athletically. Lots of acting out, class clown stuff. No idea if they are older or younger. By the time kids reach HS it is pretty hard to tell who is older or younger.The best athletes are not always the oldest ones. Good athletes are good athletes.

I am having a hard time understanding the anger people have for this. SO what if some kid may have an advantage over yours. Welcome to the real world. Things aren't perfect and you really have no clue if that older kid will have any advantage over yours till HS when abilities really start to come through.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a second grader and a kindergartner. In my experience, about 80% of the time the kids who are held back are held back to give them an edge. I live in an affluent community and so these parents can afford an extra year of preschool and believe that their child will be a “leader” because he (mostly he but sometimes she) will be the oldest. I don’t have a problem with the other 20% who have legitimate reasons to hold back . But when were deciding whether or not to send my summer boy, another mother actually said to me “Don’t you want him to be a leader? You should hold him back.” She did not ask me whether or not he was actually ready. This is the problem with redshirting!

Your vast experience of having a 2nd grade and a kindergartner. As a previous poster stated, the most judgmental tend to be the ones with younger kids who think they know everything. You had one mother say something to you and now you know how every single parent who is redshirting really feels.

Many people are redshirting because K is not like K was 20 years ago. The demands on the kids is far greater and yes many boys who are younger are not ready for this. Befoe you judge try walking in the shoes of parents who don't want their kids to be completely turned off by school or because they truly are immature and need an extra year.

Why is 5 the magic number? Because you say so?

Hmm, maybe it's because of the.....redshirting!!!!!!!!!!!

[Anonymous]

I am not sure there are many kids turning 7 in K. We held our kid with a early Aug birthday back. There are 2 other kids in his K class who were hold backs. Our kid is the oldest of the 3 (i.e. - they are all Aug / Sept bdays. Not seeing all these kids with Spring bdays being held back - seems like something of an urban legend. The thing is there are a lot more people who talk about holding back then actually do it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So much of this hysteria is based on urban legend. Or you sister's neighbor's cousin's experience. Relax. Do what's best for your family.

It's pure DCUM legend.

[Anonymous]

1. Kindergarten is not that hard --- I mean they REALLY start at square 1 and any kid who has gone to pre-school is probably bored for the first 3 mos. I don't understand the fear that kindergarten today is so challenging.
2. If you or your preschool teacher think YOUR child is not ready for the demands of kindergarten (i.e. what the school demands of kindergarteners), then I have no problem with you holding your kid back.
3. What bothers me and a lot of other people is that people often seem to be holding their child back b/c they are comparing the child to other kids and looking for an advantage. It's not so much that they think their child couldn't handle writing their name and sounding out words -- it's that they don't want their child to be the smallest or youngest or on the flip side, they want their child to be a leader or to always be good at things as the oldest, etc. I felt this way before I had kids and then even moreso when I had a late summer bday child. As a parent, why wouldn't I give my child every advantage I could? At it's core, it's a comparative and competitive mindset. It's looking at your child, not for what he can do, but for how he compares to others.

The potential to use red-shirting competitively is what rubs so many of us wrong.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: it's that they don't want their child to be the smallest or youngest or on the flip side, they want their child to be a leader or to always be good at things as the oldest, etc.

Yes, I personally (not my sister's aunt's cousin's neighbor) knew a July-birthday girl whose mother held her back for exactly this reason. Not in this area, though.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, I don't want my kid to be the youngest. Fine by me if it's ok with you that your kid's the youngest. Someone has to be the youngest after all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Kindergarten is not that hard --- I mean they REALLY start at square 1 and any kid who has gone to pre-school is probably bored for the first 3 mos. I don't understand the fear that kindergarten today is so challenging.

This is a sign that you don't know what you are talking about. In kindergarten kids have to focus on and join in on classroom activities. There's much more structure, more sitting and paying attention. It isn't so much the writing and such, its that in kindergarten the kids learn how to be students in school. Sure for many kids -- especially girls -- this is not problem. For my DS, even after we held him back (August bday) he struggled with these skills.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, I don't want my kid to be the youngest. Fine by me if it's ok with you that your kid's the youngest. Someone has to be the youngest after all.

What, specifically, is bad about being the youngest? I'm curious because I was the youngest (by up to 3 months) my entire 1-12 school career, and I don't remember ever thinking of it as an awful fate.

(I'm also the youngest child in the family -- was that an awful fate too?)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, I don't want my kid to be the youngest. Fine by me if it's ok with you that your kid's the youngest. Someone has to be the youngest after all.

What, specifically, is bad about being the youngest? I'm curious because I was the youngest (by up to 3 months) my entire 1-12 school career, and I don't remember ever thinking of it as an awful fate.

(I'm also the youngest child in the family -- was that an awful fate too?)

I'm not saying this applies to every child, but there is a lot of research out there suggesting that even through high school, children at the younger end of the grade level are at a measurable academic disadvantage. Again, this is at the statistical/macro level and may or may not bear on your decision about your child, but it is certainly food for thought. I believe Malcolm Gladwell addressed this in the book Outliers, although I have read it elsewhere since.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
I'm not saying this applies to every child, but there is a lot of research out there suggesting that even through high school, children at the younger end of the grade level are at a measurable academic disadvantage. Again, this is at the statistical/macro level and may or may not bear on your decision about your child, but it is certainly food for thought. I believe Malcolm Gladwell addressed this in the book Outliers, although I have read it elsewhere since.

Citations, please. (As far as I know, Malcolm Gladwell was talking about hockey.)

What's more, if you're just looking at test scores, then you shouldn't compare the test scores of (for example) 7-year-old first-graders to 6-year-old first graders. You should compare the test scores of 6-year-old first graders to 6-year-old kindergartners.

[Anonymous]

So what we have are people who don't want their kid to be the youngest, and hence the race to the bottom. Glad everyone's type A hyper-competitive mindset is the bane of our society.

[Anonymous]

I assume these kids are or will be 5 by the cut-off date. Isn't this mandatory school age for DC, MD, and VA? Do you live somewhere the age is different, or do they do another year of pre-k?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, I don't want my kid to be the youngest. Fine by me if it's ok with you that your kid's the youngest. Someone has to be the youngest after all.

What, specifically, is bad about being the youngest? I'm curious because I was the youngest (by up to 3 months) my entire 1-12 school career, and I don't remember ever thinking of it as an awful fate.

(I'm also the youngest child in the family -- was that an awful fate too?)

I was always the youngest, academically it was horrible for me. I ended up repeating 12th grade mainly because I stopped going, because I couldn't keep up.

[Anonymous]

This debate always ends up going round and round and round. Its never been clear to me why so many folks want to judge the difficult decisions of other parents. I think there are many parents here of younger children who just have no sense of the challenges that exist for many kids, and are very judgmental as a result. "My kid is just fine doing X, Y and Z, so it must be wrong to do anything but X, Y and Z." Things can often change as these kids get older. Its like when the parents of tweens post that there must be something terribly wrong with the parents of a teenager when the teenager does ______, and then when their kids become teens you don't hear these judgy comments anymore.

If you can't be humble, parents of younger children, life will make you so. In the meantime, just know that what you see on the surface is often misleading and just because you encounter one parent who claims to be redshirting for reasons you find offensive (and, even then, some skepticism is in order. In my experience parents feel such a sense of shame when their kids encounter difficulties -- probably because of the kind of judging you see here -- that they lie) doesn't mean you can jump to the conclusion that everyone else is. I know that when my children were young I judged other families and then life taught me some serious lessons. I regret my previous ignorance, and I feel so much wiser and more tolerant now.