This age discrepancy due to "redshirting" is ridiculous

[Anonymous]

the red shirted kids are not the bullies. My red shirted boy is the class politician. He walks into the classroom, knows everyone's name and says hello and flirts with the girls. We red shirted due to development delays. We had 4 years of preschool working on speech and OT issues. He does not disrupt class (Ok there was that one time, but that involved a girl). Even the nanny comments on his working the crowd.

MYOB - every kid is different.

If your snowflake is so special they should thrive in any environment. If they can't you need a reality check on your snowflake.

[Anonymous]

The people who freak about this seem to be parents with kids with summer bdays who do not hold back. My take is that's great and I respect your decision, now either respect others or at least calm down about it.

The extent of "redshirting" is really exaggerated in the minds of these parents. We did hold our kid back - in my child's K class three kids had been held back - all 3 were Aug / Sept bdays. Almost all the other hold backs I am aware of are late summer bdays.

So a 12 month range has been shifted to say 15 months. This is not a "problem" (except to a few crazed parents) from the school's perspective. Frankly when talking to school officials we felt slightly encouraged to hold back if in doubt (i.e. - a school official said they are aware of no one who regretted holding back).

So be happy with your decision - you saved money now and your kid will make an extra year of money later in life. And just calm down about everyone else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The people who freak about this seem to be parents with kids with summer bdays who do not hold back. My take is that's great and I respect your decision, now either respect others or at least calm down about it.

The extent of "redshirting" is really exaggerated in the minds of these parents. We did hold our kid back - in my child's K class three kids had been held back - all 3 were Aug / Sept bdays. Almost all the other hold backs I am aware of are late summer bdays.

So a 12 month range has been shifted to say 15 months. This is not a "problem" (except to a few crazed parents) from the school's perspective. Frankly when talking to school officials we felt slightly encouraged to hold back if in doubt (i.e. - a school official said they are aware of no one who regretted holding back).

So be happy with your decision - you saved money now and your kid will make an extra year of money later in life. And just calm down about everyone else.

That was me until I decided to hold my August birthday son back in later ES after years of turmoil. We are finally at peace and have not regretted our decisions, we have room to breathe.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just to be clear... the bullies are the ones with older siblings. They have years of training.

Actually, the manipulative girl I referred to earlier was the oldest of her siblings. Sometimes kids are repeating stuff they hear from their parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:the red shirted kids are not the bullies. My red shirted boy is the class politician. He walks into the classroom, knows everyone's name and says hello and flirts with the girls. We red shirted due to development delays. We had 4 years of preschool working on speech and OT issues. He does not disrupt class (Ok there was that one time, but that involved a girl). Even the nanny comments on his working the crowd.

MYOB - every kid is different.

If your snowflake is so special they should thrive in any environment. If they can't you need a reality check on your snowflake.

+1 My friend who held back her Sept birthday son said that he is the leader in the class. She has no regrets.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Agreed, we will be forced to hold back our child due to a september birthday. It sucks for him as he's ready this year to go. His academics are very strong.

Why will you be forced to hold back due to a Sept. birthday? In fix co the cutoff is the end of Sept.

My Sept. birthday child started school when the county said it was time. It is weird though to have such a large age range. I remember when parents used to push their bright children ahead by skipping them up a grade.

[Anonymous]

We held back my Sept 14th birthday son (in Arlington). I'm not confident that he was the oldest in his class, there were two August birthdays that could've been born the same year as he. For us it was absolutely the right decision. He had horrible trouble in pre-k due to immaturity - because the class was so full and only tended to have openings when the oldest kids left the centers in June and September, for the months from Sept- June every year he was the last kid to make the age cut off and move up in daycare, preschool, and pre-k. For years we saw how he just didn't measure up to his school-year peers in terms of ability to sit still, listen, pencil grip, fine motor skills etc. Part of this was clearly exacerbated by the ADHD that was diagnosed during his "second" pre-k year, but if we had sent him on time to school it would'v ebeen an unmitigated disaster, for him, his teacher, and his peers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm forced to hold DD back - her birthday is 10/15 and stupid ass FCPS won't let her test into kindergarten 2 weeks before she turns 5. Nope, let's waste an entire year and do NOTHING (with regard to her as she has to sit home for a whole year whereas in MOCO she'd be in K). Even if she reads, writes, adds, subtracts, they DON'T GIVE A F.

FCPS elementary school bureaucrats are the laziest bunch in the DC area I swear. God forbid they had to actually work a FULL 5-day workweek. God forbid they actually had to put some kind of effort into testing students to see if they are ready to enter kindergarten a couple weeks before their 5th birthday.

PP, there has be some cutoff, right? There will always be an issue whether the cut off is 9/30 or 12/31.

Are you more upset that DD will be at home with you? Or is it about learning. Because you could have enrolled her in a private pre-school and if she tested well, she could enroll in the kindergarten at age 4. Of course, pre-school is not free.

We will be exploring that option. I have heard of kids doing private kindergarten and then switching to public 1st grade in FCPS. DD is only 22 months now (but reading already, but not like chapter books or anything). So I am just thinking it would be a year of learning wasted sitting at home or playing in pre-K 1/2 days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm forced to hold DD back - her birthday is 10/15 and stupid ass FCPS won't let her test into kindergarten 2 weeks before she turns 5. Nope, let's waste an entire year and do NOTHING (with regard to her as she has to sit home for a whole year whereas in MOCO she'd be in K). Even if she reads, writes, adds, subtracts, they DON'T GIVE A F.

FCPS elementary school bureaucrats are the laziest bunch in the DC area I swear. God forbid they had to actually work a FULL 5-day workweek. God forbid they actually had to put some kind of effort into testing students to see if they are ready to enter kindergarten a couple weeks before their 5th birthday.

PP, there has be some cutoff, right? There will always be an issue whether the cut off is 9/30 or 12/31.

Are you more upset that DD will be at home with you? Or is it about learning. Because you could have enrolled her in a private pre-school and if she tested well, she could enroll in the kindergarten at age 4. Of course, pre-school is not free.

We will be exploring that option. I have heard of kids doing private kindergarten and then switching to public 1st grade in FCPS. DD is only 22 months now (but reading already, but not like chapter books or anything). So I am just thinking it would be a year of learning wasted sitting at home or playing in pre-K 1/2 days.

Thanks for clarifying. I would have assumed a 22 month old was already reading Ulysses. #humblebrag

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't see a huge change in curriculum from when I was growing up. Several children could read in K just like they can now. Maybe they weren't taking 5 AP classes at a time or playing varsity freshman year, but other than that, it appears about the same. The only acceleration I see is in AAP. Other than that, it may even be less challenging than before.

You must be pretty young. We weren't taught to read until the middle of first grade, and even then it was "Dick and Jane." It's not at all unusual for preschoolers in this area to read that series now.

Kindergarten for me was half-day and pure play. Not a moment of structured "learning," other than how to socialize, which IMHO is by far its most important function.

[Anonymous]

41 years old. It was half day then, but there was still a reading group slightly above Dick and Jane. In fact in Fairfax it was half day till 2 years ago. I'm curious what Fairfax County schools don't have a play area for the kids during the full day program. Our local school was one of the last to switch to full day and still had an indoor play area for kindergarten classrooms.

[Anonymous]

14:55--so you're saying Fairfax County was teaching reading as part of the formal curriculum 36 years ago?

And I didn't say that kids don't play in kindergarten today--I said that when I went to kindergarten, that is literally all we did. We may have had a story time, but there was no formal reading instruction until the middle of first grade.

[Anonymous]

There was another poster saying there was no play area in their local Fairfax kindergarten room, not you. I did not attend a Fairfax County kindergarten but was in the US in a public school in a blue collar area. No fancy school or anything. There was a whole phonics program in K back then for us. Many children were just learning sounds and short blends, but a few were doing some small reading comprehension and more fluent reading.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The people who freak about this seem to be parents with kids with summer bdays who do not hold back. My take is that's great and I respect your decision, now either respect others or at least calm down about it.

The extent of "redshirting" is really exaggerated in the minds of these parents. We did hold our kid back - in my child's K class three kids had been held back - all 3 were Aug / Sept bdays. Almost all the other hold backs I am aware of are late summer bdays.

So a 12 month range has been shifted to say 15 months. This is not a "problem" (except to a few crazed parents) from the school's perspective. Frankly when talking to school officials we felt slightly encouraged to hold back if in doubt (i.e. - a school official said they are aware of no one who regretted holding back).

So be happy with your decision - you saved money now and your kid will make an extra year of money later in life. And just calm down about everyone else.

I am frustrated by the redshirting trend, and yes, it's likely I talk about it because I am the parent of a child with a summer birthday. It's the trend that distresses - if one or two children were redshirted, it would be lost in the noise. But in my child's school, summer birthday's are redshirted as a matter of course, and spring birthday children are occasionally redshirted for specific reasons (e.g. social/academic immaturity).

Not only is my child the youngest in her class, she's the youngest by a few months. Her closest age peer is 3 months older than her. No other child in her class has that wide of a gap. Since it's common to redshirt, it's not just a few kids who are >1 yr older, it's almost 1/4 of the class. That contributes to the tendency to have higher (even inappropriate) expectations. When she was in early grades, the consequences of this were aggravating, and if she weren't a bright child who wasn't particularly academically focused, they might have been more dire for her. For example, her handwriting was on the "poor" side of acceptable for her age. If she had been in a class with standard age distribution, she might still have had the poorest handwriting, but she would have had some near-peers. But since the next youngest children were 3+ mos older than her, in 1st grade her handwriting looked atrocious in comparison.

I'm not going to redshirt simply because my child has poor handwriting, but it does annoy me that because redshirting has become the standard, things like poor handwriting among younger children stand out more than it otherwise would. Teachers focus on it more than they would, in my opinion, if they had a more standard age grouping. I also knew that my child's deficits in comparison to other children would fade as they aged, and I decided it would be better for her to be the kid-with-poor-handwriting in early elementary rather than the bored-and-disruptive-kid in middle and high school. But that doesn't change that when you're in the moment, when your child is held to standards that are stilted, in part because of redshirting, when your child is feeling she's doing something poorly when really she's on or close to target, you might be frustrated with a trend.

If this were one or two kids, it really would get lost in the noise. But like I point out, at my kid's school, she's the youngest by 3 months, and she has a June birthday. It's ridiculous.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The people who freak about this seem to be parents with kids with summer bdays who do not hold back. My take is that's great and I respect your decision, now either respect others or at least calm down about it.

The extent of "redshirting" is really exaggerated in the minds of these parents. We did hold our kid back - in my child's K class three kids had been held back - all 3 were Aug / Sept bdays. Almost all the other hold backs I am aware of are late summer bdays.

So a 12 month range has been shifted to say 15 months. This is not a "problem" (except to a few crazed parents) from the school's perspective. Frankly when talking to school officials we felt slightly encouraged to hold back if in doubt (i.e. - a school official said they are aware of no one who regretted holding back).

So be happy with your decision - you saved money now and your kid will make an extra year of money later in life. And just calm down about everyone else.

I am frustrated by the redshirting trend, and yes, it's likely I talk about it because I am the parent of a child with a summer birthday. It's the trend that distresses - if one or two children were redshirted, it would be lost in the noise. But in my child's school, summer birthday's are redshirted as a matter of course, and spring birthday children are occasionally redshirted for specific reasons (e.g. social/academic immaturity).

Not only is my child the youngest in her class, she's the youngest by a few months. Her closest age peer is 3 months older than her. No other child in her class has that wide of a gap. Since it's common to redshirt, it's not just a few kids who are >1 yr older, it's almost 1/4 of the class. That contributes to the tendency to have higher (even inappropriate) expectations. When she was in early grades, the consequences of this were aggravating, and if she weren't a bright child who wasn't particularly academically focused, they might have been more dire for her. For example, her handwriting was on the "poor" side of acceptable for her age. If she had been in a class with standard age distribution, she might still have had the poorest handwriting, but she would have had some near-peers. But since the next youngest children were 3+ mos older than her, in 1st grade her handwriting looked atrocious in comparison.

I'm not going to redshirt simply because my child has poor handwriting, but it does annoy me that because redshirting has become the standard, things like poor handwriting among younger children stand out more than it otherwise would. Teachers focus on it more than they would, in my opinion, if they had a more standard age grouping. I also knew that my child's deficits in comparison to other children would fade as they aged, and I decided it would be better for her to be the kid-with-poor-handwriting in early elementary rather than the bored-and-disruptive-kid in middle and high school. But that doesn't change that when you're in the moment, when your child is held to standards that are stilted, in part because of redshirting, when your child is feeling she's doing something poorly when really she's on or close to target, you might be frustrated with a trend.

If this were one or two kids, it really would get lost in the noise. But like I point out, at my kid's school, she's the youngest by 3 months, and she has a June birthday. It's ridiculous.

Your child is a good example of why people end up redshirting. There are many kids who aren't quite ready for kindergarten at 5. In Finland, kids don't start school until 7 and Finnish kids consistently rank at the top academically. Redshirting is not an easy decision for many reasons, including paying for another year of private pre-k, but we all try to do what's best for our kids.