What's the deal with holding boys back in school to gain a competitive advantage in sports?

[Anonymous]

Because those who are holding their children back need to justify it to whoever will listen, and god forbid your child who is the right age for their class is able to compete with the "older" kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because those who are holding their children back need to justify it to whoever will listen, and god forbid your child who is the right age for their class is able to compete with the "older" kids.

C'mon now. This crap helps no one. How do you expect people to respond?: "Because those people whose children are unable to keep up with the rest of the class academically, socially, and athletically have to make up some lame excuse to justify why their children are falling behind and why they're not bad parents, and it's too easy for them to shift the blame to things like redshirting, affirmative action, and sucking up to teachers." Just stop it.

[Anonymous]

Well, what other reason would one have to "give the gift of time" or "allow their child to be more mature"? It's either athletics, or social or academic maturity. Either way, at the end of the day, it is not helpful to the kid or the community, but if society/schools etc want to continue to justify it, Good Speed!

Look at the article in today's Washington Post about graduation rates. These are rates with a diluted pool of academic requirements. So what will happen next? Lower the standards to make it even easier to graduate? It is all related to the degradation of our system.

So no, if we don't collectively demand more from our schools and our society, we will continue to fail, which would be a sad tribute to those who have come before us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because those who are holding their children back need to justify it to whoever will listen, and god forbid your child who is the right age for their class is able to compete with the "older" kids.

C'mon now. This crap helps no one. How do you expect people to respond?: "Because those people whose children are unable to keep up with the rest of the class academically, socially, and athletically have to make up some lame excuse to justify why their children are falling behind and why they're not bad parents, and it's too easy for them to shift the blame to things like redshirting, affirmative action, and sucking up to teachers." Just stop it.

simple answer. a boy makes VARSITY as a freshman or sophomore instead of as a junior or senior. this thread is about competitive admission private schools. NFM

[Anonymous]

OP here. Appreciate the responses. My biggest surprise is that all these shenanigans are perfectly legal, and many of these parents are completely shameless. Say that a 6th grade lacrosse team is playing a 7th/8th grade B team. You could have 11-year olds competing against many 15 year-olds (and even a few 16 year-olds!). That's not only unfair; it's dangerous. My point in starting this thread was not to stigmatize the few summer-birthday boys in every class who are held back for social/academic/maturity reasons, but to call attention to the increasingly-pervasive problem of the wholesale holding-back of boys (even boys who are already "old" for their class) to game the system in order to gain a competitive advantage in sports, to the detriment of more ethical schools.

I liked the strategy of the second poster who suggested printing sports rosters with birthdays.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Another issue with the redshirting is that these over 18 boys will be dating high school girls who are younger. . .

I see your concern but this is NOT the case with most of the boys I know who have been held back! Most will be 18 for their entire senior year and won't turn 19 until AFTER highschool, as most are summer birthdays.

[Anonymous]

18 is an age of majority. They cannot legally engage in "relations" with those under 18.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:18 is an age of majority. They cannot legally engage in "relations" with those under 18.

Yes they can, FWIW. There's an age window in most state. In Maryland I think it's four years. So an 18 year old can date a 15 year old.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:18 is an age of majority. They cannot legally engage in "relations" with those under 18.

Yes they can, FWIW. There's an age window in most state. In Maryland I think it's four years. So an 18 year old can date a 15 year old.

Ladies, what is the issue with 18? Many seniors turn 18 in September, October, etc... so you would be dealing with 18-year old seniors regardless! Do your math!

[Anonymous]

Many sports leagues outside schools do group kids by age, rather than grade, particularly for select teams. Examples, locally: BCC Baseball (select teams) and MSI (Classic and Premium). The theory here is, I think, that rec teams are less competitive, so it's not as critical to slice and dice kids by age. There are also sports that favor kids with summer birthdays, e.g., swimming, and those that level the playing field for size, if not age -- wrestling, for example -- and those that favor smaller kids -- gymnastics, e.g. Parents of younger kids might not realize this, which might explain some of the intensity coming from the "don't hold them back" camp, who fear a disadvantage to their summer and fall b'day kids. The intensity on the other side might come from regret over their own child's experience, and while it might be unpleasant to be lectured, you have to appreciate that these folks are tryng to share their experience.

[Anonymous]

Sure, outside leagues do that, but tell it to the 17 year old who is competing against the 19 year old for a slot on a school team.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I got a bit of a lecture from a woman that I was chatting with at the pool today about this... when I told her that my DS (will be 6 in July) is starting first grade this year, she looked at me as though I had just announced that I support child abuse. She then launched into her "years of experience as a tutor" and all of the "problems that she sees in the teen years" when people do NOT hold summer birthday boys back. I finally just told her that I was sorry that her children obviously had problems, but that mine is more than able to keep up.

Sorry to hijack the thread with this overdone topic, but I've been steaming about it all day! What I don't get is why people feel so strongly about this issue when it doesn't even affect them personally.

ROFL. I joke the four topics you should never bring up in polite company - race, religion, politics, and redshirting.

[Anonymous]

After reviewing the 15+ previous threads on this topic, the general consensus seems to be that for K admissions for summer birthday kids, it should be a decision left to the parents and school officials based on what is appropriate for that child.

The issue seems to stem from the advanced K curriculums that are now taught in private schools and the fact that some kids who are just turning 5 have not yet developed the motor skills needed for what is really a first grade level education. By the age of 6 most of these kids have developed enough, so we did not experience these issues as much in the past when you really were not expected to fully read and write until you turned 6 and entered first grade. Now that these things happen in K, we need to give kids the opportunity to develop their basic motor skills before throwing them into a competitive environment (motor skills development is not correlated with intelligence or aptitude, sort of like puberty... some kids just develop these are different paces but all usually have developed them by a certain age.)

"Redshirting" really becomes an issue when a Sept-April or so child is held back for a competitive advantage. The consensus seems to be that this is not really "redshirting" but rather "repeating" a grade and should only be done for significant academic problems, and not simply to gain an age advantage.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: What I don't get is why people feel so strongly about this issue when it doesn't even affect them personally.[

But it does affect other people when the other kid is being held back for an advantage of your kid who is at the appropriate age and grade. If all of the sudden, your kid has no chance at a spot on a team, or in the musical, or suffers socially because other kids are driving, shaving etc a year earlier than the peers, then it forces the conversation, "do I do that with my kid"?

While it benefits some kids in certain ways in the younger years, it benefits the same or other kids in different ways in older years.

And how do you think the 19 year old senior feels, particularly when they had no say in the matter? Mom, why am I older than everyone else? Because you couldn't hold a crayon properly when you were 5, so we held you back so you could color nicely in Pre-Kidnergarten when you were 6.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Mom, why am I older than everyone else? Because you couldn't hold a crayon properly when you were 5, so we held you back so you could color nicely in Pre-Kidnergarten when you were 6.

We've been through this before on this forum....

The "anti-redshirting" crowd loves to use these extreme examples of 6 year olds in PreK, or 19 year olds in 12th grade because most people will then agree that "wow, yes - that seems inappropriate". This is a false argument, becuase the vast majority of "redshirts" are summer birthday kids who might only be 1-3 months older than the older "proper aged" kid in the class (ie. a July birthday will turn 6 on 2 months before a Sept birthday who would have been the oldest in the class).

As we've covered on this topic before, these extreme examples of 6 year olds in PreK are very rare, if they even exist at all. These antiredshirts are really just mad that there fall birthday kid does not get to be the oldest in the class and thus have the advantage they thought they would.

TO PROVE THIS:

Please list the names of the schools and the number of children you are directly aware of who are 6 in PreK.

I call BS on this - and I'll bet we don't see any legitimate responses to this challenge.