Did you redshirt your August girl? Why or why not?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We’re in the process of making this decision too. We’ve applied to four private schools. Two suggested holding our daughter back and sending her to pre-k again, and two recommended moving her forward. Her birthday is two weeks before the cut-off. Her current teachers think she’s ready, so I’m leaning toward sending on time, but we’re having a hard time deciding.

I do wonder if this is a bigger thing in privates because that's just a another year of tuition $$$$....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Two concrete instances where, having sent my August birthday DD "on time", had a negative social impact:

1. She was invited to go to summer camp with a few girls from her K class. She is not able to join because the camps require you to be 6 yo AND have completed K. (E.g., some Fairfax county camps, Arlinging P&R and Dynamic Gymnastics camps). They don't follow the school cut off. She's really sad about this.

2. Our swim club uses an August 1 cut off for swimming groups. She'll be grouped with the class below her, rather than her friends from school every single year. It's disappointing that she'll be excluded from being with her classmates.

We are talking about the impact of school segregation and ADHD diagnosis rates across society, and you are worried about whether your six-year-old doesn't have specific friends in her swim class?

Do you know how important friends are in elementary school? Being excluded sucks.

Agreed. I think these are helpful, tangible examples

Wow, okay.

I see why you have issues.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Two concrete instances where, having sent my August birthday DD "on time", had a negative social impact:

1. She was invited to go to summer camp with a few girls from her K class. She is not able to join because the camps require you to be 6 yo AND have completed K. (E.g., some Fairfax county camps, Arlinging P&R and Dynamic Gymnastics camps). They don't follow the school cut off. She's really sad about this.

2. Our swim club uses an August 1 cut off for swimming groups. She'll be grouped with the class below her, rather than her friends from school every single year. It's disappointing that she'll be excluded from being with her classmates.

We are talking about the impact of school segregation and ADHD diagnosis rates across society, and you are worried about whether your six-year-old doesn't have specific friends in her swim class?

Do you know how important friends are in elementary school? Being excluded sucks.

Agreed. I think these are helpful, tangible examples

Except that I have outlined how you can get around them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Two concrete instances where, having sent my August birthday DD "on time", had a negative social impact:

1. She was invited to go to summer camp with a few girls from her K class. She is not able to join because the camps require you to be 6 yo AND have completed K. (E.g., some Fairfax county camps, Arlinging P&R and Dynamic Gymnastics camps). They don't follow the school cut off. She's really sad about this.

2. Our swim club uses an August 1 cut off for swimming groups. She'll be grouped with the class below her, rather than her friends from school every single year. It's disappointing that she'll be excluded from being with her classmates.

These are not a big deal.

You can change the bday for camp. They don’t ask for a birth certificate.
For swimming last summer I asked if my August bday boy could swim up to swim with his friends and it was no problem. And a win win when he did well swimming 8&u in the meets.

I promise you that both are a big deal to my DD.

Re camp. I provided birth dates to Arlington and the gymnastics studio when my DD was 2. I can't just change it now. She can't attend those camps.

Re swim team. I don't know if they'll let her practice with her classmates and doubt that they'll give me an answer until they see her swim.

I’m a rule follower too but I have spoken with Fairfax Park authority and they said just change the birth date so he can be with kids in his grade and it’s not a big deal. Ask around I bet people will be flexible.

Same. If you want to change these things it's 100% possible. What's important is how she's doing in school, and from your examples, it seems like she's socially fine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I think DCUMs anti-redshirt contingent largely consists of crazy hypocrites, having seen many of these threads. These are not rational people.

+1

Hateful nut jobs with nothing better to do than worry about what other families are doing.

What's hypocritical about sending your kid on time and wishing that other parents would do the same? I put my money where my mouth is--my kid's birthday is very close to the cutoff, and she went on time. So far as I can tell (based on classroom birthdays), so did her classmates. Which is good--it means that the teacher is dealing with kids within a one-year, not an 18-month, age range, and can have developmentally appropriate expectations for the class in terms of behavior and academic abilities. Seems pretty rational to me.

Yet I'll bet you either use private school or moved to a fancy school district. I bet you supplement outside of school. I bet you wouldn't dream of sending your child to a high school with a large number of disadvantaged kids. Ask yourself what has a greater societal impact on other kids. Or have you never thought of that in all your self-congratulatory smugness?

You anti-redshirt posters get yourselves tied in self-congratulatory knots over redshirting but can never point to a single well-run, peer-reviewed study over an large population cohort that shows all the (imaginary) harms you come up with, let alone multiple studies that duplicate the approach and results. Yet there is literally 60 years of well-documented research on the impact of school population segregation and access to educational resources that you happily ignore.

You froth on about redshirting, as far as I can tell only because it feeds your ego because God knows you can never produce any large body of rigorous research to support your ranting, but you would never take the concrete steps you could take to actually positively impact others, since you seem to care ever so much about how other people's educational decisions impact others.

Put your money where your mouth is, as you say. Or did you not actually mean it?

Hypocrite.

You'd lose those bets. Ask yourself why you're so invested in this that you repeatedly accuse people you don't know anything about of hypocrisy. I didn't make a single comment that could fairly be described as ranting or frothing, and I didn't say one nasty thing about parents who redshirt. I certainly hope that you aren't representative of parents who do, though. You're not much of an ambassador for your cause.

+1. PP is vicious and just hysterical.

I also don’t see where an honest person sees a parent paying for private or paying for the expense to move as the same as a competitive redshirter mom. How the hell is that the same? In the first two scenarios, you typically pay a real cost to try and honestly create an outcome. We can’t afford private so we don’t. We could afford to move to our best zoned area so we did, and we also accept that nothing is a straight line or certain. A mom who holds back a kid who has no areas of concern highlighted by an educated third party like a ped, teacher, or therapist is a cheat, and she knows it, and THAT’S why she’s screaming at you.

No, as I said in a different post, I just hate hypocrites. I didn't redshirt. You just don't like the fact that it's obvious you are a hypocrite.

You really enjoy name-calling. It’s not hypocritical for me to live in a nicer home that we pay for, in a district that does well. I have a youngest in class and roles with it. We PAID for our home. We didn’t lie, to ourselves or anyone else, about anything. We didn’t claim our child couldn’t follow rules set for our zoned school. Be your age and stop name-calling. I did not do anything wrong, or to disadvantage another family or child.

What's amazing about this post is that I don't think this person could have been a better demonstration of the hypocrisy of DCUM's anti-redshirt posters if she'd tried. I almost wonder if it's a satire, except sadly I don't think it is.

You’re insulting different people, jerk. Amazing. And yes, you’re sad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I think DCUMs anti-redshirt contingent largely consists of crazy hypocrites, having seen many of these threads. These are not rational people.

+1

Hateful nut jobs with nothing better to do than worry about what other families are doing.

What's hypocritical about sending your kid on time and wishing that other parents would do the same? I put my money where my mouth is--my kid's birthday is very close to the cutoff, and she went on time. So far as I can tell (based on classroom birthdays), so did her classmates. Which is good--it means that the teacher is dealing with kids within a one-year, not an 18-month, age range, and can have developmentally appropriate expectations for the class in terms of behavior and academic abilities. Seems pretty rational to me.

Yet I'll bet you either use private school or moved to a fancy school district. I bet you supplement outside of school. I bet you wouldn't dream of sending your child to a high school with a large number of disadvantaged kids. Ask yourself what has a greater societal impact on other kids. Or have you never thought of that in all your self-congratulatory smugness?

You anti-redshirt posters get yourselves tied in self-congratulatory knots over redshirting but can never point to a single well-run, peer-reviewed study over an large population cohort that shows all the (imaginary) harms you come up with, let alone multiple studies that duplicate the approach and results. Yet there is literally 60 years of well-documented research on the impact of school population segregation and access to educational resources that you happily ignore.

You froth on about redshirting, as far as I can tell only because it feeds your ego because God knows you can never produce any large body of rigorous research to support your ranting, but you would never take the concrete steps you could take to actually positively impact others, since you seem to care ever so much about how other people's educational decisions impact others.

Put your money where your mouth is, as you say. Or did you not actually mean it?

Hypocrite.

You'd lose those bets. Ask yourself why you're so invested in this that you repeatedly accuse people you don't know anything about of hypocrisy. I didn't make a single comment that could fairly be described as ranting or frothing, and I didn't say one nasty thing about parents who redshirt. I certainly hope that you aren't representative of parents who do, though. You're not much of an ambassador for your cause.

+1. PP is vicious and just hysterical.

I also don’t see where an honest person sees a parent paying for private or paying for the expense to move as the same as a competitive redshirter mom. How the hell is that the same? In the first two scenarios, you typically pay a real cost to try and honestly create an outcome. We can’t afford private so we don’t. We could afford to move to our best zoned area so we did, and we also accept that nothing is a straight line or certain. A mom who holds back a kid who has no areas of concern highlighted by an educated third party like a ped, teacher, or therapist is a cheat, and she knows it, and THAT’S why she’s screaming at you.

No, as I said in a different post, I just hate hypocrites. I didn't redshirt. You just don't like the fact that it's obvious you are a hypocrite.

You really enjoy name-calling. It’s not hypocritical for me to live in a nicer home that we pay for, in a district that does well. I have a youngest in class and roles with it. We PAID for our home. We didn’t lie, to ourselves or anyone else, about anything. We didn’t claim our child couldn’t follow rules set for our zoned school. Be your age and stop name-calling. I did not do anything wrong, or to disadvantage another family or child.

What's amazing about this post is that I don't think this person could have been a better demonstration of the hypocrisy of DCUM's anti-redshirt posters if she'd tried. I almost wonder if it's a satire, except sadly I don't think it is.

You’re insulting different people, jerk. Amazing. And yes, you’re sad.

She handily demonstrated the hypocrisy of DCUMs anti-redshirt posters in a neat nutshell. If that bothers you so much, perhaps consider why. Accurately observing hypocrisy in action is hardly an insult.

[Anonymous]

I redshirted my Sept 25 bday girl. I agonized over the decision. Her preschool teachers heavily advised against it. But I was worried about her being the youngest, most immature girl in middle school, when mean girl dynamics kick in. I was also worried about her having the emotional wherewithal to deal with boys in high school who were a year or two older than she would be and having enough confidence to make smart decisions. I’m fine with her being 18 as a senior, that’s just more time for me to instill good habits and guide her behavior before we unleash her into the wild. She’s only in fourth grade but I don’t regret it for an instant. She’s thriving in every aspect of her life. Good luck, OP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm really interested in if ANYONE has regretted waiting a year

Bueller?

Ok I think we have our answer

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm really interested in if ANYONE has regretted waiting a year

Bueller?

Ok I think we have our answer

because that's not how it works. There's no way to know how the SAME kid would have done if not held back. In most cases they'd obviously be just fine, but that can't be proven.

FWIW there's a kid in my son's MCPS elementary who was moved from 1st to 2nd after being redshirted - he was that far ahead. But that's rare.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Two concrete instances where, having sent my August birthday DD "on time", had a negative social impact:

1. She was invited to go to summer camp with a few girls from her K class. She is not able to join because the camps require you to be 6 yo AND have completed K. (E.g., some Fairfax county camps, Arlinging P&R and Dynamic Gymnastics camps). They don't follow the school cut off. She's really sad about this.

2. Our swim club uses an August 1 cut off for swimming groups. She'll be grouped with the class below her, rather than her friends from school every single year. It's disappointing that she'll be excluded from being with her classmates.

These are not a big deal.

You can change the bday for camp. They don’t ask for a birth certificate.
For swimming last summer I asked if my August bday boy could swim up to swim with his friends and it was no problem. And a win win when he did well swimming 8&u in the meets.

I promise you that both are a big deal to my DD.

Re camp. I provided birth dates to Arlington and the gymnastics studio when my DD was 2. I can't just change it now. She can't attend those camps.

Re swim team. I don't know if they'll let her practice with her classmates and doubt that they'll give me an answer until they see her swim.

I’m a rule follower too but I have spoken with Fairfax Park authority and they said just change the birth date so he can be with kids in his grade and it’s not a big deal. Ask around I bet people will be flexible.

This might be a good solution for a mature kid, but she's really not there. K has been a struggle. I don't want to set her or the staff up for a bad situation where she's not ready. She needs to be in a camp for 5 yos with better staff ratios and closer supervision.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Two concrete instances where, having sent my August birthday DD "on time", had a negative social impact:

1. She was invited to go to summer camp with a few girls from her K class. She is not able to join because the camps require you to be 6 yo AND have completed K. (E.g., some Fairfax county camps, Arlinging P&R and Dynamic Gymnastics camps). They don't follow the school cut off. She's really sad about this.

2. Our swim club uses an August 1 cut off for swimming groups. She'll be grouped with the class below her, rather than her friends from school every single year. It's disappointing that she'll be excluded from being with her classmates.

These are not a big deal.

You can change the bday for camp. They don’t ask for a birth certificate.
For swimming last summer I asked if my August bday boy could swim up to swim with his friends and it was no problem. And a win win when he did well swimming 8&u in the meets.

I promise you that both are a big deal to my DD.

Re camp. I provided birth dates to Arlington and the gymnastics studio when my DD was 2. I can't just change it now. She can't attend those camps.

Re swim team. I don't know if they'll let her practice with her classmates and doubt that they'll give me an answer until they see her swim.

I’m a rule follower too but I have spoken with Fairfax Park authority and they said just change the birth date so he can be with kids in his grade and it’s not a big deal. Ask around I bet people will be flexible.

This might be a good solution for a mature kid, but she's really not there. K has been a struggle. I don't want to set her or the staff up for a bad situation where she's not ready. She needs to be in a camp for 5 yos with better staff ratios and closer supervision.

wait, what? So you want her to be with her friends, or not?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Two concrete instances where, having sent my August birthday DD "on time", had a negative social impact:

1. She was invited to go to summer camp with a few girls from her K class. She is not able to join because the camps require you to be 6 yo AND have completed K. (E.g., some Fairfax county camps, Arlinging P&R and Dynamic Gymnastics camps). They don't follow the school cut off. She's really sad about this.

2. Our swim club uses an August 1 cut off for swimming groups. She'll be grouped with the class below her, rather than her friends from school every single year. It's disappointing that she'll be excluded from being with her classmates.

These are not a big deal.

You can change the bday for camp. They don’t ask for a birth certificate.
For swimming last summer I asked if my August bday boy could swim up to swim with his friends and it was no problem. And a win win when he did well swimming 8&u in the meets.

I promise you that both are a big deal to my DD.

Re camp. I provided birth dates to Arlington and the gymnastics studio when my DD was 2. I can't just change it now. She can't attend those camps.

Re swim team. I don't know if they'll let her practice with her classmates and doubt that they'll give me an answer until they see her swim.

I’m a rule follower too but I have spoken with Fairfax Park authority and they said just change the birth date so he can be with kids in his grade and it’s not a big deal. Ask around I bet people will be flexible.

This might be a good solution for a mature kid, but she's really not there. K has been a struggle. I don't want to set her or the staff up for a bad situation where she's not ready. She needs to be in a camp for 5 yos with better staff ratios and closer supervision.

wait, what? So you want her to be with her friends, or not?

She wants to be with her friends. I want her to be safe and not constantly in trouble. I'd be fine with a camp that follows the school cut off, but I can't beg them to bend the rules when I know that she's going to be a behavior problem because she's not ready for the scheduled activities or level of supervision. If she was in the class behind, this wouldn't be an issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm really interested in if ANYONE has regretted waiting a year

Bueller?

Ok I think we have our answer

because that's not how it works. There's no way to know how the SAME kid would have done if not held back. In most cases they'd obviously be just fine, but that can't be proven.

FWIW there's a kid in my son's MCPS elementary who was moved from 1st to 2nd after being redshirted - he was that far ahead. But that's rare.

Good point, but I do wonder if there is anyone who would say “I shouldn’t have held my kid back because now she is bored/not challenged/frustrated” or something like that, but I never hear that

[Anonymous]

I don’t believe in holding back/redshirting for age or birthday alone, absent reasons relating to LD, specific maturity issues, or whatever just some specific reasons beyond not being young or the youngest. Just my opinion and why my boys with late summer bdays go on time. I can say that routinely camps with age rules are fine going by grade if age/grade doesn’t match what their info states. Never once had an issue with that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Two concrete instances where, having sent my August birthday DD "on time", had a negative social impact:

1. She was invited to go to summer camp with a few girls from her K class. She is not able to join because the camps require you to be 6 yo AND have completed K. (E.g., some Fairfax county camps, Arlinging P&R and Dynamic Gymnastics camps). They don't follow the school cut off. She's really sad about this.

2. Our swim club uses an August 1 cut off for swimming groups. She'll be grouped with the class below her, rather than her friends from school every single year. It's disappointing that she'll be excluded from being with her classmates.

These are not a big deal.

You can change the bday for camp. They don’t ask for a birth certificate.
For swimming last summer I asked if my August bday boy could swim up to swim with his friends and it was no problem. And a win win when he did well swimming 8&u in the meets.

I promise you that both are a big deal to my DD.

Re camp. I provided birth dates to Arlington and the gymnastics studio when my DD was 2. I can't just change it now. She can't attend those camps.

Re swim team. I don't know if they'll let her practice with her classmates and doubt that they'll give me an answer until they see her swim.

I’m a rule follower too but I have spoken with Fairfax Park authority and they said just change the birth date so he can be with kids in his grade and it’s not a big deal. Ask around I bet people will be flexible.

This might be a good solution for a mature kid, but she's really not there. K has been a struggle. I don't want to set her or the staff up for a bad situation where she's not ready. She needs to be in a camp for 5 yos with better staff ratios and closer supervision.

wait, what? So you want her to be with her friends, or not?

She wants to be with her friends. I want her to be safe and not constantly in trouble. I'd be fine with a camp that follows the school cut off, but I can't beg them to bend the rules when I know that she's going to be a behavior problem because she's not ready for the scheduled activities or level of supervision. If she was in the class behind, this wouldn't be an issue.

Even if it’s an issue for you this summer, as she gets older that might change