Why don’t schools have stronger policies about redshirting?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:If you redshirt your kids, the other kids will figure out what age your child is (most likely your child will simply tell them) and therefore their parents will too. It's less that people are cataloguing the ages and birthdays of every child and more that when you encounter an 8 year old in 1st or a 10 yr old in 3rd, it is notable, and kids and adults alike will share that info.

The fact that people discover this does not make them creepy stalkers. Again, usually this information is learned from the child themselves when they tell other kids what their age is, which is a very normal thing for kids to share with one another.

You can't control other people finding out and you can't control how they will feel about it when they do. Proceed accordingly.

+1, most talk about it and are proud to be old

Exactly. It's often a point of pride for kids in younger grades to be the oldest, so the redshirted kids get revealed very quickly. This can also be where the resentment starts, if you've got a redshirted kid in the classroom boasting about being the oldest. It's meaningless but it draws attention to it in a negative way.

If you redshirt, talk to your kids about how being a year older or younger isn't important. Make sure they understand that being older doesn't make them better, and find a way to explain why you redshirted that doesn't put other kids down. You don't want your redshirted kid lording it over other children.

TBH it's more likely that they will be uncomfortable and self conscious about being older than everyone else, like they're too old to be in the grade they're in.

Let us know how it goes when the other children make fun of your kid for being too old to be in his or her grade.

Because it will never happen.

said the person who has literally never met a child

How would the kids know what “too old” was unless psycho mom had a sit down and talked about it? Real kids only care about who’s birthday is next and if they are going to the party.

This is a strange world you live in where the moms know the ages of literally hundreds of children at their kids' schools, but the kids have no idea how old anyone is or what grade you're supposed to be in each grade.

There is no correct age per grade since school year isn’t the calendar year. Kids have birthdays all year round.

Have fun explaining that to all the kids at school.

Do you have any kids in school? It’s a non issue.

Pfft. If you have a kid who is older than some children in the grade ahead of them, the other kids will sniff that out in about three seconds and the entire grade will know within days. Some will think it's cool. Some won't care. Some will ask what is wrong with you.

The redshirted kid with be a year older than their peers forever. Elementary school. Middle school. High school. College. It will always be an issue, to varying degrees.

again with the piss poor math skills

This is not a math skills issue, it's a degree issue.

If you read the thread, you see that there is little opposition to redshirting summer birthdays, even among the so-called "anti-redshirters." Summer birthdays will never be more than a year and a month or two older than peers, even the youngest peers. So instead of an age range of 12 months, it's more like 14 or 15. Not a big deal and highly unlikely to matter in high school or college.

OP's complaint was about children redshirted with February birthdays. It's a bigger gap. It could be more significant into later ages. A senior turning 19 in the middle of the year would give me pause. So would a college freshman turning 20.

This thread was originally about a specific kind of redshirting that is rare and far more controversial than holding back a kid whoae birthday is close to the cutoff.

No OP’s complaint was that the school “lied” to her about when summer boys were sent. Even in her version where she had a 3 month rule, her son should have been redshirted. You cannot blame everyone else for not doing the homework for your own kids best interests.

[Anonymous]

OPs real complaint is that she has an undiagnosed anxiety disorder.

[Anonymous]

OP said she asked specifically how common redshirting was and the school said almost no one redshirts, so she went her June bday on time.

Now he's the youngest kid in class and not only are all the summer bdays redshirted, but so are many spring bdays.

I would also be upset about this. OP was new to the district and asked a reasonable question about common redshirting practice and for some reason the school lied to her. It sounds like the district frowns on redshirting officially but turns a blind eye when it happens, even with spring birthdays. This is maximally annoying.

I'm pro redshirting for summer birthdays but I think it should be a formal policy and that parents should not be misled about redshirting policies or practices. Schools should even provide statistics on redshirting so parents can make informed choices. What could be the objection to this?

Having a secret redshirting policy for people in the know is the worst possible scenario.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP said she asked specifically how common redshirting was and the school said almost no one redshirts, so she went her June bday on time.

Now he's the youngest kid in class and not only are all the summer bdays redshirted, but so are many spring bdays.

I would also be upset about this. OP was new to the district and asked a reasonable question about common redshirting practice and for some reason the school lied to her. It sounds like the district frowns on redshirting officially but turns a blind eye when it happens, even with spring birthdays. This is maximally annoying.

I'm pro redshirting for summer birthdays but I think it should be a formal policy and that parents should not be misled about redshirting policies or practices. Schools should even provide statistics on redshirting so parents can make informed choices. What could be the objection to this?

Having a secret redshirting policy for people in the know is the worst possible scenario.

OP also said 2 friends failed kindergarten and are repeating. What kind of public school is this that so many kids get held back and have to repeat?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP said she asked specifically how common redshirting was and the school said almost no one redshirts, so she went her June bday on time.

Now he's the youngest kid in class and not only are all the summer bdays redshirted, but so are many spring bdays.

I would also be upset about this. OP was new to the district and asked a reasonable question about common redshirting practice and for some reason the school lied to her. It sounds like the district frowns on redshirting officially but turns a blind eye when it happens, even with spring birthdays. This is maximally annoying.

I'm pro redshirting for summer birthdays but I think it should be a formal policy and that parents should not be misled about redshirting policies or practices. Schools should even provide statistics on redshirting so parents can make informed choices. What could be the objection to this?

Having a secret redshirting policy for people in the know is the worst possible scenario.

OP also said 2 friends failed kindergarten and are repeating. What kind of public school is this that so many kids get held back and have to repeat?

Uh, no she didn't. She said her son has two friends in K, one who was redshirted in February and the other in March. Neither are repeating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP said she asked specifically how common redshirting was and the school said almost no one redshirts, so she went her June bday on time.

Now he's the youngest kid in class and not only are all the summer bdays redshirted, but so are many spring bdays.

I would also be upset about this. OP was new to the district and asked a reasonable question about common redshirting practice and for some reason the school lied to her. It sounds like the district frowns on redshirting officially but turns a blind eye when it happens, even with spring birthdays. This is maximally annoying.

I'm pro redshirting for summer birthdays but I think it should be a formal policy and that parents should not be misled about redshirting policies or practices. Schools should even provide statistics on redshirting so parents can make informed choices. What could be the objection to this?

Having a secret redshirting policy for people in the know is the worst possible scenario.

OP also said 2 friends failed kindergarten and are repeating. What kind of public school is this that so many kids get held back and have to repeat?

Uh, no she didn't. She said her son has two friends in K, one who was redshirted in February and the other in March. Neither are repeating.

So her rising first grader is friends with two rising kindergarteners?

[Anonymous]

I’m sorry February is ridiculous

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:If you redshirt your kids, the other kids will figure out what age your child is (most likely your child will simply tell them) and therefore their parents will too. It's less that people are cataloguing the ages and birthdays of every child and more that when you encounter an 8 year old in 1st or a 10 yr old in 3rd, it is notable, and kids and adults alike will share that info.

The fact that people discover this does not make them creepy stalkers. Again, usually this information is learned from the child themselves when they tell other kids what their age is, which is a very normal thing for kids to share with one another.

You can't control other people finding out and you can't control how they will feel about it when they do. Proceed accordingly.

+1, most talk about it and are proud to be old

Exactly. It's often a point of pride for kids in younger grades to be the oldest, so the redshirted kids get revealed very quickly. This can also be where the resentment starts, if you've got a redshirted kid in the classroom boasting about being the oldest. It's meaningless but it draws attention to it in a negative way.

If you redshirt, talk to your kids about how being a year older or younger isn't important. Make sure they understand that being older doesn't make them better, and find a way to explain why you redshirted that doesn't put other kids down. You don't want your redshirted kid lording it over other children.

TBH it's more likely that they will be uncomfortable and self conscious about being older than everyone else, like they're too old to be in the grade they're in.

Let us know how it goes when the other children make fun of your kid for being too old to be in his or her grade.

Because it will never happen.

said the person who has literally never met a child

How would the kids know what “too old” was unless psycho mom had a sit down and talked about it? Real kids only care about who’s birthday is next and if they are going to the party.

This is a strange world you live in where the moms know the ages of literally hundreds of children at their kids' schools, but the kids have no idea how old anyone is or what grade you're supposed to be in each grade.

There is no correct age per grade since school year isn’t the calendar year. Kids have birthdays all year round.

Have fun explaining that to all the kids at school.

Do you have any kids in school? It’s a non issue.

Pfft. If you have a kid who is older than some children in the grade ahead of them, the other kids will sniff that out in about three seconds and the entire grade will know within days. Some will think it's cool. Some won't care. Some will ask what is wrong with you.

The redshirted kid with be a year older than their peers forever. Elementary school. Middle school. High school. College. It will always be an issue, to varying degrees.

You do realize that college students vary wildly in age, right? Kids take a gap year between HS and college. Kids transfer colleges and their credits might not always transfer exactly. They take a year off for health reasons, or they join the military and have to take time off for training or because they actually get deployed. Or they have a kid! Allll kinds of stuff happens. Even throughout K-12 school, different areas have different cutoffs. The places that start school early in early-mid August in the Midwest and the South often have 7/30 cutoffs. The August and September birthday kids (and there are a lot, these are some of the most common birthdays of the year) didn’t meet the cutoff where they started school.

Ok, Spock, but were you never a child? It's easy to say "'don't sweat it" when you're a middle aged parent with the benefit of experience and hindsight and you don't actually have to do it. Not sweating it though is an altogether different matter when you're young and in the thick of it. If you can't see why a child would be self conscious about being older than all of their peers, then I don't know what to tell you other than you're just being willfully blind.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you redshirt your kids, the other kids will figure out what age your child is (most likely your child will simply tell them) and therefore their parents will too. It's less that people are cataloguing the ages and birthdays of every child and more that when you encounter an 8 year old in 1st or a 10 yr old in 3rd, it is notable, and kids and adults alike will share that info.

The fact that people discover this does not make them creepy stalkers. Again, usually this information is learned from the child themselves when they tell other kids what their age is, which is a very normal thing for kids to share with one another.

You can't control other people finding out and you can't control how they will feel about it when they do. Proceed accordingly.

+1, most talk about it and are proud to be old

Exactly. It's often a point of pride for kids in younger grades to be the oldest, so the redshirted kids get revealed very quickly. This can also be where the resentment starts, if you've got a redshirted kid in the classroom boasting about being the oldest. It's meaningless but it draws attention to it in a negative way.

If you redshirt, talk to your kids about how being a year older or younger isn't important. Make sure they understand that being older doesn't make them better, and find a way to explain why you redshirted that doesn't put other kids down. You don't want your redshirted kid lording it over other children.

TBH it's more likely that they will be uncomfortable and self conscious about being older than everyone else, like they're too old to be in the grade they're in.

Let us know how it goes when the other children make fun of your kid for being too old to be in his or her grade.

Because it will never happen.

said the person who has literally never met a child

How would the kids know what “too old” was unless psycho mom had a sit down and talked about it? Real kids only care about who’s birthday is next and if they are going to the party.

This is a strange world you live in where the moms know the ages of literally hundreds of children at their kids' schools, but the kids have no idea how old anyone is or what grade you're supposed to be in each grade.

There is no correct age per grade since school year isn’t the calendar year. Kids have birthdays all year round.

Have fun explaining that to all the kids at school.

Do you have any kids in school? It’s a non issue.

Pfft. If you have a kid who is older than some children in the grade ahead of them, the other kids will sniff that out in about three seconds and the entire grade will know within days. Some will think it's cool. Some won't care. Some will ask what is wrong with you.

The redshirted kid with be a year older than their peers forever. Elementary school. Middle school. High school. College. It will always be an issue, to varying degrees.

You do realize that college students vary wildly in age, right? Kids take a gap year between HS and college. Kids transfer colleges and their credits might not always transfer exactly. They take a year off for health reasons, or they join the military and have to take time off for training or because they actually get deployed. Or they have a kid! Allll kinds of stuff happens. Even throughout K-12 school, different areas have different cutoffs. The places that start school early in early-mid August in the Midwest and the South often have 7/30 cutoffs. The August and September birthday kids (and there are a lot, these are some of the most common birthdays of the year) didn’t meet the cutoff where they started school.

Ok, Spock, but were you never a child? It's easy to say "'don't sweat it" when you're a middle aged parent with the benefit of experience and hindsight and you don't actually have to do it. Not sweating it though is an altogether different matter when you're young and in the thick of it. If you can't see why a child would be self conscious about being older than all of their peers, then I don't know what to tell you other than you're just being willfully blind.

Okay, Watson, but actually it's great to be older in college because you don't need a fake ID

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m sorry February is ridiculous

aw, that's ok. no need to apologize. you never know what someone else is going through.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you redshirt your kids, the other kids will figure out what age your child is (most likely your child will simply tell them) and therefore their parents will too. It's less that people are cataloguing the ages and birthdays of every child and more that when you encounter an 8 year old in 1st or a 10 yr old in 3rd, it is notable, and kids and adults alike will share that info.

The fact that people discover this does not make them creepy stalkers. Again, usually this information is learned from the child themselves when they tell other kids what their age is, which is a very normal thing for kids to share with one another.

You can't control other people finding out and you can't control how they will feel about it when they do. Proceed accordingly.

+1, most talk about it and are proud to be old

Exactly. It's often a point of pride for kids in younger grades to be the oldest, so the redshirted kids get revealed very quickly. This can also be where the resentment starts, if you've got a redshirted kid in the classroom boasting about being the oldest. It's meaningless but it draws attention to it in a negative way.

If you redshirt, talk to your kids about how being a year older or younger isn't important. Make sure they understand that being older doesn't make them better, and find a way to explain why you redshirted that doesn't put other kids down. You don't want your redshirted kid lording it over other children.

TBH it's more likely that they will be uncomfortable and self conscious about being older than everyone else, like they're too old to be in the grade they're in.

Let us know how it goes when the other children make fun of your kid for being too old to be in his or her grade.

Because it will never happen.

said the person who has literally never met a child

How would the kids know what “too old” was unless psycho mom had a sit down and talked about it? Real kids only care about who’s birthday is next and if they are going to the party.

This is a strange world you live in where the moms know the ages of literally hundreds of children at their kids' schools, but the kids have no idea how old anyone is or what grade you're supposed to be in each grade.

There is no correct age per grade since school year isn’t the calendar year. Kids have birthdays all year round.

Have fun explaining that to all the kids at school.

Do you have any kids in school? It’s a non issue.

Pfft. If you have a kid who is older than some children in the grade ahead of them, the other kids will sniff that out in about three seconds and the entire grade will know within days. Some will think it's cool. Some won't care. Some will ask what is wrong with you.

The redshirted kid with be a year older than their peers forever. Elementary school. Middle school. High school. College. It will always be an issue, to varying degrees.

You do realize that college students vary wildly in age, right? Kids take a gap year between HS and college. Kids transfer colleges and their credits might not always transfer exactly. They take a year off for health reasons, or they join the military and have to take time off for training or because they actually get deployed. Or they have a kid! Allll kinds of stuff happens. Even throughout K-12 school, different areas have different cutoffs. The places that start school early in early-mid August in the Midwest and the South often have 7/30 cutoffs. The August and September birthday kids (and there are a lot, these are some of the most common birthdays of the year) didn’t meet the cutoff where they started school.

Ok, Spock, but were you never a child? It's easy to say "'don't sweat it" when you're a middle aged parent with the benefit of experience and hindsight and you don't actually have to do it. Not sweating it though is an altogether different matter when you're young and in the thick of it. If you can't see why a child would be self conscious about being older than all of their peers, then I don't know what to tell you other than you're just being willfully blind.

Hey Ashley, this is a you problem and nothing else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you redshirt your kids, the other kids will figure out what age your child is (most likely your child will simply tell them) and therefore their parents will too. It's less that people are cataloguing the ages and birthdays of every child and more that when you encounter an 8 year old in 1st or a 10 yr old in 3rd, it is notable, and kids and adults alike will share that info.

The fact that people discover this does not make them creepy stalkers. Again, usually this information is learned from the child themselves when they tell other kids what their age is, which is a very normal thing for kids to share with one another.

You can't control other people finding out and you can't control how they will feel about it when they do. Proceed accordingly.

+1, most talk about it and are proud to be old

Exactly. It's often a point of pride for kids in younger grades to be the oldest, so the redshirted kids get revealed very quickly. This can also be where the resentment starts, if you've got a redshirted kid in the classroom boasting about being the oldest. It's meaningless but it draws attention to it in a negative way.

If you redshirt, talk to your kids about how being a year older or younger isn't important. Make sure they understand that being older doesn't make them better, and find a way to explain why you redshirted that doesn't put other kids down. You don't want your redshirted kid lording it over other children.

TBH it's more likely that they will be uncomfortable and self conscious about being older than everyone else, like they're too old to be in the grade they're in.

Let us know how it goes when the other children make fun of your kid for being too old to be in his or her grade.

Because it will never happen.

said the person who has literally never met a child

How would the kids know what “too old” was unless psycho mom had a sit down and talked about it? Real kids only care about who’s birthday is next and if they are going to the party.

This is a strange world you live in where the moms know the ages of literally hundreds of children at their kids' schools, but the kids have no idea how old anyone is or what grade you're supposed to be in each grade.

There is no correct age per grade since school year isn’t the calendar year. Kids have birthdays all year round.

Have fun explaining that to all the kids at school.

Do you have any kids in school? It’s a non issue.

Pfft. If you have a kid who is older than some children in the grade ahead of them, the other kids will sniff that out in about three seconds and the entire grade will know within days. Some will think it's cool. Some won't care. Some will ask what is wrong with you.

The redshirted kid with be a year older than their peers forever. Elementary school. Middle school. High school. College. It will always be an issue, to varying degrees.

You do realize that college students vary wildly in age, right? Kids take a gap year between HS and college. Kids transfer colleges and their credits might not always transfer exactly. They take a year off for health reasons, or they join the military and have to take time off for training or because they actually get deployed. Or they have a kid! Allll kinds of stuff happens. Even throughout K-12 school, different areas have different cutoffs. The places that start school early in early-mid August in the Midwest and the South often have 7/30 cutoffs. The August and September birthday kids (and there are a lot, these are some of the most common birthdays of the year) didn’t meet the cutoff where they started school.

Ok, Spock, but were you never a child? It's easy to say "'don't sweat it" when you're a middle aged parent with the benefit of experience and hindsight and you don't actually have to do it. Not sweating it though is an altogether different matter when you're young and in the thick of it. If you can't see why a child would be self conscious about being older than all of their peers, then I don't know what to tell you other than you're just being willfully blind.

But they aren’t self-conscious about it, that’s the thing. There’s always been redshirting but in the 80s and 90s, it was more for sports. I have a summer birthday and went on time and I had friends a full year older in my same grade, and friends my exact age in the grade below. Honestly it’s more socially annoying and a problem being the youngest in a grade. You’re the last to get a drivers license (probably not as big of a deal these days since fewer kids drive), the last to have those milestone birthdays, you feel immature and behind compared to the held-back summer birthday kids and the fall kids from right after the cutoff. My friend group always skewed young too. The less mature/younger kids find each other early on and then it just compounds on itself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you redshirt your kids, the other kids will figure out what age your child is (most likely your child will simply tell them) and therefore their parents will too. It's less that people are cataloguing the ages and birthdays of every child and more that when you encounter an 8 year old in 1st or a 10 yr old in 3rd, it is notable, and kids and adults alike will share that info.

The fact that people discover this does not make them creepy stalkers. Again, usually this information is learned from the child themselves when they tell other kids what their age is, which is a very normal thing for kids to share with one another.

You can't control other people finding out and you can't control how they will feel about it when they do. Proceed accordingly.

+1, most talk about it and are proud to be old

Exactly. It's often a point of pride for kids in younger grades to be the oldest, so the redshirted kids get revealed very quickly. This can also be where the resentment starts, if you've got a redshirted kid in the classroom boasting about being the oldest. It's meaningless but it draws attention to it in a negative way.

If you redshirt, talk to your kids about how being a year older or younger isn't important. Make sure they understand that being older doesn't make them better, and find a way to explain why you redshirted that doesn't put other kids down. You don't want your redshirted kid lording it over other children.

TBH it's more likely that they will be uncomfortable and self conscious about being older than everyone else, like they're too old to be in the grade they're in.

Let us know how it goes when the other children make fun of your kid for being too old to be in his or her grade.

Because it will never happen.

said the person who has literally never met a child

How would the kids know what “too old” was unless psycho mom had a sit down and talked about it? Real kids only care about who’s birthday is next and if they are going to the party.

This is a strange world you live in where the moms know the ages of literally hundreds of children at their kids' schools, but the kids have no idea how old anyone is or what grade you're supposed to be in each grade.

There is no correct age per grade since school year isn’t the calendar year. Kids have birthdays all year round.

Have fun explaining that to all the kids at school.

Do you have any kids in school? It’s a non issue.

Pfft. If you have a kid who is older than some children in the grade ahead of them, the other kids will sniff that out in about three seconds and the entire grade will know within days. Some will think it's cool. Some won't care. Some will ask what is wrong with you.

The redshirted kid with be a year older than their peers forever. Elementary school. Middle school. High school. College. It will always be an issue, to varying degrees.

You do realize that college students vary wildly in age, right? Kids take a gap year between HS and college. Kids transfer colleges and their credits might not always transfer exactly. They take a year off for health reasons, or they join the military and have to take time off for training or because they actually get deployed. Or they have a kid! Allll kinds of stuff happens. Even throughout K-12 school, different areas have different cutoffs. The places that start school early in early-mid August in the Midwest and the South often have 7/30 cutoffs. The August and September birthday kids (and there are a lot, these are some of the most common birthdays of the year) didn’t meet the cutoff where they started school.

Ok, Spock, but were you never a child? It's easy to say "'don't sweat it" when you're a middle aged parent with the benefit of experience and hindsight and you don't actually have to do it. Not sweating it though is an altogether different matter when you're young and in the thick of it. If you can't see why a child would be self conscious about being older than all of their peers, then I don't know what to tell you other than you're just being willfully blind.

If OP is telling the truth, the redshirted kids have plenty of own-age peers in class with them so no need to feel self conscious about anything. I’m sure you’re relieved.

[Anonymous]

It's very weird that this topic gets so heated when most summer birthday kids, including kids born less than a month before the cutoff, are sent on time. I only know of a handful of redshirted kids through my kids' schools, and it seems to be due to certain developmental issues rather than the parents angling for some competitive edge.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you redshirt your kids, the other kids will figure out what age your child is (most likely your child will simply tell them) and therefore their parents will too. It's less that people are cataloguing the ages and birthdays of every child and more that when you encounter an 8 year old in 1st or a 10 yr old in 3rd, it is notable, and kids and adults alike will share that info.

The fact that people discover this does not make them creepy stalkers. Again, usually this information is learned from the child themselves when they tell other kids what their age is, which is a very normal thing for kids to share with one another.

You can't control other people finding out and you can't control how they will feel about it when they do. Proceed accordingly.

+1, most talk about it and are proud to be old

Exactly. It's often a point of pride for kids in younger grades to be the oldest, so the redshirted kids get revealed very quickly. This can also be where the resentment starts, if you've got a redshirted kid in the classroom boasting about being the oldest. It's meaningless but it draws attention to it in a negative way.

If you redshirt, talk to your kids about how being a year older or younger isn't important. Make sure they understand that being older doesn't make them better, and find a way to explain why you redshirted that doesn't put other kids down. You don't want your redshirted kid lording it over other children.

TBH it's more likely that they will be uncomfortable and self conscious about being older than everyone else, like they're too old to be in the grade they're in.

Let us know how it goes when the other children make fun of your kid for being too old to be in his or her grade.

Because it will never happen.

said the person who has literally never met a child

How would the kids know what “too old” was unless psycho mom had a sit down and talked about it? Real kids only care about who’s birthday is next and if they are going to the party.

This is a strange world you live in where the moms know the ages of literally hundreds of children at their kids' schools, but the kids have no idea how old anyone is or what grade you're supposed to be in each grade.

There is no correct age per grade since school year isn’t the calendar year. Kids have birthdays all year round.

Have fun explaining that to all the kids at school.

Do you have any kids in school? It’s a non issue.

Pfft. If you have a kid who is older than some children in the grade ahead of them, the other kids will sniff that out in about three seconds and the entire grade will know within days. Some will think it's cool. Some won't care. Some will ask what is wrong with you.

The redshirted kid with be a year older than their peers forever. Elementary school. Middle school. High school. College. It will always be an issue, to varying degrees.

You do realize that college students vary wildly in age, right? Kids take a gap year between HS and college. Kids transfer colleges and their credits might not always transfer exactly. They take a year off for health reasons, or they join the military and have to take time off for training or because they actually get deployed. Or they have a kid! Allll kinds of stuff happens. Even throughout K-12 school, different areas have different cutoffs. The places that start school early in early-mid August in the Midwest and the South often have 7/30 cutoffs. The August and September birthday kids (and there are a lot, these are some of the most common birthdays of the year) didn’t meet the cutoff where they started school.

Ok, Spock, but were you never a child? It's easy to say "'don't sweat it" when you're a middle aged parent with the benefit of experience and hindsight and you don't actually have to do it. Not sweating it though is an altogether different matter when you're young and in the thick of it. If you can't see why a child would be self conscious about being older than all of their peers, then I don't know what to tell you other than you're just being willfully blind.

never in all my years, including 3 sons with Sept/Oct birthdays have I know a kid embarrassed about their age in school. you people make up the craziest stuff. god bless you if this is a big concern for you