Just another redshirting vent
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Anonymous
They are older, not necessarily smarter. Kids who are held back start to figure it out. We were with friends this weekend and the child was confused by my child's grade/birthday compared to his. His parents held him back. He was 2 years younger and taller than my kid and very self-conscious about it. Parents who think the kids don't know, well, they do know. |
Anonymous
It depend on the sport. If we held our child back, he would not be able to compete senior year as he would miss the age cut off for swim. |
Anonymous
This is just a real question - there are age cut offs for Swimming in Hs? It goes by age and not grade like other Hs sports? I’m not asking about club swimming outside of school - but the actual high school swim team. |
Anonymous
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By late elementary school, how do you distinguish between kids who were redshirted and those who were held back? I always assume that if there is a year ahead birthday party in my child's class that the child was held back or was really behind and couldn't start elementary school on time. But we are in DC publics where redshiting is rare.
I'd never talk about it with my child because I wouldn't want her to apply any stigma to a child who repeated a grade. My brother repeated 3rd grade and didn't face any stigma for it, at least none he ever talked or compalined about. But if parents are so hyper focused on age, I could see this being an issue for a child repeating a grade. |
Anonymous
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Kids are curious and naturally find sameness and differences amongst one another. Birthdays/are are a natural topic of discussion for kids. Have you ever driven a carpool? Kids know who is the tallest/fastest/oldest/youngest/who has the most siblings/dogs, etc. As they get older information about age becomes more relevant to them for different reasons - academically, physically, and socially.
There are some competitive parents who find out ages and don’t hesitate to share that info with other parents but my experience is that kids already know. I’ve chaperoned two class outings where the leader innocently asks for ages at the start of the program (“so, you are all 8 and 9?”) and kids, being literal little creatures, make sure to point specific ages - at one gathering they all pointed to one child and said no, he’s x age (older)! Not to be mean, just to give a correct answer to the leader. |
Anonymous
My child is the correct age for grade, but the youngest in her grade by a few months. She attends a school where redshirting is rampant, and has a late summer birthday. The age range in her class is about 18 months. Not only is she the youngest, but there is a gap. The next youngest child is a couple months older than her, and then another gap and then finally a more even distribution. The youngest quarter of the kids in the class span 6 months worth of birthdays, leaving 3/4 of the kids in oldest 2/3rds of the age range. There are more redshirted summer birthdays than correct age for grade summer birthdays. In the younger grades, this meant when my child was behaving in age appropriate manners, her behavior stood out as "immature" because when you're 5, 6+ mos of development for an average child can make a huge difference. The academic and behavior standards were geared to the older cohort of kids, since they were the majority. The younger kids were expected to keep up and reach that standard as well. In K and 1st, when writing samples were put up on the wall, my child was well aware that her writing was not nearly as neat as the children who were a year, a year and a half older than her. And having almost no close in age peers meant seeing very few other samples of children at a similar level. The same held true for other situations. Fortunately, these extreme differences close up fairly quickly. While a 6 mos gap at 5 years old is large, it can often be developmentally invisible by 7. It was still obvious the class was geared to the older children, because they were the overwhelming majority, but the differences were less obvious to the kids so there were fewer instances of the youngest children being called or treated like "babies" by the oldest kids. By 3rd grade, for my child, you couldn't tell a difference at all. And not redshirting has been fantastic for my DC. She has grit like you wouldn't believe because of being in such an uneven environment her first few years, and working hard to meet a standard that was usually above her ability. If she'd been a particularly easy to discourage child, we probably would have seen negative results from this instead of positive, but fortunately she took on the challenge rather than internalizing the gap. When you have classes that are inappropriate for the age range they are supposed to teach, some parents are going to respond by setting their children up for success and getting their children as close as possible to the age that the class is geared for. Schools need to either modify their curriculum so it's age appropriate, or change the age ranges so they're getting the ages they want to get. Parents shouldn't be left doing this on an ad hoc basis. It just privileges the well off because they're the ones who can afford to keep kids home for an extra year. And it penalizes the less well off, because their kids are being held to an inappropriate standard that's being reinforced by the growing tendency towards redshirting. |
Anonymous
No normal parent reads the bulletin boards in their childs classrooms? Do you not remember your child's classmates names either? When you're playing on the playground after school, and a classmate announces she is turning 6, do you immediately wipe your memory so you don't accidentally know a creepy amount of information about the child? |
Anonymous
Yes but there is no stigma to it unless parents provide one. Just facts, like eye color and hair color. I am seriously worried about struggling kids who were held back then facing a parent backlash because no one can myob around here. |
Anonymous
When my kids are invited to birthday parties I try not to read the full invite in case age is mentioned and I also try to avoid looking at the cake (just kidding) |
Anonymous
+1. My daughter started PK3 in DCPS at age 2 (Sept. bday) and it's been fine. She's now a 2nd grader. I don't mind her being the youngest in a 12-month range--she has a couple of friends a year older, and she'll just have to work hard to keep up with older kids physically and academically. What would be a little tough is if she were the youngest in an 18 or 24-month span. This is all hypothetical though, as I only know one kid who is redshirted (and only missed the cutoff by a few days, so he's still basically 12 months older). |
Anonymous
Not sure about high school as we aren't there yet, but the high school teams are only about 2-3 months and most kids are doing club swimming. My kid has an early fall birthday so if we started him a year later he would not be able to summer swim (if he does it) with the summer swim team being 19 as it goes by ages. |
Anonymous
Missing the cut off is not redshirting. We have several friends who missed the cut off including my child. Some of us went private to start them and some waited a year. |
Anonymous
PP might have meant to say “made” the cutoff by a few days. |
Anonymous
I don't think you could prove decisively that redshirting has caused standards to shift, or that it was the standards shift that has increased redshirting. I also don't think it's a coincidence that we see increasing redshirting and increasing age-inappropriate standards at younger grades, but who knows which is the chicken and which is the egg. I don't blame the parents who redshirt. I'm against redshirting in general, but that doesn't make me against the parents who are making a particular decision for their child. I am against developmentally inappropriate standards, and I think increased redshirting makes it less obvious that we have a problem. Schools don't see parents who redshirt as making a statement about the standards of the grades their child is in, but rather as saying their child is somehow developmentally behind other children. I have no evidence, but my anecdotal experience says the majority of redshirted children are not at all developmentally delayed, they're just young kids for whom the current standards of the early grades are inappropriate. |
Anonymous
Why do you assume those of us unhappy with the inappropriate developmental standards are not reaching out to the schools, school board, and anywhere else we can? Do you assume the people on the politics section of the site complaining about everything under the sun are also not attempting to make changes? It would be more honest if you just said "These people make me uncomfortable and I wish they would shut up." Or you could not read the thread. |