Since this is anonymous, why did you REALLY redshirt your kid?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This troll is probably the wounded redshirted poster who pops up to say his parents' decision to hold him back a year warped him for life.

It's put heavy expectations on me.

https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/academic-redshirting/

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-15490760

If I don't meet the expectations discussed in articles like these, I'll seem like a failure, like I messed up. I would've been perfectly happy with a modest career and a modest lifestyle, but because I was redshirted, great things are expected of me. Why should I want that kind of pressure?

I say this with all compassion: get yourself some counseling. Your life’s woes are not because you were redshirted. if your parents have unrealistic expectations, they would have had them whether you were redshirted or not.

It's not my parents who have these expectations. It's nature, as well as most objective outsiders, such as the people who conducted the studies I linked.

Out in the real world, literally nobody cares what year you started school. No one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This troll is probably the wounded redshirted poster who pops up to say his parents' decision to hold him back a year warped him for life.

It's put heavy expectations on me.

https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/academic-redshirting/

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-15490760

If I don't meet the expectations discussed in articles like these, I'll seem like a failure, like I messed up. I would've been perfectly happy with a modest career and a modest lifestyle, but because I was redshirted, great things are expected of me. Why should I want that kind of pressure?

I say this with all compassion: get yourself some counseling. Your life’s woes are not because you were redshirted. if your parents have unrealistic expectations, they would have had them whether you were redshirted or not.

It's not my parents who have these expectations. It's nature, as well as most objective outsiders, such as the people who conducted the studies I linked.

OK, the mention of nature has given you away. We have it wrong. This isn’t redshirted kid impersonating crazy parent, this is crazy parent impersonating redshirted kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are considering it for our current 4 year-old. He has a July birthday. His older brother with a July birthday went in time and it was the right decision for him. His younger brother is just very immature, a very sensitive kid who still needs lots of one on one attention to stay on task. His preschool teacher supports redshirting him. Some kids do fine as the youngest. Some would do better on the older end.

I know this is an old comment, but I just want to point out that preschool teachers are not the best source to ask about redshirting. Of course they want your business, and teaching a child they already know who is more mature than the other kids will make their job a lot easier.

Second, one extra known/older kid isn’t going to make a meaningful difference in the class as a whole.

In the cases of class competitions, one redshirted kid is enough. There can only be one class president, one valedictorian. One redshirted kid means that there's going to be an age-appropriate Yale applicant who deserves to go but won't.

[Anonymous]

Are there anti-redshirt posters on DCUM who aren't totally whacko? As a group, I think they are DCUM's weirdest and that's saying something.

[Anonymous]

Can I revive this? My child was born two days before the cutoff in DC, which is late so as to scoop up all those at-risk kids (which is great). But he’s a boy and now the pandemic. I think it’s reasonable but I was met with so much resistance and formality from his teacher. I don’t want him to be 16 starting his senior year of high school. Does this make me unreasonable and trying to get him to have a leg up on his peers? His speech therapy is on hold and he’ll miss most of kindergarten. Am I nuts for wanting to hold him back?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can I revive this? My child was born two days before the cutoff in DC, which is late so as to scoop up all those at-risk kids (which is great). But he’s a boy and now the pandemic. I think it’s reasonable but I was met with so much resistance and formality from his teacher. I don’t want him to be 16 starting his senior year of high school. Does this make me unreasonable and trying to get him to have a leg up on his peers? His speech therapy is on hold and he’ll miss most of kindergarten. Am I nuts for wanting to hold him back?

You're not nuts as long as you're just putting him in school in learn. As long as you don't have him sign up for any competitions, your decision is fine.

And by the way, it's not like he'd be 16 his entire senior year, just the first few months. There's a BIG difference between starting 12th grade at 16 and turning 17 before the new year, and starting 12th grade at 16 and turning 17 after the new year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can I revive this? My child was born two days before the cutoff in DC, which is late so as to scoop up all those at-risk kids (which is great). But he’s a boy and now the pandemic. I think it’s reasonable but I was met with so much resistance and formality from his teacher. I don’t want him to be 16 starting his senior year of high school. Does this make me unreasonable and trying to get him to have a leg up on his peers? His speech therapy is on hold and he’ll miss most of kindergarten. Am I nuts for wanting to hold him back?

You're not nuts as long as you're just putting him in school in learn. As long as you don't have him sign up for any competitions, your decision is fine.

And by the way, it's not like he'd be 16 his entire senior year, just the first few months. There's a BIG difference between starting 12th grade at 16 and turning 17 before the new year, and starting 12th grade at 16 and turning 17 after the new year.

Really? No competitions? Lol. It’s not like PP’s kid will be 19 his senior year. Why is it fair for an October 1 birthday to compete, but not a September 30?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can I revive this? My child was born two days before the cutoff in DC, which is late so as to scoop up all those at-risk kids (which is great). But he’s a boy and now the pandemic. I think it’s reasonable but I was met with so much resistance and formality from his teacher. I don’t want him to be 16 starting his senior year of high school. Does this make me unreasonable and trying to get him to have a leg up on his peers? His speech therapy is on hold and he’ll miss most of kindergarten. Am I nuts for wanting to hold him back?

You're not nuts as long as you're just putting him in school in learn. As long as you don't have him sign up for any competitions, your decision is fine.

And by the way, it's not like he'd be 16 his entire senior year, just the first few months. There's a BIG difference between starting 12th grade at 16 and turning 17 before the new year, and starting 12th grade at 16 and turning 17 after the new year.

Really? No competitions? Lol. It’s not like PP’s kid will be 19 his senior year. Why is it fair for an October 1 birthday to compete, but not a September 30?

No, he won't turn 19 his senior year, but he'll turn 19 the year he graduates from high school, which really isn't that much different. And to your last question, you have to draw the line somewhere. If the cut-off is October 1st, that means that the class of 2034 is designed for kids born between 1 October 2015 and 30 September 2016. Someone born on 30 September 2015 is not part of that age-range, and therefore should be in the class of 2033, the age-range of which is 1 October 2014 to 30 September 2015, which they obviously are within.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can I revive this? My child was born two days before the cutoff in DC, which is late so as to scoop up all those at-risk kids (which is great). But he’s a boy and now the pandemic. I think it’s reasonable but I was met with so much resistance and formality from his teacher. I don’t want him to be 16 starting his senior year of high school. Does this make me unreasonable and trying to get him to have a leg up on his peers? His speech therapy is on hold and he’ll miss most of kindergarten. Am I nuts for wanting to hold him back?

You're not nuts as long as you're just putting him in school in learn. As long as you don't have him sign up for any competitions, your decision is fine.

And by the way, it's not like he'd be 16 his entire senior year, just the first few months. There's a BIG difference between starting 12th grade at 16 and turning 17 before the new year, and starting 12th grade at 16 and turning 17 after the new year.

Really? No competitions? Lol. It’s not like PP’s kid will be 19 his senior year. Why is it fair for an October 1 birthday to compete, but not a September 30?

No, he won't turn 19 his senior year, but he'll turn 19 the year he graduates from high school, which really isn't that much different. And to your last question, you have to draw the line somewhere. If the cut-off is October 1st, that means that the class of 2034 is designed for kids born between 1 October 2015 and 30 September 2016. Someone born on 30 September 2015 is not part of that age-range, and therefore should be in the class of 2033, the age-range of which is 1 October 2014 to 30 September 2015, which they obviously are within.

This is a weird argument. The Oct 1 birthday and everyone else after will also turn 19 the year they graduate HS. Shrug. I have no problem holding kids back with August and on birthdays if it’s appropriate to do so. PP you sound militant for some reason, like your child didn’t make a sports team and you think it’s because there were older kids. Yeah that person on the other thread who wanted to hold their May birthday back was wacky but contrary to popular belief, this isn’t all that common.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can I revive this? My child was born two days before the cutoff in DC, which is late so as to scoop up all those at-risk kids (which is great). But he’s a boy and now the pandemic. I think it’s reasonable but I was met with so much resistance and formality from his teacher. I don’t want him to be 16 starting his senior year of high school. Does this make me unreasonable and trying to get him to have a leg up on his peers? His speech therapy is on hold and he’ll miss most of kindergarten. Am I nuts for wanting to hold him back?

You're not nuts as long as you're just putting him in school in learn. As long as you don't have him sign up for any competitions, your decision is fine.

And by the way, it's not like he'd be 16 his entire senior year, just the first few months. There's a BIG difference between starting 12th grade at 16 and turning 17 before the new year, and starting 12th grade at 16 and turning 17 after the new year.

Really? No competitions? Lol. It’s not like PP’s kid will be 19 his senior year. Why is it fair for an October 1 birthday to compete, but not a September 30?

Yeah that person on the other thread who wanted to hold their May birthday back was wacky but contrary to popular belief, this isn’t all that common.

Redshirting of any type is any rare. But as I've already pointed out, one redshirted student is enough to screw over someone who won fair and square. If there's one Yale applicant who was redshirted, that's one Yale applicant who deserves to go to Yale, but won't. If there's one redshirted student in a graduation class, the valedictorian spot is taken, and the competition is now for salutatorian.

[Anonymous]

We want to send our kid this year (we actually think it's good for kids otherwise ready for kindergarten to be young/small and learn to keep up with kids a little older than them), but we are redshirting because of COVID. Kid is ready for kindergarten but not for virtual kindergarten, and we don't want his first experience at school to be that.

[Anonymous]

We red-shirted our December-born son because of our long-term concerns. Just because a child is ready to start Kindergarten at 4 doesn't mean they'll be ready to go to college at 17.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We red-shirted our December-born son because of our long-term concerns. Just because a child is ready to start Kindergarten at 4 doesn't mean they'll be ready to go to college at 17.

That makes no sense. Age differences matter less as you get older, not more. The difference between a 4-year-old and a 5-year-old is equivalent to the difference between a 68-year-old and an 85-year-old, while the difference between a 17-year-old and an 18-year-old is equivalent to the difference between a 68-year-old and a 72-year-old, which is obviously smaller. If someone can keep up with 5-year-olds at the age of 4, they'll definitely be able to keep up with 18-year-olds at the age of 17. And if, for some weird reason, they're not ready to start college at 17, they can just take a gap year after high school.

[Anonymous]

I don't have any kids, so I'll speak for my parents' reasoning for redshirting me, someone with a late-September birthday. Simply put, my parents assumed that the advantages that come with being the oldest would be more important to me than being on a normal schedule. Sure, redshirted kids usually do better in school, but for some people, being at top of their class just isn't that important to them. I've never been passionate about being the best academically and things like being class president, valedictorian, getting into a top-20 were just never that important to me.

[Anonymous]

Because, it's more expensive to redshirt a kid than to send them on time. Usually, if one option is more expensive than the other, the more expensive option is the one that will be more beneficial. But the cost of an extra year of daycare is like pennies to us, so we didn't have a problem paying for that extra year.