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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A friend works at a top public HS in Virginia and says if you look at the kids on the Honor Roll and the kids on the Suspension List - guess who's on the HR (kids who are old for their grade) and who's on the SL (kids who are the youngest in the grade).

This is HS. And that affects college and the rest of life. Why wouldn't you hold them back if you're on the fence?

If want your kid to be on the honor roll, you should have to put in the work required. A 16-year-old on the 10th grade honor roll is just proving that they're a whiz at 15-year-old work. In fact, I consider it quite the opposite of honorable to make the honor roll by cheating.

[Anonymous]

I don't' think colleges think of it as cheating. And neither do teachers. It's weird that parents are so incensed by this. Who cares?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't' think colleges think of it as cheating. And neither do teachers. It's weird that parents are so incensed by this. Who cares?

Who says colleges and teachers have an objective outlook on life in terms of morality?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A friend works at a top public HS in Virginia and says if you look at the kids on the Honor Roll and the kids on the Suspension List - guess who's on the HR (kids who are old for their grade) and who's on the SL (kids who are the youngest in the grade).

This is HS. And that affects college and the rest of life. Why wouldn't you hold them back if you're on the fence?

If want your kid to be on the honor roll, you should have to put in the work required. A 16-year-old on the 10th grade honor roll is just proving that they're a whiz at 15-year-old work. In fact, I consider it quite the opposite of honorable to make the honor roll by cheating.

Honor roll is a joke these days, but that is an interesting trend.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Her pre-school teachers recommended it, and we figured that it would be beneficial in the long-run. I think a lot of parents make the mistake of thinking that they'd be setting their kid behind if they redshirted, but this is not true. These days, it's quite common for students to finish their high-school-through-college education in 7 years instead of 8. Many high schools offer a path that will allow students to graduate in 3 years instead of 4. But even students who take the full 4 years to graduate high school can take accumulate enough AP credits and concurrent community college credits to have a year of college credit under their belt as soon as they finish high school and start college as a sophomore, putting them on track to graduate college in 3 years. Since older kids do better in school, it follows logically that the older students will have an easier time doing what they need to do in high school to either graduate a year early or graduate on time with a year of college credit.

If a kid with a fall birthday starts on time, they'll start high school at 13 and graduate college at 21. If a kid with a fall birthday starts on time, they'll start high school at 14, but will still probably graduate college at 21, as their age advantage will either allow them to graduate high school a year early or start college as a sophomore.

Also, the better a student does in high school, the more likely they are to be accepted into a university abroad. In the UK, university if automatically 3 years instead of 4, so a student who gets superior grades in high school has a better chance of going to a university that will allow them to finish in 3 years. Since a redshirted student is more likely to get superior grades, this is also another reason why redshirting a student will most likely not set them behind. The bottom line, your kid is probably going to graduate college on time regardless of whether or not your redshirt them.

Never heard of this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A friend works at a top public HS in Virginia and says if you look at the kids on the Honor Roll and the kids on the Suspension List - guess who's on the HR (kids who are old for their grade) and who's on the SL (kids who are the youngest in the grade).

I'd rather my kid make the honor roll every other semester playing by the rules than make the honor roll every semester by cheating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A friend works at a top public HS in Virginia and says if you look at the kids on the Honor Roll and the kids on the Suspension List - guess who's on the HR (kids who are old for their grade) and who's on the SL (kids who are the youngest in the grade).

I'd rather my kid make the honor roll every other semester playing by the rules than make the honor roll every semester by cheating.

This is actually funny. All this pearl-clutching about red-shirting! I think it's the super competitive parents who are all up in arms about it. If you didn't want to do it, you didn't. But other people made choices to hold their kids back for various reasons (see above). So.... now what? it's this fakey moralizing that cracks me up. I have never met a parent of a 4/5/6 year old who talked about how it wouldn't be FAIR to hold their kid back. These parents make decisions that are best for their families/kids at that moment and they typically have to do with not wanting to pay for another year of child care, or their kids already can read and would be bored in preK for another year, or whatever - NOT about what would be fair to the population of future classmates of their children, or whether it would be cheating (!!) to hold back.

This is the world you live in, non-red-shirters, so suck it up and live in it. You didn't hold back and now you all feel bad. But you can still feel morally superior, I guess. That's not going to stop individual families from doing what they think is best for their kids at any given point. Good thing there's dcum!

[Anonymous]

We didn't start our July bday boy until he was 6. We had him enrolled, went to K orientation and everything. His pre-K teacher really recommended that we wait a year due to his behavior in class (normal for a boy his age - but probably a little hard for him to sit still, etc.). We stressed over the decision. It was financially very difficult for us to wait. We asked everyone we knew - family members who were teachers, close friends who were school administrators, other parents who had sent them early, other parents who sent them late. We read all the studies (there aren't many out there). Everyone said the same thing - you won't regret it if you wait, but you will if you send him too early. So we sacrificed and followed the trusted advice we were given.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We didn't start our July bday boy until he was 6. We had him enrolled, went to K orientation and everything. His pre-K teacher really recommended that we wait a year due to his behavior in class (normal for a boy his age - but probably a little hard for him to sit still, etc.). We stressed over the decision. It was financially very difficult for us to wait. We asked everyone we knew - family members who were teachers, close friends who were school administrators, other parents who had sent them early, other parents who sent them late. We read all the studies (there aren't many out there). Everyone said the same thing - you won't regret it if you wait, but you will if you send him too early. So we sacrificed and followed the trusted advice we were given.

I trust you're not enroll him in any competitions such as class president, right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A friend works at a top public HS in Virginia and says if you look at the kids on the Honor Roll and the kids on the Suspension List - guess who's on the HR (kids who are old for their grade) and who's on the SL (kids who are the youngest in the grade).

I'd rather my kid make the honor roll every other semester playing by the rules than make the honor roll every semester by cheating.

Listen, you keep calling it cheating, but refuse to acknowledge that redshirting is explicitly allowed. You may consider it "cheating", but that's according to your own, personal, invented rule (although elsewhere you've insisted that it is "natural law", I know).

Do you really think that if you keep saying it over and over that somehow other people will come to believe in your personal "rule"?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We didn't start our July bday boy until he was 6. We had him enrolled, went to K orientation and everything. His pre-K teacher really recommended that we wait a year due to his behavior in class (normal for a boy his age - but probably a little hard for him to sit still, etc.). We stressed over the decision. It was financially very difficult for us to wait. We asked everyone we knew - family members who were teachers, close friends who were school administrators, other parents who had sent them early, other parents who sent them late. We read all the studies (there aren't many out there). Everyone said the same thing - you won't regret it if you wait, but you will if you send him too early. So we sacrificed and followed the trusted advice we were given.

Don't you think that was a bit greedy? Redshirting someone before October and December is somewhat understandable(but still not justified), as those kids are roughly in the youngest quarter, but someone with a July birthday is almost in the middle. In fact, someone born on July 1st, would be slightly on the older, as July 2nd is the middle day of a leap-year and the 1st day on the later half of a non-leap-year. Even if he was born on July 31st, he would've been older than roughly 42 percent of his classmates.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We didn't start our July bday boy until he was 6. We had him enrolled, went to K orientation and everything. His pre-K teacher really recommended that we wait a year due to his behavior in class (normal for a boy his age - but probably a little hard for him to sit still, etc.). We stressed over the decision. It was financially very difficult for us to wait. We asked everyone we knew - family members who were teachers, close friends who were school administrators, other parents who had sent them early, other parents who sent them late. We read all the studies (there aren't many out there). Everyone said the same thing - you won't regret it if you wait, but you will if you send him too early. So we sacrificed and followed the trusted advice we were given.

Don't you think that was a bit greedy? Redshirting someone before October and December is somewhat understandable(but still not justified), as those kids are roughly in the youngest quarter, but someone with a July birthday is almost in the middle. In fact, someone born on July 1st, would be slightly on the older, as July 2nd is the middle day of a leap-year and the 1st day on the later half of a non-leap-year. Even if he was born on July 31st, he would've been older than roughly 42 percent of his classmates.

Where do you live? In VA, the cut off is September, so no - July is in the youngest quarter. Can you explain the use of your word greedy? It sounds like english is not your first language, I am not meaning to be rude, but what is your definition of that word?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We didn't start our July bday boy until he was 6. We had him enrolled, went to K orientation and everything. His pre-K teacher really recommended that we wait a year due to his behavior in class (normal for a boy his age - but probably a little hard for him to sit still, etc.). We stressed over the decision. It was financially very difficult for us to wait. We asked everyone we knew - family members who were teachers, close friends who were school administrators, other parents who had sent them early, other parents who sent them late. We read all the studies (there aren't many out there). Everyone said the same thing - you won't regret it if you wait, but you will if you send him too early. So we sacrificed and followed the trusted advice we were given.

I trust you're not enroll him in any competitions such as class president, right?

I can see you are not from around here. Parents don't "enroll children in competitions such as class president". That's not a thing. And being older would not be any sort of advantage for becoming class president.

[Anonymous]

We green shirted. It has proved a noon for COVID. We can take a year off it need be and will be fine..

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A friend works at a top public HS in Virginia and says if you look at the kids on the Honor Roll and the kids on the Suspension List - guess who's on the HR (kids who are old for their grade) and who's on the SL (kids who are the youngest in the grade).

I'd rather my kid make the honor roll every other semester playing by the rules than make the honor roll every semester by cheating.

This is actually funny. All this pearl-clutching about red-shirting! I think it's the super competitive parents who are all up in arms about it. If you didn't want to do it, you didn't. But other people made choices to hold their kids back for various reasons (see above). So.... now what? it's this fakey moralizing that cracks me up. I have never met a parent of a 4/5/6 year old who talked about how it wouldn't be FAIR to hold their kid back. These parents make decisions that are best for their families/kids at that moment and they typically have to do with not wanting to pay for another year of child care, or their kids already can read and would be bored in preK for another year, or whatever - NOT about what would be fair to the population of future classmates of their children, or whether it would be cheating (!!) to hold back.

This is the world you live in, non-red-shirters, so suck it up and live in it. You didn't hold back and now you all feel bad. But you can still feel morally superior, I guess. That's not going to stop individual families from doing what they think is best for their kids at any given point. Good thing there's dcum!

My kid missed the cut off so we held back. It was clearly the WRONG choice and child skipped a grade to make up for it. We aren't competitive at all. Our child isn't competitive at all. Smart kids will do well when challenged and its better to challenge them. I cannot imagine my child being a year behind in school both academically or socially. Kids act like the kids around them so the kids held back are immature because they are not with their proper aged peers. They may seem mature compared to the other kids but they aren't when you put them with the right age. Math is super slow in elementary school, even on the faster tracks so holding your kid back does a disservice to them.