Redshirting girls?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In the absence of providing some reason, I would be suspicious that the school just wants another year of tuition.

I wouldn't do it unless you think she's going to struggle in her age cohort.

We really don't. She's 3 so it is hard to know far ahead. She is currently in a montessori preschool for 3-6 year olds. Her teachers have no concerns. We've had two conferences and there was nothing mentioned regarding her development, focus, or maturity. I went to observe her in class and she was doing great. She didn’t notice I was there until another student told her. She enjoys school and learning. She does get bored easily. She's in gymnastics, swimming, and ice skating so we've had a chance to see how she follows instruction and all that outside of a school setting. No concerns from us, but again she does get bored easily. She's told her gymnastics instructor a couple of times that she was bored with the lesson. She is not some child prodigy though. She doesn't know all of her letters or letter sounds.
Just a 3 year old who picks up on things quickly and isn't shy. She's also small. Like 15 %tile height.

Some kids will be small no matter what you choose. Don't hold back for no good reason.

Or else what? What are you so worried is going to happen?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It depends on your future plans. If you want to stay with private schools K-12, or at least until the end of middle school, keep in mind that the private schools often recommend earlier “unofficial” cutoffs and routine holding back of kids with summer and even late spring birthdays. If you are planning on starting public elementary it’s a different story. Yes, girls are redshirted too in public but it’s less common than boys and tends to be the girls born very close to the cutoff in August/September.

We plan to stay with private through high school.

Then honestly I would do what they recommend. There’s at least one very bitter poster on here who didn’t redshirt a summer birthday kid in private, didn’t understand the concept of private school unofficial cutoffs, and the kid is now by far the youngest in their class with behavior and experiences to match. If you were going to go to public it would be different.

Not all young for the grade kids have behavioral problems. So, you are saying because one child has behavioral issues, all youngest will.

This is true. My son is one of three September birthdays in his pre-k class. He’s probably the most immature. Im redshirting him with the guidance of his prek teacher and the private K he will likely ultimately attend. He may be neurodivergent, or he may just benefit from being older versus younger and more pressured to catch up. It varies very much by child and that’s why every family should make this decision with the best interest of the particular child in mind.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We redshirted my DD. She was born 5 days before the cutoff and was socially/emotionally immature. It was a great choice for her. She has never been the oldest in the class as there are always June-July kids that are redshirted. She has always been in private and from her preschool years, I can’t think of any girl or boy with a May-August birthday who went on time. All of this to say that my DD was never an exception.
My middle (like one PP above) has an end of October birthday and she would have been fine/great being the youngest. Her best friends are a girl 3 week older than her and a girl 8 months younger. It makes no difference when they are 8+

OP here. This is helpful. When we asked why, we were told because of her birthday and [they] are having the conversation with many other families in the same position. They could not (or did not) indicate anything in particular from her interview/playdate that made them concerned. From our limited view, it seems the school (private) is making a shift to these new cutoffs. We have an older son at the school who was redshirted (same early summer birth month), but it was, more or less, an easy yes.

What about during puberty and such? That was where my mind went with being the oldest.

My daughter was born in May and we are sending her on time to a K-12 Big 3 equivalent in NYC for PreK. A lot of kids in her preschool class with January and February birthdays also got into good schools and we heard in some cases that the private school classes for next year were going to be pretty young as opposed to skewing older. We decided to apply and send her because we found that she gravitated towards older kids and was more mature than most of her peers in preschool. She asked to be potty trained and was fully potty trained at 2, is very interested in disabilities and differences, has an amazing vocabulary and loves being read to, and is very good at connecting ideas. While she is not reading or doing math, I don't think that's a compelling reason not to send her to PreK with an early May birthday. And of the schools we applied to, no one suggested that she might have been born too late to go. Also, many of the schools we applied to held play dates later for younger children and split play dates up by age specifically so that they were not confusing maturity with ability. Most admissions directors understand that some parents redshirt with the goal of giving their child an edge in the private school admissions process and in our situation, we heard from a few admissions directors that each child would be evaluated against children who were the same age in the cohort more so than against the entire cohort. And that makes sense. Intelligence falls on a bell curve - to only accept the oldest children because of maturity or because they've already reviewed material isn't a great way to select a class. You'll be missing a lot of smart younger children and you'll probably end up accepting some kids that are only in the mix because they've gone through the material multiple times.

You have to remember outside of specific areas red shirting is not that common and redshirting girls born in May and June is very uncommon. Your daughter will be significantly older (in some cases more than a year older) than her peers at school and this will be more pronounced in college where she will have male and female peers who are a year or more younger than her. She will also probably develop physically much earlier and may get unwanted attention. She may also feel that her peers are immature and want to spend more time with children in the grade above her grade, because they are her real peers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DD was born July 3. Right now she's in prek and doing well. Teacher says she is the 2nd youngest kid.

I have no plans to redshirt her. Id rather start her on time and let her stay back later in her schooling if necessary. Otherwise you have no wiggle room.

The opportunities to reclass are really hard. Typically it comes with moving to a new school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It depends on your future plans. If you want to stay with private schools K-12, or at least until the end of middle school, keep in mind that the private schools often recommend earlier “unofficial” cutoffs and routine holding back of kids with summer and even late spring birthdays. If you are planning on starting public elementary it’s a different story. Yes, girls are redshirted too in public but it’s less common than boys and tends to be the girls born very close to the cutoff in August/September.

We plan to stay with private through high school.

Then honestly I would do what they recommend. There’s at least one very bitter poster on here who didn’t redshirt a summer birthday kid in private, didn’t understand the concept of private school unofficial cutoffs, and the kid is now by far the youngest in their class with behavior and experiences to match. If you were going to go to public it would be different.

Not all young for the grade kids have behavioral problems. So, you are saying because one child has behavioral issues, all youngest will.

Private schools routinely recommend redshirting the summer birthday kids and are open to redshirting the late spring kids too, especially boys. I’m just letting OP know how it is.

If you’re planning to stay at the private through high school, I would just go with what they recommend, to fit in with the peer group.

[Anonymous]

I have a child who recently graduated from college. She went to a Baltimore private where redshirting/prefirst is common. Due to her summer birthday, it was suggested that we redshirt her, and we opted not to. The school accepted our decision. Hopefully your school will accept yours. They should - if it turns out your kid can't perform in the grade you decide to put her in, they can counsel her out. They hold the cards.

DD was always one of the youngest, if not the youngest, in her classes, throughout school. That worked well for her academically and artistically - she responds to challenge. If someone is better than her at something, she will work to match or exceed them. If she's the best, she's less inclined to push herself further. She was always in the top academic and artistic tracks and performed well. With sports it was a bit more challenging, as except for her best sport she never made the top team at the earliest possible point. However she was always able to make a team for the sports she wanted to play. In lower and early middle school she was slightly emotionally immature compared to her classmates, but that evened out by the end of middle school, and she never lacked for good friends at any grade.

She was middle of the pack hitting puberty. For girls it happens so early these days that it wasn't a given that the red shirted kids would hit it first in any case. One kids starts at 9, another at 11.

Kids are also getting drivers licenses later. DD got hers as soon as she could and was one of the very first kids in her class to do so, even being one of the youngest.

Summer camps/programs were actually one of the more challenging things. Their age cut offs tended to be before DD's birthday so whenever she was entering a new age group, I'd need to reach out to find out if they'd accept her based on her grade or if they were strict on age.

She went to a southern college on a full scholarship and did very well. I will note that many of her redshirted classmates attended more prestigious colleges, including ivy. I don't think that would have been her path even if we had redshirted her, but it may be something to consider, especially if that's one of your hopes for sending your child to private school.

Her red shirted peers are also doing just fine. I think we made the best choice for our kid, and I wouldn't change it even if I could, nor would she. But I guarantee that her classmates who were redshirted also would make the same choice again and have parents who would make the same choice again.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DD was born July 3. Right now she's in prek and doing well. Teacher says she is the 2nd youngest kid.

I have no plans to redshirt her. Id rather start her on time and let her stay back later in her schooling if necessary. Otherwise you have no wiggle room.

The opportunities to reclass are really hard. Typically it comes with moving to a new school.

While this is true, it's definitely not unheard of. It's not uncommon for summer birthdays to repeat 9th grade in boarding school or at a new school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a child who recently graduated from college. She went to a Baltimore private where redshirting/prefirst is common. Due to her summer birthday, it was suggested that we redshirt her, and we opted not to. The school accepted our decision. Hopefully your school will accept yours. They should - if it turns out your kid can't perform in the grade you decide to put her in, they can counsel her out. They hold the cards.

DD was always one of the youngest, if not the youngest, in her classes, throughout school. That worked well for her academically and artistically - she responds to challenge. If someone is better than her at something, she will work to match or exceed them. If she's the best, she's less inclined to push herself further. She was always in the top academic and artistic tracks and performed well. With sports it was a bit more challenging, as except for her best sport she never made the top team at the earliest possible point. However she was always able to make a team for the sports she wanted to play. In lower and early middle school she was slightly emotionally immature compared to her classmates, but that evened out by the end of middle school, and she never lacked for good friends at any grade.

She was middle of the pack hitting puberty. For girls it happens so early these days that it wasn't a given that the red shirted kids would hit it first in any case. One kids starts at 9, another at 11.

Kids are also getting drivers licenses later. DD got hers as soon as she could and was one of the very first kids in her class to do so, even being one of the youngest.

Summer camps/programs were actually one of the more challenging things. Their age cut offs tended to be before DD's birthday so whenever she was entering a new age group, I'd need to reach out to find out if they'd accept her based on her grade or if they were strict on age.

She went to a southern college on a full scholarship and did very well. I will note that many of her redshirted classmates attended more prestigious colleges, including ivy. I don't think that would have been her path even if we had redshirted her, but it may be something to consider, especially if that's one of your hopes for sending your child to private school.

Her red shirted peers are also doing just fine. I think we made the best choice for our kid, and I wouldn't change it even if I could, nor would she. But I guarantee that her classmates who were redshirted also would make the same choice again and have parents who would make the same choice again.

No one should send their PreK child to private school with the goal of that child getting into an Ivy. There are so many things that may make that a pipe dream including genetics/academic ability, legacy + other preferred status, composition of the class, + mental health. Plus, getting into Ivy doesn't guarantee success. My husband went to Harvard and is successful, but not crazily so ($350K salary and has a good title at a well known company) and his boss went to the University of Michigan and his peers at work went to Kenyon and Emory.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My daughter has an early sept bday so would have been 5 in k in public (9/30) cut off but was 6 in K in private (9/1 cutoff). It’s a top private here and she’s the oldest girl in her grade. She’s doing well and loves it but socially she’s always been drawn to the girls one grade ahead. It’s also frustrating bc she’s on sports teams with girls a grade ahead bc her main sport goes by age not school year. Our school was firm about the cutoff for K but after that doesn’t go by a cutoff so even said she could do K elsewhere and come the next year for 1st. I didn’t do that bc I wanted her to be a lifer and bond well w/ her grade, but my point is not all schools push it. I wouldn’t do it.

This is exactly what happened to me. I was a late July birthday and was redshirted. I played up in travel soccer and felt alienated from both the peers in my grade and the kids on my team. Because sports were so present in my life I felt like I didn't fit in anywhere with my teams and that really bothered me. Also, I was constantly getting asked if I was held back and I was definitely on the earlier side of development (I got my period when I was 11, so before 5th grade started). I always gravitated towards older kids and most of my friends in HS were in the year ahead of me. It was very similar in college - most of my friends (especially friends on sports teams) were a year or two older.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In the absence of providing some reason, I would be suspicious that the school just wants another year of tuition.

I wouldn't do it unless you think she's going to struggle in her age cohort.

We really don't. She's 3 so it is hard to know far ahead. She is currently in a montessori preschool for 3-6 year olds. Her teachers have no concerns. We've had two conferences and there was nothing mentioned regarding her development, focus, or maturity. I went to observe her in class and she was doing great. She didn’t notice I was there until another student told her. She enjoys school and learning. She does get bored easily. She's in gymnastics, swimming, and ice skating so we've had a chance to see how she follows instruction and all that outside of a school setting. No concerns from us, but again she does get bored easily. She's told her gymnastics instructor a couple of times that she was bored with the lesson. She is not some child prodigy though. She doesn't know all of her letters or letter sounds.
Just a 3 year old who picks up on things quickly and isn't shy. She's also small. Like 15 %tile height.

Some kids will be small no matter what you choose. Don't hold back for no good reason.

After reading your description of your child, I would not redshirt or at least not yet. You should wait at least another year and see how she does socially with the other kids. Is she confident? Does she stand up for herself? Etc. do not redshirt because she is short. If you/your husband are short, she will be short and it’s not a big deal (especially for girls). There is a tiny girl in my kid’s 1st grade class. She is shorter than my almost 4 year old. And yet, she is spunky and fun and confident.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a child who recently graduated from college. She went to a Baltimore private where redshirting/prefirst is common. Due to her summer birthday, it was suggested that we redshirt her, and we opted not to. The school accepted our decision. Hopefully your school will accept yours. They should - if it turns out your kid can't perform in the grade you decide to put her in, they can counsel her out. They hold the cards.

DD was always one of the youngest, if not the youngest, in her classes, throughout school. That worked well for her academically and artistically - she responds to challenge. If someone is better than her at something, she will work to match or exceed them. If she's the best, she's less inclined to push herself further. She was always in the top academic and artistic tracks and performed well. With sports it was a bit more challenging, as except for her best sport she never made the top team at the earliest possible point. However she was always able to make a team for the sports she wanted to play. In lower and early middle school she was slightly emotionally immature compared to her classmates, but that evened out by the end of middle school, and she never lacked for good friends at any grade.

She was middle of the pack hitting puberty. For girls it happens so early these days that it wasn't a given that the red shirted kids would hit it first in any case. One kids starts at 9, another at 11.

Kids are also getting drivers licenses later. DD got hers as soon as she could and was one of the very first kids in her class to do so, even being one of the youngest.

Summer camps/programs were actually one of the more challenging things. Their age cut offs tended to be before DD's birthday so whenever she was entering a new age group, I'd need to reach out to find out if they'd accept her based on her grade or if they were strict on age.

She went to a southern college on a full scholarship and did very well. I will note that many of her redshirted classmates attended more prestigious colleges, including ivy. I don't think that would have been her path even if we had redshirted her, but it may be something to consider, especially if that's one of your hopes for sending your child to private school.

Her red shirted peers are also doing just fine. I think we made the best choice for our kid, and I wouldn't change it even if I could, nor would she. But I guarantee that her classmates who were redshirted also would make the same choice again and have parents who would make the same choice again.

No one should send their PreK child to private school with the goal of that child getting into an Ivy. There are so many things that may make that a pipe dream including genetics/academic ability, legacy + other preferred status, composition of the class, + mental health. Plus, getting into Ivy doesn't guarantee success. My husband went to Harvard and is successful, but not crazily so ($350K salary and has a good title at a well known company) and his boss went to the University of Michigan and his peers at work went to Kenyon and Emory.

My takeaway wasn't "Ivy or bust" rather all the kids are doing well. It doesn't matter what you do in the end. It's pretty simple. So stop hand wringing over kids that aren't yours being redshirted. They are doing fine.

[Anonymous]

We think we will face this decision next year. DD is a late May birthday and currently in PK3 based on age / cut off. 1st semester she was really struggling socially, since winter break it has been much better and her teachers are really pleased with the progress she is making. Academically she is probably ready or very close to ready for Kindergarten now. She knows all her letters and sounds, knows a few sight words, can count and skip count to 20, and can write her name (but doesn't have her pencil grip down yet). So the plan for now is to go onto PK4 and reassess next year. Her current preschool reserves one PK4 class for older kids who either just miss the cutoff or aren't quite ready for K. If we were to wait a year she would be 6 when she started Kindergarten but wouldn't turn 7 until almost summer break so I don't know that kids would notice she was older (other than the fact that she is very tall for her age already).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It depends on the kid, OP. There seems to be such a focus on these boards WRT redshirting and gender but the fact is, some kids do fine being the youngest regardless of their gender, and some do not. My DD is one of the oldest not by choice (she's got a mid-October bday and missed the cutoff). She would have done fine being one of the youngest in the next grade, but she's a younger sibling, always been very independent and able to advocate for herself. One of her good friends is the absolute youngest in their grade (late summer bday) and is thriving too. Another friend is about a month older than my DD and had repeated K after not having a good experience as the youngest. So if you've got experts recommending that your DD hang back, there is probably a reason for it.

It's not experts, it's people from a private school who have their particular and peculiar ideas about how a school should be run, i.e., absolutely no kids who are young for their grade. Silly private schools want everyone to repeat K so they get more $$$ out of you, and so that they can artificially increase their test scores in later years, because a 10 year old in 3rd grade will score much better than an 8 year old in the same grade. LOL.

Nobody in a public school setting would recommend redshirting OP's girl given her age and lack of issues.

[Anonymous]

Don't redshirt girls! They are ahead of the boys in the first place. They get taller and more mature faster. And making them different from peers hurts them more socially. But if you are going private make her be among her peers but not the oldest one. Older does nothing better than just being older, and older does nothing for girls. ADHD? Still ADHD, but older, taller, and trying to deal with those differences on top. Put girls in according to school cutoffs. Girls will be fine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We think we will face this decision next year. DD is a late May birthday and currently in PK3 based on age / cut off. 1st semester she was really struggling socially, since winter break it has been much better and her teachers are really pleased with the progress she is making. Academically she is probably ready or very close to ready for Kindergarten now. She knows all her letters and sounds, knows a few sight words, can count and skip count to 20, and can write her name (but doesn't have her pencil grip down yet). So the plan for now is to go onto PK4 and reassess next year. Her current preschool reserves one PK4 class for older kids who either just miss the cutoff or aren't quite ready for K. If we were to wait a year she would be 6 when she started Kindergarten but wouldn't turn 7 until almost summer break so I don't know that kids would notice she was older (other than the fact that she is very tall for her age already).

If she’s already ahead at age 3 with her learning I wouldn’t hold her back another two years in pre-K before kindergarten. She sounds like she will be for sure ready for K. Maybe it’s not an issue for you, but it’s worth noting if you hold her back she will turn 19 while still in HS. Not for a whole year, but it’s quite a big gap with her peers/classmates graduating at 17 and 18.