We chose not to redshirt DS without considering the long-term consequences:

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting. Because of where we lived at the time, ours started kindergarten at 4 despite turning 5 in late November, and never had any problems. This sounds specific to your son, not all boys born at the same time.

Same here. My late November son is at Stuyvesant, 15 going on 25, cruising along on his own academically, wins debate awards and has a girlfriend *much to my chagrin*. Doesn't drive but he's got the subway and citibike. I haven't had to escort him anywhere since 7th grade.

I hope this is a troll, because otherwise, you've made your son very identifiable by giving away where he goes to school, as well as his cohort and his month of birth. You shouldn't be giving away that sort of information in the internet.

[Anonymous]

You can't blame everything that goes wrong in your child's life on his age relative to his peers. My son has some struggles due to having ADHD (he is not a good language arts student and never has been). However, he is a two sport athlete(track and cross country), and a strong math and science student. He is an August birthday, not redshirted. Like most other humans, he has had some successes and some relative failures in life. I don't think he would have magically been a superstar in every single thing if he had been redshirted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting. Because of where we lived at the time, ours started kindergarten at 4 despite turning 5 in late November, and never had any problems. This sounds specific to your son, not all boys born at the same time.

Same here. My late November son is at Stuyvesant, 15 going on 25, cruising along on his own academically, wins debate awards and has a girlfriend *much to my chagrin*. Doesn't drive but he's got the subway and citibike. I haven't had to escort him anywhere since 7th grade.

I hope this is a troll, because otherwise, you've made your son very identifiable by giving away where he goes to school, as well as his cohort and his month of birth. You shouldn't be giving away that sort of information in the internet.

OMG someone leaked that one of the sophomores on the Stuy debate team has a November birthday and a girlfriend. Get him in the Witness Protection Program!

[Anonymous]

Some kids do poorly when they are held back a year. Some kids do poorly when they are pushed ahead a year. You have to know your kid and take a guess.

Our assembly line school system and is a problem.

OP your kid can take a gap year for study to get that missing year back.

[Anonymous]

My personal guide: No child should start kindergarten until they are 5. Especially these days!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You must not live in the dmv because with a Nov birthday he wouldn’t have we started anywhere around here.
If you live in another state where Dec is the cut off(?) he wouldn’t have been the youngest, there would be other Oct Nov Dec birthdays too.

Only any and CT have late Dec cut off to be 5, thus you “start” as a 4 yo.

DC area and everywhere else has Sept 1 age 5 cut off.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for sharing. These are important considerations and a lot of people aren’t thinking about the possible long term consequences of always being the youngest

op is an odd one. Esol too.

Her kid is bad at math, blames not redshirting in K.

Her kid tried out for varsity orchestra and didn’t make it, blames not redshirting in K.

Her kid needs another semester of college to complete some credits, blames not redshirting in K.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You must not live in the dmv because with a Nov birthday he wouldn’t have we started anywhere around here.
If you live in another state where Dec is the cut off(?) he wouldn’t have been the youngest, there would be other Oct Nov Dec birthdays too.

when my now young 20s kids were going to kindergarten, Dec 31 was the cutoff date, in DC. I think that changed later once Universal preK was opened

[Anonymous]

NOVEMBER BIRTHDAY --- you did not need to post, Op.
Yours was an extremely odd, unusual decision

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting. Because of where we lived at the time, ours started kindergarten at 4 despite turning 5 in late November, and never had any problems. This sounds specific to your son, not all boys born at the same time.

Same here. My late November son is at Stuyvesant, 15 going on 25, cruising along on his own academically, wins debate awards and has a girlfriend *much to my chagrin*. Doesn't drive but he's got the subway and citibike. I haven't had to escort him anywhere since 7th grade.

I hope this is a troll, because otherwise, you've made your son very identifiable by giving away where he goes to school, as well as his cohort and his month of birth. You shouldn't be giving away that sort of information in the internet.

OMG someone leaked that one of the sophomores on the Stuy debate team has a November birthday and a girlfriend. Get him in the Witness Protection Program!

Mainly, they shared the name of his school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for sharing. These are important considerations and a lot of people aren’t thinking about the possible long term consequences of always being the youngest

op is an odd one. Esol too.

Her kid is bad at math, blames not redshirting in K.

Her kid tried out for varsity orchestra and didn’t make it, blames not redshirting in K.

Her kid needs another semester of college to complete some credits, blames not redshirting in K.

There are studies out there that prove that kids who are younger generally do worse in school, and even later in life.

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

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

[Anonymous]

I was one of the oldest in my class. Graduated Valedictorian. It still took 5 years for me to graduate college. It’s a big adjustment for many. You are way overthinking this and you shouldn’t fill his head with this excise either. Life is not a race to finish.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The purpose is this post is to encourage parents of kids born between October and December to think long-term when deciding whether or not to send them to kindergarten at 4. Our son has a late November birthday, and when he was 4, all that mattered to us was that he was ready for Kindergarten. We didn't ask ourselves how he would do in high school or college. Thus, we sent him at 4, and he has ultimately been emotionally damaged because of it.

Now contrary to popular opinion, he didn't feel as bad about being the last to get his driver's license as one might expect. After all, it's a hard and fast rule in this country that if you're under 16, you're now allowed a driver's license. Thus, our son knew that his classmates weren't driving before him because of anything he had done wrong; he knew that it was just the law and there was no reason for him to blame himself. However, our son experienced other problems that I'm sure were an indirect result of his relative age. However, because these problems were an indirect result, he had a much harder time not blaming himself for them.

One such example is that he didn't make it into his high school's top orchestra until his senior year, while most of his orchestra friends made it in their junior year. Concerts were torture for him his junior year, as he had to sit in the audience watching his classmates perform some of the greatest classical pieces ever written.

Another example is that he failed Pre-Calculus his junior year, and had to retake it his senior year, meaning he graduated high school with no knowledge of Calculus. Whenever he got together with his friends to study during his senior year, he had to endure the shame of pulling out his Pre-Calculus textbook while all his friends pulled out their Calculus(and in some cases, Multivariable Calculus) textbooks.

But, most recently and most importantly, is that he failed to graduate from college in 4 years. Due to his immaturity when he entered college, he wasn't able to handle as much as most of his classmates, and the result was that he ended up falling a year behind. He should've graduated this spring, but he didn't. It's going to be another year before he graduates and he is miserable about it. These past weeks, he's had to endure his friends from high school as well as his friends from his first year at the university(including his old roommates) posting pictures of themselves in their caps and gowns on facebook. The moderator of that group, the other day, made a post saying, "Congratulations college grads!" which filled our son with shame. A parent of one of his friends from high school invited them to a college graduation party at their enormous house, to which our son had to gloomily decline. Even though he's graduating next year, the people he's going to graduate with are people he barely knows, whereas most people who graduate from college together have shared the full 4 years together, from start to finish.

I've never heard a parent say they regret redshirting, but I've heard many parents say they regret not redshirting, and now I understand why.

This is a clue that OP is not serious.

I think OP is the son who is struggling and blaming his issues on his parent's decision 20 years ago.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for sharing. These are important considerations and a lot of people aren’t thinking about the possible long term consequences of always being the youngest

op is an odd one. Esol too.

Her kid is bad at math, blames not redshirting in K.

Her kid tried out for varsity orchestra and didn’t make it, blames not redshirting in K.

Her kid needs another semester of college to complete some credits, blames not redshirting in K.

There are studies out there that prove that kids who are younger generally do worse in school, and even later in life.

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

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

It's obvious that academically advanced kids should advanced to higher grades younger and others should advance later. And this should vary by subject!

But schools insist on forcing undifferentiated learning based on age based locking tiers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting. Because of where we lived at the time, ours started kindergarten at 4 despite turning 5 in late November, and never had any problems. This sounds specific to your son, not all boys born at the same time.

Same here. My late November son is at Stuyvesant, 15 going on 25, cruising along on his own academically, wins debate awards and has a girlfriend *much to my chagrin*. Doesn't drive but he's got the subway and citibike. I haven't had to escort him anywhere since 7th grade.

I hope this is a troll, because otherwise, you've made your son very identifiable by giving away where he goes to school, as well as his cohort and his month of birth. You shouldn't be giving away that sort of information in the internet.

OMG someone leaked that one of the sophomores on the Stuy debate team has a November birthday and a girlfriend. Get him in the Witness Protection Program!

Mainly, they shared the name of his school.

So someone leaked that one of the sophomores on the Stuy debate team has a November birthday and a girlfriend... and goes to Stuy?