Anonymous wrote:Public schools aren’t retaining anyone because that costs $$$. I’ve only heard of retention being offered when a kid missed a lot of a grade due to something like a serious medical issue, or at the end of the Covid school years - 2019-20 or 2020-21 - if a kid didn’t progress during the closures. My neighbor had a young for grade 1st grader in 20-21 and FCPS did offer to let her repeat 1st in person.
But let this thread be a heads up to everyone: redshirting is common, perhaps even expected, in private schools, especially for the younger for grade kids. So plan accordingly.
+1, and I would say it’s increasingly common in public school among parents who read the data on developmentally appropriate settings for 4-5. So, assume if you send a four year old they’ll be youngest by a year+, and an early five year old by a year. None of this is secret, or unavailable information to you.
Since most public schools do an age cut off around September 1st, the number of kids attending K at age 4 is very small (and even people who complain about excessive redshirting don't complain about redshirting a kid who would be 4 during the "normal" cut off). In NY (which is the only place with a midyear cut off that results in a lot of 4 year olds being eligible for K) it's common for people to redshirt those kids and no one complains about it.
The only redshirting people complain about is when people start redshirting kids who would be well over 5 when starting K but they hold them back anyway. Yes, in some privates that's common place, but the school generally encourages it and everyone has a chance to do it -- they like having an older class of K students and often they will strongly encourage redshirting summer or late spring birthdays. Some schools even offer a transitional year for young K students before taking the regular K class, so you still wind up with a fairly age-homogenous class.
But in public that's not the case, and when some parents start deciding their April or May birthday kid needs another year, it can leave other parents stuck with the consequences of those actions without warning. No one is going to get mad that a parent redshirted so their kid could start K at 5, but when you see kids starting K at 6 and a half, it becomes an issue.
Please yell at me now and tell me I'm a "crazy anti-redshirter" for agreeing this specific issue is a problem.
As someone with a young for grade kid, I think it is absolutely insane to consider this a problem whatsoever, and really makes you sound like someone who has no experience with any real problems in life.
My kid with an August birthday who I sent on time (she started K at 5 but was among the youngest in her grade) was viciously bullied by a redshirted child in 1st grade. My kid was 6 years old for the entirety of 1st grade. The bullying child turned 8 in September and was signficantly bigger and taller. Redshirting played a major role in the bullying because while this one child was the leader, there were many older kids in the classroom due to redshirting and when the bully would attack/provoke my kid, she'd cry, and then all the older kids would round on her and call her a baby and tease her for being small and young (she is average height for her age).
I had no idea how prevalent redshirting was when I enrolled my kid in K. She was academically and socially ready for a K classroom full of 5 and 6 year old children. In fact she continues to be at the top of her grade academically and she is well liked by teachers for being a good listener who follows directions and is helpful and kind in the classroom (something that apparently the extra years of preschool or staying home did not help instill in these redshirted kids who are merely bigger and older, not more mature).
I absolutely resent that my child's classroom environment has been dominated by older children who I think should have spent their 5/6 year in K learning out to function in elementary school, but instead spent it elsewhere and arrived at elementary school with their own ideas about how school should work. I resent how common bullying and relational aggression are at the school because of these older-but-less-mature kids.
Call me a crazy anti-redshirted if you want. I think redshirting sucks. Kids should start school at the same age so that they learn the same skills and are generally at the same developmental level. Kids with developmental delays can/should be held back to accommodate their delays, but it shouldn't be at the parents' discretion.
We will be moving school districts before these older kids hit puberty in 3rd grade and we have to deal with that.
As a parent who doesn't care about redshirting one way or another (and has both middle-of-age-for grade and young-for-grade kids, none old-for-grade): the bullying isn't because your kid is small. Bullies will find literally anything to gang up on kids about. One of my kids was bulled for not watching Spongebob Squarepants in a late elementary grade. Does that make sense as a thing to mock a kid over? No. But my kid was a prickly and kind of hard-to-get-to-know kid, so of course they were a target. The actual thing to make fun of was incidental to the act of piling on.
And it's possible (probable?) this older kid is lashing out because:
- they do have delays and you have no idea and the delays are social
- they feel embarassed about your kid doing as well when they are so much older.
PP here. Of course bullying can happen for a whole variety of reasons.
But at my kid's specific school, in specific classrooms where there are a large percent of redshirted kids including one that was significantly older, the bullying was closely related to having a cohort of older, bigger, unsocialized kids. My DD was not the only child targeted, but all the children who were bullied were "on time" kids who were on the younger end of normal for the grade. All the bullies were the oldest kids in class.
Also, it's not just about the age difference. It's also that these redshirted kids were not socialized into elementary school when they were young enough for it help. They arrived at K too old and less malleable. In my child's 1st grade class, those older kids RAN the classroom. This year my kid is in 2nd and due to the bullying issues last year, my kid and others who were targeted are in a classroom without any of the much older kids. The classroom is significantly better, with less conflict and fewer behavioral issues.
I don't have any issue with moderate redshirting for kids with summer birthdays. I don't think you should be allowed to redshirt a kid with a birthday during the school year unless there is a clear reason why delaying kindergarten will help. And I actually think a lot of developmental delays might be made worse by redshirting unless you can show the kids are going to get services to improve the situation. Perhaps some of these delays would be best addressed by having the kid in a classroom with other kids and receiving services through the school.
I honestly do not understand why you continue to keep your child in a school where your DC experiences significant bullying and you believe the classroom activities and level are so wildly inappropriate. It seems weird to me.
You seem very ignorant of the reality that most parents experience. Most parents can’t just switch schools out of the blue.
Right. Which leads parents to make careful decisions about when their kids start school. For example— not sending a kid who may struggle to kindergarten too early.
Or, send our kid and get them the help they need so they don’t struggle.
What "help" do you recommend?
IEP’s. Soooo many kids have them. Professional help often paid for by the school district. I’ve see kids get services for adhd, dyslexia, occupational therapy… I think many people like you overestimate your ability and underestimate the ability of professionals with undergrad and grad degrees in education and therapy.
IEPs are for children with disabilities. You have to qualify for them. You can't just "get an IEP."
- Professional with an undergrad and grad degree in education and psychology.
Then what is the issue you feel that you can’t send a 5 to Kinder? I’m telling you, you’re making it something it’s not. It’s not that hard. Trust me.
Some kids just need a bit more time. That’s the help. It’s so weird you can’t understand that. Professionals and parents agree. Busy bodies with faux concerns about other people’s children don’t get an opinion.
No, they don’t. They need to be in school with age appropriate peers
Could you please share the data you’re sourcing this from? That age-identical classrooms are critical to children’s success? Moreso than the developmental appropriateness of the environment? Because candidly I think you’re making this up as you go along.
My four year old and her seven year old cousin are best friends. It’s amazing to see how she brings out leadership and compassion in her older cousin and how her cousin brings out courage and creativity in her.
The discussion is about peers and a child held back isn't necessarily going to be a leader just because they are older. It harms everyone and when you get to HS, do you want your 14 year old in classes with 19-20 year olds as that is whats happening.
You’re right, a child who is redshirted isn’t necessarily going to be a leader and— parents who are redshirting aren’t always doing it for that reason anyway. So don’t worry about the redshirted kids.
You seem to be suggesting a freshman in high school could be taking classes with a senior— while the 20 y/o would be shockingly rare, it’s not more worrying to have a 19 than an 18 y/o senior. What is your panic about here?
It’s it rare at all. Electives, gym, health ed and math are always mixed. My 13-14 year old freshman had three classes with seniors freshman year. An elective that was auditioned in, pe and math.
Ok so please explain your anxiety around a 14 year old being in a class with a 19 year old that doesn’t exist for an 18 year old?
.
19 year olds in high school isn’t redshirting. Those are kids who failed a year, had transfer issues, are foreign students who need more time for the language, were homeschooled or have GED and need the credit etc etc. It happens rarely, but that won’t be solved by banning redshirting. Some areas have specific adult only high schools for ages 18 plus - maybe advocate for that if it’s an issue in your area.
These kids were held back. Except the fall kids who missed the deadline. Let’s call it what it is. It’s a huge issue when these adults are with young teens.
Nonsense. I’m around a ton of teens. This is 100% a non-issue.
The hyperbole from the anti-redshirt posters is so ridiculous. It’s like none of you have contact with any actual teens.
The redshirted kids at my child's middle school who all started puberty a grade earlier than they would have had they started on time absolutely changed the culture if the school and the experience for the non-redshirted kids, for the worse.
I cannot fathom why anyone who has seen a kid through puberty would be like "oh yeah, it would be great to have an age spread of 18 months in 6th and 7th grade. Super cool." It's already a hard time and it's already harder for the kids who start puberty early or late, but now you want to stretch it out even more? Whyyyyyyyyy? It makes no sense.
I am fine if K is for 6/7 year olds. Just make it official and start school later. But this unofficial system where K is for 4-7 yr olds, and people are supposed to case the joint in advance to guess where in that age spread to send their kid? That's dumb. Just pick an age and have everyone send their kid when they hit that age.
Typical onset of puberty for girls is between 8 and 13 years old. For boys, it’s between 9-14 years old. That’s already a 5-year spread within the realm of completely normal.
You need to calm down.
1) Onset is not not equally distributed along those ranges.
2) Redshirting of non-summer birthdays makes the range even wider, which is a substantial issue. It forces families of on time kids to deal with puberty issues a year earlier than even the earliest year they would otherwise deal with it.
3) I feel very calm, thank you -- my kids are through this. Parents choosing to redshirt have not. They are making a choice based on a perceived disadvantage in kindergarten, not understanding the negative impact 4-6 years later. Both for their kid and dir peers.
There is absolutely no evidence for the bolded statement. You don’t understand statistics.
Anonymous wrote:Public schools aren’t retaining anyone because that costs $$$. I’ve only heard of retention being offered when a kid missed a lot of a grade due to something like a serious medical issue, or at the end of the Covid school years - 2019-20 or 2020-21 - if a kid didn’t progress during the closures. My neighbor had a young for grade 1st grader in 20-21 and FCPS did offer to let her repeat 1st in person.
But let this thread be a heads up to everyone: redshirting is common, perhaps even expected, in private schools, especially for the younger for grade kids. So plan accordingly.
+1, and I would say it’s increasingly common in public school among parents who read the data on developmentally appropriate settings for 4-5. So, assume if you send a four year old they’ll be youngest by a year+, and an early five year old by a year. None of this is secret, or unavailable information to you.
Since most public schools do an age cut off around September 1st, the number of kids attending K at age 4 is very small (and even people who complain about excessive redshirting don't complain about redshirting a kid who would be 4 during the "normal" cut off). In NY (which is the only place with a midyear cut off that results in a lot of 4 year olds being eligible for K) it's common for people to redshirt those kids and no one complains about it.
The only redshirting people complain about is when people start redshirting kids who would be well over 5 when starting K but they hold them back anyway. Yes, in some privates that's common place, but the school generally encourages it and everyone has a chance to do it -- they like having an older class of K students and often they will strongly encourage redshirting summer or late spring birthdays. Some schools even offer a transitional year for young K students before taking the regular K class, so you still wind up with a fairly age-homogenous class.
But in public that's not the case, and when some parents start deciding their April or May birthday kid needs another year, it can leave other parents stuck with the consequences of those actions without warning. No one is going to get mad that a parent redshirted so their kid could start K at 5, but when you see kids starting K at 6 and a half, it becomes an issue.
Please yell at me now and tell me I'm a "crazy anti-redshirter" for agreeing this specific issue is a problem.
As someone with a young for grade kid, I think it is absolutely insane to consider this a problem whatsoever, and really makes you sound like someone who has no experience with any real problems in life.
My kid with an August birthday who I sent on time (she started K at 5 but was among the youngest in her grade) was viciously bullied by a redshirted child in 1st grade. My kid was 6 years old for the entirety of 1st grade. The bullying child turned 8 in September and was signficantly bigger and taller. Redshirting played a major role in the bullying because while this one child was the leader, there were many older kids in the classroom due to redshirting and when the bully would attack/provoke my kid, she'd cry, and then all the older kids would round on her and call her a baby and tease her for being small and young (she is average height for her age).
I had no idea how prevalent redshirting was when I enrolled my kid in K. She was academically and socially ready for a K classroom full of 5 and 6 year old children. In fact she continues to be at the top of her grade academically and she is well liked by teachers for being a good listener who follows directions and is helpful and kind in the classroom (something that apparently the extra years of preschool or staying home did not help instill in these redshirted kids who are merely bigger and older, not more mature).
I absolutely resent that my child's classroom environment has been dominated by older children who I think should have spent their 5/6 year in K learning out to function in elementary school, but instead spent it elsewhere and arrived at elementary school with their own ideas about how school should work. I resent how common bullying and relational aggression are at the school because of these older-but-less-mature kids.
Call me a crazy anti-redshirted if you want. I think redshirting sucks. Kids should start school at the same age so that they learn the same skills and are generally at the same developmental level. Kids with developmental delays can/should be held back to accommodate their delays, but it shouldn't be at the parents' discretion.
We will be moving school districts before these older kids hit puberty in 3rd grade and we have to deal with that.
As a parent who doesn't care about redshirting one way or another (and has both middle-of-age-for grade and young-for-grade kids, none old-for-grade): the bullying isn't because your kid is small. Bullies will find literally anything to gang up on kids about. One of my kids was bulled for not watching Spongebob Squarepants in a late elementary grade. Does that make sense as a thing to mock a kid over? No. But my kid was a prickly and kind of hard-to-get-to-know kid, so of course they were a target. The actual thing to make fun of was incidental to the act of piling on.
And it's possible (probable?) this older kid is lashing out because:
- they do have delays and you have no idea and the delays are social
- they feel embarassed about your kid doing as well when they are so much older.
PP here. Of course bullying can happen for a whole variety of reasons.
But at my kid's specific school, in specific classrooms where there are a large percent of redshirted kids including one that was significantly older, the bullying was closely related to having a cohort of older, bigger, unsocialized kids. My DD was not the only child targeted, but all the children who were bullied were "on time" kids who were on the younger end of normal for the grade. All the bullies were the oldest kids in class.
Also, it's not just about the age difference. It's also that these redshirted kids were not socialized into elementary school when they were young enough for it help. They arrived at K too old and less malleable. In my child's 1st grade class, those older kids RAN the classroom. This year my kid is in 2nd and due to the bullying issues last year, my kid and others who were targeted are in a classroom without any of the much older kids. The classroom is significantly better, with less conflict and fewer behavioral issues.
I don't have any issue with moderate redshirting for kids with summer birthdays. I don't think you should be allowed to redshirt a kid with a birthday during the school year unless there is a clear reason why delaying kindergarten will help. And I actually think a lot of developmental delays might be made worse by redshirting unless you can show the kids are going to get services to improve the situation. Perhaps some of these delays would be best addressed by having the kid in a classroom with other kids and receiving services through the school.
I honestly do not understand why you continue to keep your child in a school where your DC experiences significant bullying and you believe the classroom activities and level are so wildly inappropriate. It seems weird to me.
You seem very ignorant of the reality that most parents experience. Most parents can’t just switch schools out of the blue.
Right. Which leads parents to make careful decisions about when their kids start school. For example— not sending a kid who may struggle to kindergarten too early.
Unless they don’t know about how prevalent it is because the schools don’t say anything and the other moms apparently don’t volunteer the info. Nice.
What information do you feel is lacking? If you ask your local elementary school they will likely tell you the average kindergarten age. You presumably know your child’s age. Do some research into peer reviewed studies about optimal environments for the child’s age you have and see whether your local or chosen kindergarten matches with that. I’m truly confused what you think someone needs to tell you to make this choice?
We arrived back in the US after mostly raising kids on military bases abroad and we arrived in August. Honestly I didn’t even know red shirting was a thing until I saw some really big kindergarten kids on my son’s first day of school. So no I did t put my five year old on a waitlist for preschool, had never heard of “junior kindergarten” at preschool, etc.
That’s really not an excuse for not researching, talking to others, asking around.
Sweetheart, those are all excuses for "I want my child to have an advantage over yours" and we all know it.
I’m a DP, and leaving aside your tone, it’s not an advantage over your student. Your student has exactly the same right to delay a year as anyone else. Nothing is being taken away from you or your child you just made a different choice. Lose your victim mentality around this.
That PP is just mad they didn't know what they were doing.
I really hate the "savvy parents know to redshirt, it's your fault if you don't" argument, because we're talking about kids.
Of course there are going to be parents who, fir whatever reason, don't know the *unspoken* customs if redshirting in a district, and their kid will wind up at a disadvantage. You can criticize the parents for this but it's the kid who suffers.
Which is why there should be NO UNSPOKEN REDSHIRTING CUSTOMS. This should not be gameable. And relishing the idea that some kids struggle in school because their parents naively thought the published age cutoffs were when you are actually supposed to send your kids, and not just a vague suggestion and all the "smart" parents postpone K a year, is a weird flex.
Have a cut off. Enforce a cut off. Make sure the school work makes sense for kids who meet the cut off. This isn't hard. These are kids. We should all want them ALL to succeed.
Apparently it is hard. The current cutoff sends 4 year olds into the classroom for hours sitting on end, doing age inappropriate activities, with barely any time outdoors. Everyone (even on this thread) agrees that isn’t right for a four year old, and yet that’s The Cutoff. So, apparently, it’s hard.
To your other point, the same published guidelines that you assume everyone does have access to also (at least in FCPS) explains what to do if you don’t want to start your kid. I don’t think this is about whisper networks and secret handshakes. What I think is “savvy” is the parents who have a data-informed sense for what their kids should be doing at 4-5-6 and yes, we should really help parents understand how bad sitting still indoors, doing screen-based learning and endless worksheets really is for early childhood.
So you make the cut off 5. Easy. Everyone agrees 4 is too young for K. So kids should enroll in K in the fall after their 5th birthday. Done.
Or, if you think 5 is too young, then make it 6.
If you don't think kids should be sitting indoors for hours on end, then advocate for that not to be how K works. Is it okay in 1st? No. So sounds like we need to talk to schools about crap curriculums that aren't appropriate for any early elementary kids.
Also your argument that we should just make sure that every parent is "data informed" before making the choice to redshirt ignores reality, which is that some parents are simply never going to get there. Some parents lack the cognitive ability or the language skills or the maturity to do that. Some parents are immigrants who don't speak the language. Some parents just went through a divorce or a death in the family and don't have the bandwidth. Some parents are poor and no matter what the data says, they are going to send their kid to K when the school says they can because they can't afford another year of daycare.
Your way means that the kids of all those parents are just SOL. Nice.
The thing is, “I” can’t make it five. Or six.
I can’t make them let kids under six spend at least half of every day outside.
The only thing I can do is keep my kids in environments that align with their age as best as possible within the published regulations, and vote for people who support later starts in kindergarten and more developmentally appropriate.
Yes. “My way” only helps my kid in the immediate case. But I don’t think there are any benefits to pretending I don’t know what the data says about where my four year old belongs.
Anonymous wrote:Public schools aren’t retaining anyone because that costs $$$. I’ve only heard of retention being offered when a kid missed a lot of a grade due to something like a serious medical issue, or at the end of the Covid school years - 2019-20 or 2020-21 - if a kid didn’t progress during the closures. My neighbor had a young for grade 1st grader in 20-21 and FCPS did offer to let her repeat 1st in person.
But let this thread be a heads up to everyone: redshirting is common, perhaps even expected, in private schools, especially for the younger for grade kids. So plan accordingly.
+1, and I would say it’s increasingly common in public school among parents who read the data on developmentally appropriate settings for 4-5. So, assume if you send a four year old they’ll be youngest by a year+, and an early five year old by a year. None of this is secret, or unavailable information to you.
Since most public schools do an age cut off around September 1st, the number of kids attending K at age 4 is very small (and even people who complain about excessive redshirting don't complain about redshirting a kid who would be 4 during the "normal" cut off). In NY (which is the only place with a midyear cut off that results in a lot of 4 year olds being eligible for K) it's common for people to redshirt those kids and no one complains about it.
The only redshirting people complain about is when people start redshirting kids who would be well over 5 when starting K but they hold them back anyway. Yes, in some privates that's common place, but the school generally encourages it and everyone has a chance to do it -- they like having an older class of K students and often they will strongly encourage redshirting summer or late spring birthdays. Some schools even offer a transitional year for young K students before taking the regular K class, so you still wind up with a fairly age-homogenous class.
But in public that's not the case, and when some parents start deciding their April or May birthday kid needs another year, it can leave other parents stuck with the consequences of those actions without warning. No one is going to get mad that a parent redshirted so their kid could start K at 5, but when you see kids starting K at 6 and a half, it becomes an issue.
Please yell at me now and tell me I'm a "crazy anti-redshirter" for agreeing this specific issue is a problem.
As someone with a young for grade kid, I think it is absolutely insane to consider this a problem whatsoever, and really makes you sound like someone who has no experience with any real problems in life.
My kid with an August birthday who I sent on time (she started K at 5 but was among the youngest in her grade) was viciously bullied by a redshirted child in 1st grade. My kid was 6 years old for the entirety of 1st grade. The bullying child turned 8 in September and was signficantly bigger and taller. Redshirting played a major role in the bullying because while this one child was the leader, there were many older kids in the classroom due to redshirting and when the bully would attack/provoke my kid, she'd cry, and then all the older kids would round on her and call her a baby and tease her for being small and young (she is average height for her age).
I had no idea how prevalent redshirting was when I enrolled my kid in K. She was academically and socially ready for a K classroom full of 5 and 6 year old children. In fact she continues to be at the top of her grade academically and she is well liked by teachers for being a good listener who follows directions and is helpful and kind in the classroom (something that apparently the extra years of preschool or staying home did not help instill in these redshirted kids who are merely bigger and older, not more mature).
I absolutely resent that my child's classroom environment has been dominated by older children who I think should have spent their 5/6 year in K learning out to function in elementary school, but instead spent it elsewhere and arrived at elementary school with their own ideas about how school should work. I resent how common bullying and relational aggression are at the school because of these older-but-less-mature kids.
Call me a crazy anti-redshirted if you want. I think redshirting sucks. Kids should start school at the same age so that they learn the same skills and are generally at the same developmental level. Kids with developmental delays can/should be held back to accommodate their delays, but it shouldn't be at the parents' discretion.
We will be moving school districts before these older kids hit puberty in 3rd grade and we have to deal with that.
As a parent who doesn't care about redshirting one way or another (and has both middle-of-age-for grade and young-for-grade kids, none old-for-grade): the bullying isn't because your kid is small. Bullies will find literally anything to gang up on kids about. One of my kids was bulled for not watching Spongebob Squarepants in a late elementary grade. Does that make sense as a thing to mock a kid over? No. But my kid was a prickly and kind of hard-to-get-to-know kid, so of course they were a target. The actual thing to make fun of was incidental to the act of piling on.
And it's possible (probable?) this older kid is lashing out because:
- they do have delays and you have no idea and the delays are social
- they feel embarassed about your kid doing as well when they are so much older.
PP here. Of course bullying can happen for a whole variety of reasons.
But at my kid's specific school, in specific classrooms where there are a large percent of redshirted kids including one that was significantly older, the bullying was closely related to having a cohort of older, bigger, unsocialized kids. My DD was not the only child targeted, but all the children who were bullied were "on time" kids who were on the younger end of normal for the grade. All the bullies were the oldest kids in class.
Also, it's not just about the age difference. It's also that these redshirted kids were not socialized into elementary school when they were young enough for it help. They arrived at K too old and less malleable. In my child's 1st grade class, those older kids RAN the classroom. This year my kid is in 2nd and due to the bullying issues last year, my kid and others who were targeted are in a classroom without any of the much older kids. The classroom is significantly better, with less conflict and fewer behavioral issues.
I don't have any issue with moderate redshirting for kids with summer birthdays. I don't think you should be allowed to redshirt a kid with a birthday during the school year unless there is a clear reason why delaying kindergarten will help. And I actually think a lot of developmental delays might be made worse by redshirting unless you can show the kids are going to get services to improve the situation. Perhaps some of these delays would be best addressed by having the kid in a classroom with other kids and receiving services through the school.
I honestly do not understand why you continue to keep your child in a school where your DC experiences significant bullying and you believe the classroom activities and level are so wildly inappropriate. It seems weird to me.
You seem very ignorant of the reality that most parents experience. Most parents can’t just switch schools out of the blue.
Right. Which leads parents to make careful decisions about when their kids start school. For example— not sending a kid who may struggle to kindergarten too early.
Unless they don’t know about how prevalent it is because the schools don’t say anything and the other moms apparently don’t volunteer the info. Nice.
What information do you feel is lacking? If you ask your local elementary school they will likely tell you the average kindergarten age. You presumably know your child’s age. Do some research into peer reviewed studies about optimal environments for the child’s age you have and see whether your local or chosen kindergarten matches with that. I’m truly confused what you think someone needs to tell you to make this choice?
We arrived back in the US after mostly raising kids on military bases abroad and we arrived in August. Honestly I didn’t even know red shirting was a thing until I saw some really big kindergarten kids on my son’s first day of school. So no I did t put my five year old on a waitlist for preschool, had never heard of “junior kindergarten” at preschool, etc.
That’s really not an excuse for not researching, talking to others, asking around.
Sweetheart, those are all excuses for "I want my child to have an advantage over yours" and we all know it.
I’m a DP, and leaving aside your tone, it’s not an advantage over your student. Your student has exactly the same right to delay a year as anyone else. Nothing is being taken away from you or your child you just made a different choice. Lose your victim mentality around this.
That PP is just mad they didn't know what they were doing.
I really hate the "savvy parents know to redshirt, it's your fault if you don't" argument, because we're talking about kids.
Of course there are going to be parents who, fir whatever reason, don't know the *unspoken* customs if redshirting in a district, and their kid will wind up at a disadvantage. You can criticize the parents for this but it's the kid who suffers.
Which is why there should be NO UNSPOKEN REDSHIRTING CUSTOMS. This should not be gameable. And relishing the idea that some kids struggle in school because their parents naively thought the published age cutoffs were when you are actually supposed to send your kids, and not just a vague suggestion and all the "smart" parents postpone K a year, is a weird flex.
Have a cut off. Enforce a cut off. Make sure the school work makes sense for kids who meet the cut off. This isn't hard. These are kids. We should all want them ALL to succeed.
Apparently it is hard. The current cutoff sends 4 year olds into the classroom for hours sitting on end, doing age inappropriate activities, with barely any time outdoors. Everyone (even on this thread) agrees that isn’t right for a four year old, and yet that’s The Cutoff. So, apparently, it’s hard.
To your other point, the same published guidelines that you assume everyone does have access to also (at least in FCPS) explains what to do if you don’t want to start your kid. I don’t think this is about whisper networks and secret handshakes. What I think is “savvy” is the parents who have a data-informed sense for what their kids should be doing at 4-5-6 and yes, we should really help parents understand how bad sitting still indoors, doing screen-based learning and endless worksheets really is for early childhood.
So you make the cut off 5. Easy. Everyone agrees 4 is too young for K. So kids should enroll in K in the fall after their 5th birthday. Done.
Or, if you think 5 is too young, then make it 6.
If you don't think kids should be sitting indoors for hours on end, then advocate for that not to be how K works. Is it okay in 1st? No. So sounds like we need to talk to schools about crap curriculums that aren't appropriate for any early elementary kids.
Also your argument that we should just make sure that every parent is "data informed" before making the choice to redshirt ignores reality, which is that some parents are simply never going to get there. Some parents lack the cognitive ability or the language skills or the maturity to do that. Some parents are immigrants who don't speak the language. Some parents just went through a divorce or a death in the family and don't have the bandwidth. Some parents are poor and no matter what the data says, they are going to send their kid to K when the school says they can because they can't afford another year of daycare.
Your way means that the kids of all those parents are just SOL. Nice.
The thing is, “I” can’t make it five. Or six.
I can’t make them let kids under six spend at least half of every day outside.
The only thing I can do is keep my kids in environments that align with their age as best as possible within the published regulations, and vote for people who support later starts in kindergarten and more developmentally appropriate.
Yes. “My way” only helps my kid in the immediate case. But I don’t think there are any benefits to pretending I don’t know what the data says about where my four year old belongs.
why not just homeschool a few years until you feel they are ready then put them in the grade they are supposed to be in? this seems like the best solution. the early years is really not a lot of academics to catch up on.
Anonymous wrote:Public schools aren’t retaining anyone because that costs $$$. I’ve only heard of retention being offered when a kid missed a lot of a grade due to something like a serious medical issue, or at the end of the Covid school years - 2019-20 or 2020-21 - if a kid didn’t progress during the closures. My neighbor had a young for grade 1st grader in 20-21 and FCPS did offer to let her repeat 1st in person.
But let this thread be a heads up to everyone: redshirting is common, perhaps even expected, in private schools, especially for the younger for grade kids. So plan accordingly.
+1, and I would say it’s increasingly common in public school among parents who read the data on developmentally appropriate settings for 4-5. So, assume if you send a four year old they’ll be youngest by a year+, and an early five year old by a year. None of this is secret, or unavailable information to you.
Since most public schools do an age cut off around September 1st, the number of kids attending K at age 4 is very small (and even people who complain about excessive redshirting don't complain about redshirting a kid who would be 4 during the "normal" cut off). In NY (which is the only place with a midyear cut off that results in a lot of 4 year olds being eligible for K) it's common for people to redshirt those kids and no one complains about it.
The only redshirting people complain about is when people start redshirting kids who would be well over 5 when starting K but they hold them back anyway. Yes, in some privates that's common place, but the school generally encourages it and everyone has a chance to do it -- they like having an older class of K students and often they will strongly encourage redshirting summer or late spring birthdays. Some schools even offer a transitional year for young K students before taking the regular K class, so you still wind up with a fairly age-homogenous class.
But in public that's not the case, and when some parents start deciding their April or May birthday kid needs another year, it can leave other parents stuck with the consequences of those actions without warning. No one is going to get mad that a parent redshirted so their kid could start K at 5, but when you see kids starting K at 6 and a half, it becomes an issue.
Please yell at me now and tell me I'm a "crazy anti-redshirter" for agreeing this specific issue is a problem.
As someone with a young for grade kid, I think it is absolutely insane to consider this a problem whatsoever, and really makes you sound like someone who has no experience with any real problems in life.
My kid with an August birthday who I sent on time (she started K at 5 but was among the youngest in her grade) was viciously bullied by a redshirted child in 1st grade. My kid was 6 years old for the entirety of 1st grade. The bullying child turned 8 in September and was signficantly bigger and taller. Redshirting played a major role in the bullying because while this one child was the leader, there were many older kids in the classroom due to redshirting and when the bully would attack/provoke my kid, she'd cry, and then all the older kids would round on her and call her a baby and tease her for being small and young (she is average height for her age).
I had no idea how prevalent redshirting was when I enrolled my kid in K. She was academically and socially ready for a K classroom full of 5 and 6 year old children. In fact she continues to be at the top of her grade academically and she is well liked by teachers for being a good listener who follows directions and is helpful and kind in the classroom (something that apparently the extra years of preschool or staying home did not help instill in these redshirted kids who are merely bigger and older, not more mature).
I absolutely resent that my child's classroom environment has been dominated by older children who I think should have spent their 5/6 year in K learning out to function in elementary school, but instead spent it elsewhere and arrived at elementary school with their own ideas about how school should work. I resent how common bullying and relational aggression are at the school because of these older-but-less-mature kids.
Call me a crazy anti-redshirted if you want. I think redshirting sucks. Kids should start school at the same age so that they learn the same skills and are generally at the same developmental level. Kids with developmental delays can/should be held back to accommodate their delays, but it shouldn't be at the parents' discretion.
We will be moving school districts before these older kids hit puberty in 3rd grade and we have to deal with that.
As a parent who doesn't care about redshirting one way or another (and has both middle-of-age-for grade and young-for-grade kids, none old-for-grade): the bullying isn't because your kid is small. Bullies will find literally anything to gang up on kids about. One of my kids was bulled for not watching Spongebob Squarepants in a late elementary grade. Does that make sense as a thing to mock a kid over? No. But my kid was a prickly and kind of hard-to-get-to-know kid, so of course they were a target. The actual thing to make fun of was incidental to the act of piling on.
And it's possible (probable?) this older kid is lashing out because:
- they do have delays and you have no idea and the delays are social
- they feel embarassed about your kid doing as well when they are so much older.
PP here. Of course bullying can happen for a whole variety of reasons.
But at my kid's specific school, in specific classrooms where there are a large percent of redshirted kids including one that was significantly older, the bullying was closely related to having a cohort of older, bigger, unsocialized kids. My DD was not the only child targeted, but all the children who were bullied were "on time" kids who were on the younger end of normal for the grade. All the bullies were the oldest kids in class.
Also, it's not just about the age difference. It's also that these redshirted kids were not socialized into elementary school when they were young enough for it help. They arrived at K too old and less malleable. In my child's 1st grade class, those older kids RAN the classroom. This year my kid is in 2nd and due to the bullying issues last year, my kid and others who were targeted are in a classroom without any of the much older kids. The classroom is significantly better, with less conflict and fewer behavioral issues.
I don't have any issue with moderate redshirting for kids with summer birthdays. I don't think you should be allowed to redshirt a kid with a birthday during the school year unless there is a clear reason why delaying kindergarten will help. And I actually think a lot of developmental delays might be made worse by redshirting unless you can show the kids are going to get services to improve the situation. Perhaps some of these delays would be best addressed by having the kid in a classroom with other kids and receiving services through the school.
I honestly do not understand why you continue to keep your child in a school where your DC experiences significant bullying and you believe the classroom activities and level are so wildly inappropriate. It seems weird to me.
You seem very ignorant of the reality that most parents experience. Most parents can’t just switch schools out of the blue.
Right. Which leads parents to make careful decisions about when their kids start school. For example— not sending a kid who may struggle to kindergarten too early.
Unless they don’t know about how prevalent it is because the schools don’t say anything and the other moms apparently don’t volunteer the info. Nice.
What information do you feel is lacking? If you ask your local elementary school they will likely tell you the average kindergarten age. You presumably know your child’s age. Do some research into peer reviewed studies about optimal environments for the child’s age you have and see whether your local or chosen kindergarten matches with that. I’m truly confused what you think someone needs to tell you to make this choice?
We arrived back in the US after mostly raising kids on military bases abroad and we arrived in August. Honestly I didn’t even know red shirting was a thing until I saw some really big kindergarten kids on my son’s first day of school. So no I did t put my five year old on a waitlist for preschool, had never heard of “junior kindergarten” at preschool, etc.
That’s really not an excuse for not researching, talking to others, asking around.
Sweetheart, those are all excuses for "I want my child to have an advantage over yours" and we all know it.
I’m a DP, and leaving aside your tone, it’s not an advantage over your student. Your student has exactly the same right to delay a year as anyone else. Nothing is being taken away from you or your child you just made a different choice. Lose your victim mentality around this.
That PP is just mad they didn't know what they were doing.
I really hate the "savvy parents know to redshirt, it's your fault if you don't" argument, because we're talking about kids.
Of course there are going to be parents who, fir whatever reason, don't know the *unspoken* customs if redshirting in a district, and their kid will wind up at a disadvantage. You can criticize the parents for this but it's the kid who suffers.
Which is why there should be NO UNSPOKEN REDSHIRTING CUSTOMS. This should not be gameable. And relishing the idea that some kids struggle in school because their parents naively thought the published age cutoffs were when you are actually supposed to send your kids, and not just a vague suggestion and all the "smart" parents postpone K a year, is a weird flex.
Have a cut off. Enforce a cut off. Make sure the school work makes sense for kids who meet the cut off. This isn't hard. These are kids. We should all want them ALL to succeed.
Apparently it is hard. The current cutoff sends 4 year olds into the classroom for hours sitting on end, doing age inappropriate activities, with barely any time outdoors. Everyone (even on this thread) agrees that isn’t right for a four year old, and yet that’s The Cutoff. So, apparently, it’s hard.
To your other point, the same published guidelines that you assume everyone does have access to also (at least in FCPS) explains what to do if you don’t want to start your kid. I don’t think this is about whisper networks and secret handshakes. What I think is “savvy” is the parents who have a data-informed sense for what their kids should be doing at 4-5-6 and yes, we should really help parents understand how bad sitting still indoors, doing screen-based learning and endless worksheets really is for early childhood.
So you make the cut off 5. Easy. Everyone agrees 4 is too young for K. So kids should enroll in K in the fall after their 5th birthday. Done.
Or, if you think 5 is too young, then make it 6.
If you don't think kids should be sitting indoors for hours on end, then advocate for that not to be how K works. Is it okay in 1st? No. So sounds like we need to talk to schools about crap curriculums that aren't appropriate for any early elementary kids.
Also your argument that we should just make sure that every parent is "data informed" before making the choice to redshirt ignores reality, which is that some parents are simply never going to get there. Some parents lack the cognitive ability or the language skills or the maturity to do that. Some parents are immigrants who don't speak the language. Some parents just went through a divorce or a death in the family and don't have the bandwidth. Some parents are poor and no matter what the data says, they are going to send their kid to K when the school says they can because they can't afford another year of daycare.
Your way means that the kids of all those parents are just SOL. Nice.
The thing is, “I” can’t make it five. Or six.
I can’t make them let kids under six spend at least half of every day outside.
The only thing I can do is keep my kids in environments that align with their age as best as possible within the published regulations, and vote for people who support later starts in kindergarten and more developmentally appropriate.
Yes. “My way” only helps my kid in the immediate case. But I don’t think there are any benefits to pretending I don’t know what the data says about where my four year old belongs.
why not just homeschool a few years until you feel they are ready then put them in the grade they are supposed to be in? this seems like the best solution. the early years is really not a lot of academics to catch up on.
Because forest-based PreK five/Jr Kindergarten exists in my area which is a great place for her to be (and maintain her second language) and the rules allow her to enroll in Kindergarten a year late.
Why would I choose another suboptimal option? What’s the rush to graduate at 17 instead of 18? Show me the data on why that’s the “best” solution.
Anonymous wrote:Public schools aren’t retaining anyone because that costs $$$. I’ve only heard of retention being offered when a kid missed a lot of a grade due to something like a serious medical issue, or at the end of the Covid school years - 2019-20 or 2020-21 - if a kid didn’t progress during the closures. My neighbor had a young for grade 1st grader in 20-21 and FCPS did offer to let her repeat 1st in person.
But let this thread be a heads up to everyone: redshirting is common, perhaps even expected, in private schools, especially for the younger for grade kids. So plan accordingly.
+1, and I would say it’s increasingly common in public school among parents who read the data on developmentally appropriate settings for 4-5. So, assume if you send a four year old they’ll be youngest by a year+, and an early five year old by a year. None of this is secret, or unavailable information to you.
Since most public schools do an age cut off around September 1st, the number of kids attending K at age 4 is very small (and even people who complain about excessive redshirting don't complain about redshirting a kid who would be 4 during the "normal" cut off). In NY (which is the only place with a midyear cut off that results in a lot of 4 year olds being eligible for K) it's common for people to redshirt those kids and no one complains about it.
The only redshirting people complain about is when people start redshirting kids who would be well over 5 when starting K but they hold them back anyway. Yes, in some privates that's common place, but the school generally encourages it and everyone has a chance to do it -- they like having an older class of K students and often they will strongly encourage redshirting summer or late spring birthdays. Some schools even offer a transitional year for young K students before taking the regular K class, so you still wind up with a fairly age-homogenous class.
But in public that's not the case, and when some parents start deciding their April or May birthday kid needs another year, it can leave other parents stuck with the consequences of those actions without warning. No one is going to get mad that a parent redshirted so their kid could start K at 5, but when you see kids starting K at 6 and a half, it becomes an issue.
Please yell at me now and tell me I'm a "crazy anti-redshirter" for agreeing this specific issue is a problem.
As someone with a young for grade kid, I think it is absolutely insane to consider this a problem whatsoever, and really makes you sound like someone who has no experience with any real problems in life.
My kid with an August birthday who I sent on time (she started K at 5 but was among the youngest in her grade) was viciously bullied by a redshirted child in 1st grade. My kid was 6 years old for the entirety of 1st grade. The bullying child turned 8 in September and was signficantly bigger and taller. Redshirting played a major role in the bullying because while this one child was the leader, there were many older kids in the classroom due to redshirting and when the bully would attack/provoke my kid, she'd cry, and then all the older kids would round on her and call her a baby and tease her for being small and young (she is average height for her age).
I had no idea how prevalent redshirting was when I enrolled my kid in K. She was academically and socially ready for a K classroom full of 5 and 6 year old children. In fact she continues to be at the top of her grade academically and she is well liked by teachers for being a good listener who follows directions and is helpful and kind in the classroom (something that apparently the extra years of preschool or staying home did not help instill in these redshirted kids who are merely bigger and older, not more mature).
I absolutely resent that my child's classroom environment has been dominated by older children who I think should have spent their 5/6 year in K learning out to function in elementary school, but instead spent it elsewhere and arrived at elementary school with their own ideas about how school should work. I resent how common bullying and relational aggression are at the school because of these older-but-less-mature kids.
Call me a crazy anti-redshirted if you want. I think redshirting sucks. Kids should start school at the same age so that they learn the same skills and are generally at the same developmental level. Kids with developmental delays can/should be held back to accommodate their delays, but it shouldn't be at the parents' discretion.
We will be moving school districts before these older kids hit puberty in 3rd grade and we have to deal with that.
As a parent who doesn't care about redshirting one way or another (and has both middle-of-age-for grade and young-for-grade kids, none old-for-grade): the bullying isn't because your kid is small. Bullies will find literally anything to gang up on kids about. One of my kids was bulled for not watching Spongebob Squarepants in a late elementary grade. Does that make sense as a thing to mock a kid over? No. But my kid was a prickly and kind of hard-to-get-to-know kid, so of course they were a target. The actual thing to make fun of was incidental to the act of piling on.
And it's possible (probable?) this older kid is lashing out because:
- they do have delays and you have no idea and the delays are social
- they feel embarassed about your kid doing as well when they are so much older.
PP here. Of course bullying can happen for a whole variety of reasons.
But at my kid's specific school, in specific classrooms where there are a large percent of redshirted kids including one that was significantly older, the bullying was closely related to having a cohort of older, bigger, unsocialized kids. My DD was not the only child targeted, but all the children who were bullied were "on time" kids who were on the younger end of normal for the grade. All the bullies were the oldest kids in class.
Also, it's not just about the age difference. It's also that these redshirted kids were not socialized into elementary school when they were young enough for it help. They arrived at K too old and less malleable. In my child's 1st grade class, those older kids RAN the classroom. This year my kid is in 2nd and due to the bullying issues last year, my kid and others who were targeted are in a classroom without any of the much older kids. The classroom is significantly better, with less conflict and fewer behavioral issues.
I don't have any issue with moderate redshirting for kids with summer birthdays. I don't think you should be allowed to redshirt a kid with a birthday during the school year unless there is a clear reason why delaying kindergarten will help. And I actually think a lot of developmental delays might be made worse by redshirting unless you can show the kids are going to get services to improve the situation. Perhaps some of these delays would be best addressed by having the kid in a classroom with other kids and receiving services through the school.
I honestly do not understand why you continue to keep your child in a school where your DC experiences significant bullying and you believe the classroom activities and level are so wildly inappropriate. It seems weird to me.
You seem very ignorant of the reality that most parents experience. Most parents can’t just switch schools out of the blue.
Right. Which leads parents to make careful decisions about when their kids start school. For example— not sending a kid who may struggle to kindergarten too early.
Unless they don’t know about how prevalent it is because the schools don’t say anything and the other moms apparently don’t volunteer the info. Nice.
What information do you feel is lacking? If you ask your local elementary school they will likely tell you the average kindergarten age. You presumably know your child’s age. Do some research into peer reviewed studies about optimal environments for the child’s age you have and see whether your local or chosen kindergarten matches with that. I’m truly confused what you think someone needs to tell you to make this choice?
We arrived back in the US after mostly raising kids on military bases abroad and we arrived in August. Honestly I didn’t even know red shirting was a thing until I saw some really big kindergarten kids on my son’s first day of school. So no I did t put my five year old on a waitlist for preschool, had never heard of “junior kindergarten” at preschool, etc.
That’s really not an excuse for not researching, talking to others, asking around.
Sweetheart, those are all excuses for "I want my child to have an advantage over yours" and we all know it.
I’m a DP, and leaving aside your tone, it’s not an advantage over your student. Your student has exactly the same right to delay a year as anyone else. Nothing is being taken away from you or your child you just made a different choice. Lose your victim mentality around this.
That PP is just mad they didn't know what they were doing.
I really hate the "savvy parents know to redshirt, it's your fault if you don't" argument, because we're talking about kids.
Of course there are going to be parents who, fir whatever reason, don't know the *unspoken* customs if redshirting in a district, and their kid will wind up at a disadvantage. You can criticize the parents for this but it's the kid who suffers.
Which is why there should be NO UNSPOKEN REDSHIRTING CUSTOMS. This should not be gameable. And relishing the idea that some kids struggle in school because their parents naively thought the published age cutoffs were when you are actually supposed to send your kids, and not just a vague suggestion and all the "smart" parents postpone K a year, is a weird flex.
Have a cut off. Enforce a cut off. Make sure the school work makes sense for kids who meet the cut off. This isn't hard. These are kids. We should all want them ALL to succeed.
Apparently it is hard. The current cutoff sends 4 year olds into the classroom for hours sitting on end, doing age inappropriate activities, with barely any time outdoors. Everyone (even on this thread) agrees that isn’t right for a four year old, and yet that’s The Cutoff. So, apparently, it’s hard.
To your other point, the same published guidelines that you assume everyone does have access to also (at least in FCPS) explains what to do if you don’t want to start your kid. I don’t think this is about whisper networks and secret handshakes. What I think is “savvy” is the parents who have a data-informed sense for what their kids should be doing at 4-5-6 and yes, we should really help parents understand how bad sitting still indoors, doing screen-based learning and endless worksheets really is for early childhood.
So you make the cut off 5. Easy. Everyone agrees 4 is too young for K. So kids should enroll in K in the fall after their 5th birthday. Done.
Or, if you think 5 is too young, then make it 6.
If you don't think kids should be sitting indoors for hours on end, then advocate for that not to be how K works. Is it okay in 1st? No. So sounds like we need to talk to schools about crap curriculums that aren't appropriate for any early elementary kids.
Also your argument that we should just make sure that every parent is "data informed" before making the choice to redshirt ignores reality, which is that some parents are simply never going to get there. Some parents lack the cognitive ability or the language skills or the maturity to do that. Some parents are immigrants who don't speak the language. Some parents just went through a divorce or a death in the family and don't have the bandwidth. Some parents are poor and no matter what the data says, they are going to send their kid to K when the school says they can because they can't afford another year of daycare.
Your way means that the kids of all those parents are just SOL. Nice.
The thing is, “I” can’t make it five. Or six.
I can’t make them let kids under six spend at least half of every day outside.
The only thing I can do is keep my kids in environments that align with their age as best as possible within the published regulations, and vote for people who support later starts in kindergarten and more developmentally appropriate.
Yes. “My way” only helps my kid in the immediate case. But I don’t think there are any benefits to pretending I don’t know what the data says about where my four year old belongs.
why not just homeschool a few years until you feel they are ready then put them in the grade they are supposed to be in? this seems like the best solution. the early years is really not a lot of academics to catch up on.
"They grade they are supposed to be in" is an arbitrary rule you made up in your little head. This just isn't how it works. There are actual rules and you just can't handle that people play by them for some reason. What is your deal?
Anonymous wrote:Public schools aren’t retaining anyone because that costs $$$. I’ve only heard of retention being offered when a kid missed a lot of a grade due to something like a serious medical issue, or at the end of the Covid school years - 2019-20 or 2020-21 - if a kid didn’t progress during the closures. My neighbor had a young for grade 1st grader in 20-21 and FCPS did offer to let her repeat 1st in person.
But let this thread be a heads up to everyone: redshirting is common, perhaps even expected, in private schools, especially for the younger for grade kids. So plan accordingly.
+1, and I would say it’s increasingly common in public school among parents who read the data on developmentally appropriate settings for 4-5. So, assume if you send a four year old they’ll be youngest by a year+, and an early five year old by a year. None of this is secret, or unavailable information to you.
Since most public schools do an age cut off around September 1st, the number of kids attending K at age 4 is very small (and even people who complain about excessive redshirting don't complain about redshirting a kid who would be 4 during the "normal" cut off). In NY (which is the only place with a midyear cut off that results in a lot of 4 year olds being eligible for K) it's common for people to redshirt those kids and no one complains about it.
The only redshirting people complain about is when people start redshirting kids who would be well over 5 when starting K but they hold them back anyway. Yes, in some privates that's common place, but the school generally encourages it and everyone has a chance to do it -- they like having an older class of K students and often they will strongly encourage redshirting summer or late spring birthdays. Some schools even offer a transitional year for young K students before taking the regular K class, so you still wind up with a fairly age-homogenous class.
But in public that's not the case, and when some parents start deciding their April or May birthday kid needs another year, it can leave other parents stuck with the consequences of those actions without warning. No one is going to get mad that a parent redshirted so their kid could start K at 5, but when you see kids starting K at 6 and a half, it becomes an issue.
Please yell at me now and tell me I'm a "crazy anti-redshirter" for agreeing this specific issue is a problem.
As someone with a young for grade kid, I think it is absolutely insane to consider this a problem whatsoever, and really makes you sound like someone who has no experience with any real problems in life.
My kid with an August birthday who I sent on time (she started K at 5 but was among the youngest in her grade) was viciously bullied by a redshirted child in 1st grade. My kid was 6 years old for the entirety of 1st grade. The bullying child turned 8 in September and was signficantly bigger and taller. Redshirting played a major role in the bullying because while this one child was the leader, there were many older kids in the classroom due to redshirting and when the bully would attack/provoke my kid, she'd cry, and then all the older kids would round on her and call her a baby and tease her for being small and young (she is average height for her age).
I had no idea how prevalent redshirting was when I enrolled my kid in K. She was academically and socially ready for a K classroom full of 5 and 6 year old children. In fact she continues to be at the top of her grade academically and she is well liked by teachers for being a good listener who follows directions and is helpful and kind in the classroom (something that apparently the extra years of preschool or staying home did not help instill in these redshirted kids who are merely bigger and older, not more mature).
I absolutely resent that my child's classroom environment has been dominated by older children who I think should have spent their 5/6 year in K learning out to function in elementary school, but instead spent it elsewhere and arrived at elementary school with their own ideas about how school should work. I resent how common bullying and relational aggression are at the school because of these older-but-less-mature kids.
Call me a crazy anti-redshirted if you want. I think redshirting sucks. Kids should start school at the same age so that they learn the same skills and are generally at the same developmental level. Kids with developmental delays can/should be held back to accommodate their delays, but it shouldn't be at the parents' discretion.
We will be moving school districts before these older kids hit puberty in 3rd grade and we have to deal with that.
As a parent who doesn't care about redshirting one way or another (and has both middle-of-age-for grade and young-for-grade kids, none old-for-grade): the bullying isn't because your kid is small. Bullies will find literally anything to gang up on kids about. One of my kids was bulled for not watching Spongebob Squarepants in a late elementary grade. Does that make sense as a thing to mock a kid over? No. But my kid was a prickly and kind of hard-to-get-to-know kid, so of course they were a target. The actual thing to make fun of was incidental to the act of piling on.
And it's possible (probable?) this older kid is lashing out because:
- they do have delays and you have no idea and the delays are social
- they feel embarassed about your kid doing as well when they are so much older.
PP here. Of course bullying can happen for a whole variety of reasons.
But at my kid's specific school, in specific classrooms where there are a large percent of redshirted kids including one that was significantly older, the bullying was closely related to having a cohort of older, bigger, unsocialized kids. My DD was not the only child targeted, but all the children who were bullied were "on time" kids who were on the younger end of normal for the grade. All the bullies were the oldest kids in class.
Also, it's not just about the age difference. It's also that these redshirted kids were not socialized into elementary school when they were young enough for it help. They arrived at K too old and less malleable. In my child's 1st grade class, those older kids RAN the classroom. This year my kid is in 2nd and due to the bullying issues last year, my kid and others who were targeted are in a classroom without any of the much older kids. The classroom is significantly better, with less conflict and fewer behavioral issues.
I don't have any issue with moderate redshirting for kids with summer birthdays. I don't think you should be allowed to redshirt a kid with a birthday during the school year unless there is a clear reason why delaying kindergarten will help. And I actually think a lot of developmental delays might be made worse by redshirting unless you can show the kids are going to get services to improve the situation. Perhaps some of these delays would be best addressed by having the kid in a classroom with other kids and receiving services through the school.
I honestly do not understand why you continue to keep your child in a school where your DC experiences significant bullying and you believe the classroom activities and level are so wildly inappropriate. It seems weird to me.
You seem very ignorant of the reality that most parents experience. Most parents can’t just switch schools out of the blue.
Right. Which leads parents to make careful decisions about when their kids start school. For example— not sending a kid who may struggle to kindergarten too early.
Or, send our kid and get them the help they need so they don’t struggle.
What "help" do you recommend?
IEP’s. Soooo many kids have them. Professional help often paid for by the school district. I’ve see kids get services for adhd, dyslexia, occupational therapy… I think many people like you overestimate your ability and underestimate the ability of professionals with undergrad and grad degrees in education and therapy.
IEPs are for children with disabilities. You have to qualify for them. You can't just "get an IEP."
- Professional with an undergrad and grad degree in education and psychology.
Then what is the issue you feel that you can’t send a 5 to Kinder? I’m telling you, you’re making it something it’s not. It’s not that hard. Trust me.
Some kids just need a bit more time. That’s the help. It’s so weird you can’t understand that. Professionals and parents agree. Busy bodies with faux concerns about other people’s children don’t get an opinion.
No, they don’t. They need to be in school with age appropriate peers
Could you please share the data you’re sourcing this from? That age-identical classrooms are critical to children’s success? Moreso than the developmental appropriateness of the environment? Because candidly I think you’re making this up as you go along.
My four year old and her seven year old cousin are best friends. It’s amazing to see how she brings out leadership and compassion in her older cousin and how her cousin brings out courage and creativity in her.
The discussion is about peers and a child held back isn't necessarily going to be a leader just because they are older. It harms everyone and when you get to HS, do you want your 14 year old in classes with 19-20 year olds as that is whats happening.
You’re right, a child who is redshirted isn’t necessarily going to be a leader and— parents who are redshirting aren’t always doing it for that reason anyway. So don’t worry about the redshirted kids.
You seem to be suggesting a freshman in high school could be taking classes with a senior— while the 20 y/o would be shockingly rare, it’s not more worrying to have a 19 than an 18 y/o senior. What is your panic about here?
It’s it rare at all. Electives, gym, health ed and math are always mixed. My 13-14 year old freshman had three classes with seniors freshman year. An elective that was auditioned in, pe and math.
Ok so please explain your anxiety around a 14 year old being in a class with a 19 year old that doesn’t exist for an 18 year old?
.
19 year olds in high school isn’t redshirting. Those are kids who failed a year, had transfer issues, are foreign students who need more time for the language, were homeschooled or have GED and need the credit etc etc. It happens rarely, but that won’t be solved by banning redshirting. Some areas have specific adult only high schools for ages 18 plus - maybe advocate for that if it’s an issue in your area.
These kids were held back. Except the fall kids who missed the deadline. Let’s call it what it is. It’s a huge issue when these adults are with young teens.
Nonsense. I’m around a ton of teens. This is 100% a non-issue.
The hyperbole from the anti-redshirt posters is so ridiculous. It’s like none of you have contact with any actual teens.
The redshirted kids at my child's middle school who all started puberty a grade earlier than they would have had they started on time absolutely changed the culture if the school and the experience for the non-redshirted kids, for the worse.
I cannot fathom why anyone who has seen a kid through puberty would be like "oh yeah, it would be great to have an age spread of 18 months in 6th and 7th grade. Super cool." It's already a hard time and it's already harder for the kids who start puberty early or late, but now you want to stretch it out even more? Whyyyyyyyyy? It makes no sense.
I am fine if K is for 6/7 year olds. Just make it official and start school later. But this unofficial system where K is for 4-7 yr olds, and people are supposed to case the joint in advance to guess where in that age spread to send their kid? That's dumb. Just pick an age and have everyone send their kid when they hit that age.
Typical onset of puberty for girls is between 8 and 13 years old. For boys, it’s between 9-14 years old. That’s already a 5-year spread within the realm of completely normal.
You need to calm down.
1) Onset is not not equally distributed along those ranges.
2) Redshirting of non-summer birthdays makes the range even wider, which is a substantial issue. It forces families of on time kids to deal with puberty issues a year earlier than even the earliest year they would otherwise deal with it.
3) I feel very calm, thank you -- my kids are through this. Parents choosing to redshirt have not. They are making a choice based on a perceived disadvantage in kindergarten, not understanding the negative impact 4-6 years later. Both for their kid and dir peers.
There is absolutely no evidence for the bolded statement. You don’t understand statistics.
You don't need evidence for basic math.
Redshirting expands the range if ages in one grade. You can argue whether that's a good thing or a bad thing or a neutral thing. But you can't argue it's not a thing.
Without redshirting, the typical 6th grade class would have 11 year olds turning 12, either during the school year or in the summer following. With redshirting, it will have a mix of 11 and 12 year olds at the beginning of the year, and a mix of 12 and 13 year olds at the end PLUS some non-redshirted summer birthdays who are still 11.
Again, you can argue that's not a big deal or that it only amounts to a few extra minutes months, but mathematically, redshirting expands the age range for the grade. Which means, yes, it expands the range of puberty onset.
Anonymous wrote:Public schools aren’t retaining anyone because that costs $$$. I’ve only heard of retention being offered when a kid missed a lot of a grade due to something like a serious medical issue, or at the end of the Covid school years - 2019-20 or 2020-21 - if a kid didn’t progress during the closures. My neighbor had a young for grade 1st grader in 20-21 and FCPS did offer to let her repeat 1st in person.
But let this thread be a heads up to everyone: redshirting is common, perhaps even expected, in private schools, especially for the younger for grade kids. So plan accordingly.
+1, and I would say it’s increasingly common in public school among parents who read the data on developmentally appropriate settings for 4-5. So, assume if you send a four year old they’ll be youngest by a year+, and an early five year old by a year. None of this is secret, or unavailable information to you.
Since most public schools do an age cut off around September 1st, the number of kids attending K at age 4 is very small (and even people who complain about excessive redshirting don't complain about redshirting a kid who would be 4 during the "normal" cut off). In NY (which is the only place with a midyear cut off that results in a lot of 4 year olds being eligible for K) it's common for people to redshirt those kids and no one complains about it.
Ok, but if you are just starting late because you think the school environment is not appropriate for a 4,5,6,7 year old why not homeschool then join the closest age cohert when you feel your child is ready. You're not making much sense here.
The only redshirting people complain about is when people start redshirting kids who would be well over 5 when starting K but they hold them back anyway. Yes, in some privates that's common place, but the school generally encourages it and everyone has a chance to do it -- they like having an older class of K students and often they will strongly encourage redshirting summer or late spring birthdays. Some schools even offer a transitional year for young K students before taking the regular K class, so you still wind up with a fairly age-homogenous class.
But in public that's not the case, and when some parents start deciding their April or May birthday kid needs another year, it can leave other parents stuck with the consequences of those actions without warning. No one is going to get mad that a parent redshirted so their kid could start K at 5, but when you see kids starting K at 6 and a half, it becomes an issue.
Please yell at me now and tell me I'm a "crazy anti-redshirter" for agreeing this specific issue is a problem.
As someone with a young for grade kid, I think it is absolutely insane to consider this a problem whatsoever, and really makes you sound like someone who has no experience with any real problems in life.
My kid with an August birthday who I sent on time (she started K at 5 but was among the youngest in her grade) was viciously bullied by a redshirted child in 1st grade. My kid was 6 years old for the entirety of 1st grade. The bullying child turned 8 in September and was signficantly bigger and taller. Redshirting played a major role in the bullying because while this one child was the leader, there were many older kids in the classroom due to redshirting and when the bully would attack/provoke my kid, she'd cry, and then all the older kids would round on her and call her a baby and tease her for being small and young (she is average height for her age).
I had no idea how prevalent redshirting was when I enrolled my kid in K. She was academically and socially ready for a K classroom full of 5 and 6 year old children. In fact she continues to be at the top of her grade academically and she is well liked by teachers for being a good listener who follows directions and is helpful and kind in the classroom (something that apparently the extra years of preschool or staying home did not help instill in these redshirted kids who are merely bigger and older, not more mature).
I absolutely resent that my child's classroom environment has been dominated by older children who I think should have spent their 5/6 year in K learning out to function in elementary school, but instead spent it elsewhere and arrived at elementary school with their own ideas about how school should work. I resent how common bullying and relational aggression are at the school because of these older-but-less-mature kids.
Call me a crazy anti-redshirted if you want. I think redshirting sucks. Kids should start school at the same age so that they learn the same skills and are generally at the same developmental level. Kids with developmental delays can/should be held back to accommodate their delays, but it shouldn't be at the parents' discretion.
We will be moving school districts before these older kids hit puberty in 3rd grade and we have to deal with that.
As a parent who doesn't care about redshirting one way or another (and has both middle-of-age-for grade and young-for-grade kids, none old-for-grade): the bullying isn't because your kid is small. Bullies will find literally anything to gang up on kids about. One of my kids was bulled for not watching Spongebob Squarepants in a late elementary grade. Does that make sense as a thing to mock a kid over? No. But my kid was a prickly and kind of hard-to-get-to-know kid, so of course they were a target. The actual thing to make fun of was incidental to the act of piling on.
And it's possible (probable?) this older kid is lashing out because:
- they do have delays and you have no idea and the delays are social
- they feel embarassed about your kid doing as well when they are so much older.
PP here. Of course bullying can happen for a whole variety of reasons.
But at my kid's specific school, in specific classrooms where there are a large percent of redshirted kids including one that was significantly older, the bullying was closely related to having a cohort of older, bigger, unsocialized kids. My DD was not the only child targeted, but all the children who were bullied were "on time" kids who were on the younger end of normal for the grade. All the bullies were the oldest kids in class.
Also, it's not just about the age difference. It's also that these redshirted kids were not socialized into elementary school when they were young enough for it help. They arrived at K too old and less malleable. In my child's 1st grade class, those older kids RAN the classroom. This year my kid is in 2nd and due to the bullying issues last year, my kid and others who were targeted are in a classroom without any of the much older kids. The classroom is significantly better, with less conflict and fewer behavioral issues.
I don't have any issue with moderate redshirting for kids with summer birthdays. I don't think you should be allowed to redshirt a kid with a birthday during the school year unless there is a clear reason why delaying kindergarten will help. And I actually think a lot of developmental delays might be made worse by redshirting unless you can show the kids are going to get services to improve the situation. Perhaps some of these delays would be best addressed by having the kid in a classroom with other kids and receiving services through the school.
I honestly do not understand why you continue to keep your child in a school where your DC experiences significant bullying and you believe the classroom activities and level are so wildly inappropriate. It seems weird to me.
You seem very ignorant of the reality that most parents experience. Most parents can’t just switch schools out of the blue.
Right. Which leads parents to make careful decisions about when their kids start school. For example— not sending a kid who may struggle to kindergarten too early.
Unless they don’t know about how prevalent it is because the schools don’t say anything and the other moms apparently don’t volunteer the info. Nice.
What information do you feel is lacking? If you ask your local elementary school they will likely tell you the average kindergarten age. You presumably know your child’s age. Do some research into peer reviewed studies about optimal environments for the child’s age you have and see whether your local or chosen kindergarten matches with that. I’m truly confused what you think someone needs to tell you to make this choice?
We arrived back in the US after mostly raising kids on military bases abroad and we arrived in August. Honestly I didn’t even know red shirting was a thing until I saw some really big kindergarten kids on my son’s first day of school. So no I did t put my five year old on a waitlist for preschool, had never heard of “junior kindergarten” at preschool, etc.
That’s really not an excuse for not researching, talking to others, asking around.
Sweetheart, those are all excuses for "I want my child to have an advantage over yours" and we all know it.
I’m a DP, and leaving aside your tone, it’s not an advantage over your student. Your student has exactly the same right to delay a year as anyone else. Nothing is being taken away from you or your child you just made a different choice. Lose your victim mentality around this.
That PP is just mad they didn't know what they were doing.
I really hate the "savvy parents know to redshirt, it's your fault if you don't" argument, because we're talking about kids.
Of course there are going to be parents who, fir whatever reason, don't know the *unspoken* customs if redshirting in a district, and their kid will wind up at a disadvantage. You can criticize the parents for this but it's the kid who suffers.
Which is why there should be NO UNSPOKEN REDSHIRTING CUSTOMS. This should not be gameable. And relishing the idea that some kids struggle in school because their parents naively thought the published age cutoffs were when you are actually supposed to send your kids, and not just a vague suggestion and all the "smart" parents postpone K a year, is a weird flex.
Have a cut off. Enforce a cut off. Make sure the school work makes sense for kids who meet the cut off. This isn't hard. These are kids. We should all want them ALL to succeed.
Apparently it is hard. The current cutoff sends 4 year olds into the classroom for hours sitting on end, doing age inappropriate activities, with barely any time outdoors. Everyone (even on this thread) agrees that isn’t right for a four year old, and yet that’s The Cutoff. So, apparently, it’s hard.
To your other point, the same published guidelines that you assume everyone does have access to also (at least in FCPS) explains what to do if you don’t want to start your kid. I don’t think this is about whisper networks and secret handshakes. What I think is “savvy” is the parents who have a data-informed sense for what their kids should be doing at 4-5-6 and yes, we should really help parents understand how bad sitting still indoors, doing screen-based learning and endless worksheets really is for early childhood.
So you make the cut off 5. Easy. Everyone agrees 4 is too young for K. So kids should enroll in K in the fall after their 5th birthday. Done.
Or, if you think 5 is too young, then make it 6.
If you don't think kids should be sitting indoors for hours on end, then advocate for that not to be how K works. Is it okay in 1st? No. So sounds like we need to talk to schools about crap curriculums that aren't appropriate for any early elementary kids.
Also your argument that we should just make sure that every parent is "data informed" before making the choice to redshirt ignores reality, which is that some parents are simply never going to get there. Some parents lack the cognitive ability or the language skills or the maturity to do that. Some parents are immigrants who don't speak the language. Some parents just went through a divorce or a death in the family and don't have the bandwidth. Some parents are poor and no matter what the data says, they are going to send their kid to K when the school says they can because they can't afford another year of daycare.
Your way means that the kids of all those parents are just SOL. Nice.
The thing is, “I” can’t make it five. Or six.
I can’t make them let kids under six spend at least half of every day outside.
The only thing I can do is keep my kids in environments that align with their age as best as possible within the published regulations, and vote for people who support later starts in kindergarten and more developmentally appropriate.
Yes. “My way” only helps my kid in the immediate case. But I don’t think there are any benefits to pretending I don’t know what the data says about where my four year old belongs.
why not just homeschool a few years until you feel they are ready then put them in the grade they are supposed to be in? this seems like the best solution. the early years is really not a lot of academics to catch up on.
"They grade they are supposed to be in" is an arbitrary rule you made up in your little head. This just isn't how it works. There are actual rules and you just can't handle that people play by them for some reason. What is your deal?
Anonymous wrote:Public schools aren’t retaining anyone because that costs $$$. I’ve only heard of retention being offered when a kid missed a lot of a grade due to something like a serious medical issue, or at the end of the Covid school years - 2019-20 or 2020-21 - if a kid didn’t progress during the closures. My neighbor had a young for grade 1st grader in 20-21 and FCPS did offer to let her repeat 1st in person.
But let this thread be a heads up to everyone: redshirting is common, perhaps even expected, in private schools, especially for the younger for grade kids. So plan accordingly.
+1, and I would say it’s increasingly common in public school among parents who read the data on developmentally appropriate settings for 4-5. So, assume if you send a four year old they’ll be youngest by a year+, and an early five year old by a year. None of this is secret, or unavailable information to you.
Since most public schools do an age cut off around September 1st, the number of kids attending K at age 4 is very small (and even people who complain about excessive redshirting don't complain about redshirting a kid who would be 4 during the "normal" cut off). In NY (which is the only place with a midyear cut off that results in a lot of 4 year olds being eligible for K) it's common for people to redshirt those kids and no one complains about it.
Ok, but if you are just starting late because you think the school environment is not appropriate for a 4,5,6,7 year old why not homeschool then join the closest age cohert when you feel your child is ready. You're not making much sense here.
The only redshirting people complain about is when people start redshirting kids who would be well over 5 when starting K but they hold them back anyway. Yes, in some privates that's common place, but the school generally encourages it and everyone has a chance to do it -- they like having an older class of K students and often they will strongly encourage redshirting summer or late spring birthdays. Some schools even offer a transitional year for young K students before taking the regular K class, so you still wind up with a fairly age-homogenous class.
But in public that's not the case, and when some parents start deciding their April or May birthday kid needs another year, it can leave other parents stuck with the consequences of those actions without warning. No one is going to get mad that a parent redshirted so their kid could start K at 5, but when you see kids starting K at 6 and a half, it becomes an issue.
Please yell at me now and tell me I'm a "crazy anti-redshirter" for agreeing this specific issue is a problem.
As someone with a young for grade kid, I think it is absolutely insane to consider this a problem whatsoever, and really makes you sound like someone who has no experience with any real problems in life.
My kid with an August birthday who I sent on time (she started K at 5 but was among the youngest in her grade) was viciously bullied by a redshirted child in 1st grade. My kid was 6 years old for the entirety of 1st grade. The bullying child turned 8 in September and was signficantly bigger and taller. Redshirting played a major role in the bullying because while this one child was the leader, there were many older kids in the classroom due to redshirting and when the bully would attack/provoke my kid, she'd cry, and then all the older kids would round on her and call her a baby and tease her for being small and young (she is average height for her age).
I had no idea how prevalent redshirting was when I enrolled my kid in K. She was academically and socially ready for a K classroom full of 5 and 6 year old children. In fact she continues to be at the top of her grade academically and she is well liked by teachers for being a good listener who follows directions and is helpful and kind in the classroom (something that apparently the extra years of preschool or staying home did not help instill in these redshirted kids who are merely bigger and older, not more mature).
I absolutely resent that my child's classroom environment has been dominated by older children who I think should have spent their 5/6 year in K learning out to function in elementary school, but instead spent it elsewhere and arrived at elementary school with their own ideas about how school should work. I resent how common bullying and relational aggression are at the school because of these older-but-less-mature kids.
Call me a crazy anti-redshirted if you want. I think redshirting sucks. Kids should start school at the same age so that they learn the same skills and are generally at the same developmental level. Kids with developmental delays can/should be held back to accommodate their delays, but it shouldn't be at the parents' discretion.
We will be moving school districts before these older kids hit puberty in 3rd grade and we have to deal with that.
As a parent who doesn't care about redshirting one way or another (and has both middle-of-age-for grade and young-for-grade kids, none old-for-grade): the bullying isn't because your kid is small. Bullies will find literally anything to gang up on kids about. One of my kids was bulled for not watching Spongebob Squarepants in a late elementary grade. Does that make sense as a thing to mock a kid over? No. But my kid was a prickly and kind of hard-to-get-to-know kid, so of course they were a target. The actual thing to make fun of was incidental to the act of piling on.
And it's possible (probable?) this older kid is lashing out because:
- they do have delays and you have no idea and the delays are social
- they feel embarassed about your kid doing as well when they are so much older.
PP here. Of course bullying can happen for a whole variety of reasons.
But at my kid's specific school, in specific classrooms where there are a large percent of redshirted kids including one that was significantly older, the bullying was closely related to having a cohort of older, bigger, unsocialized kids. My DD was not the only child targeted, but all the children who were bullied were "on time" kids who were on the younger end of normal for the grade. All the bullies were the oldest kids in class.
Also, it's not just about the age difference. It's also that these redshirted kids were not socialized into elementary school when they were young enough for it help. They arrived at K too old and less malleable. In my child's 1st grade class, those older kids RAN the classroom. This year my kid is in 2nd and due to the bullying issues last year, my kid and others who were targeted are in a classroom without any of the much older kids. The classroom is significantly better, with less conflict and fewer behavioral issues.
I don't have any issue with moderate redshirting for kids with summer birthdays. I don't think you should be allowed to redshirt a kid with a birthday during the school year unless there is a clear reason why delaying kindergarten will help. And I actually think a lot of developmental delays might be made worse by redshirting unless you can show the kids are going to get services to improve the situation. Perhaps some of these delays would be best addressed by having the kid in a classroom with other kids and receiving services through the school.
I honestly do not understand why you continue to keep your child in a school where your DC experiences significant bullying and you believe the classroom activities and level are so wildly inappropriate. It seems weird to me.
You seem very ignorant of the reality that most parents experience. Most parents can’t just switch schools out of the blue.
Right. Which leads parents to make careful decisions about when their kids start school. For example— not sending a kid who may struggle to kindergarten too early.
Unless they don’t know about how prevalent it is because the schools don’t say anything and the other moms apparently don’t volunteer the info. Nice.
What information do you feel is lacking? If you ask your local elementary school they will likely tell you the average kindergarten age. You presumably know your child’s age. Do some research into peer reviewed studies about optimal environments for the child’s age you have and see whether your local or chosen kindergarten matches with that. I’m truly confused what you think someone needs to tell you to make this choice?
We arrived back in the US after mostly raising kids on military bases abroad and we arrived in August. Honestly I didn’t even know red shirting was a thing until I saw some really big kindergarten kids on my son’s first day of school. So no I did t put my five year old on a waitlist for preschool, had never heard of “junior kindergarten” at preschool, etc.
That’s really not an excuse for not researching, talking to others, asking around.
Sweetheart, those are all excuses for "I want my child to have an advantage over yours" and we all know it.
I’m a DP, and leaving aside your tone, it’s not an advantage over your student. Your student has exactly the same right to delay a year as anyone else. Nothing is being taken away from you or your child you just made a different choice. Lose your victim mentality around this.
That PP is just mad they didn't know what they were doing.
I really hate the "savvy parents know to redshirt, it's your fault if you don't" argument, because we're talking about kids.
Of course there are going to be parents who, fir whatever reason, don't know the *unspoken* customs if redshirting in a district, and their kid will wind up at a disadvantage. You can criticize the parents for this but it's the kid who suffers.
Which is why there should be NO UNSPOKEN REDSHIRTING CUSTOMS. This should not be gameable. And relishing the idea that some kids struggle in school because their parents naively thought the published age cutoffs were when you are actually supposed to send your kids, and not just a vague suggestion and all the "smart" parents postpone K a year, is a weird flex.
Have a cut off. Enforce a cut off. Make sure the school work makes sense for kids who meet the cut off. This isn't hard. These are kids. We should all want them ALL to succeed.
Apparently it is hard. The current cutoff sends 4 year olds into the classroom for hours sitting on end, doing age inappropriate activities, with barely any time outdoors. Everyone (even on this thread) agrees that isn’t right for a four year old, and yet that’s The Cutoff. So, apparently, it’s hard.
To your other point, the same published guidelines that you assume everyone does have access to also (at least in FCPS) explains what to do if you don’t want to start your kid. I don’t think this is about whisper networks and secret handshakes. What I think is “savvy” is the parents who have a data-informed sense for what their kids should be doing at 4-5-6 and yes, we should really help parents understand how bad sitting still indoors, doing screen-based learning and endless worksheets really is for early childhood.
So you make the cut off 5. Easy. Everyone agrees 4 is too young for K. So kids should enroll in K in the fall after their 5th birthday. Done.
Or, if you think 5 is too young, then make it 6.
If you don't think kids should be sitting indoors for hours on end, then advocate for that not to be how K works. Is it okay in 1st? No. So sounds like we need to talk to schools about crap curriculums that aren't appropriate for any early elementary kids.
Also your argument that we should just make sure that every parent is "data informed" before making the choice to redshirt ignores reality, which is that some parents are simply never going to get there. Some parents lack the cognitive ability or the language skills or the maturity to do that. Some parents are immigrants who don't speak the language. Some parents just went through a divorce or a death in the family and don't have the bandwidth. Some parents are poor and no matter what the data says, they are going to send their kid to K when the school says they can because they can't afford another year of daycare.
Your way means that the kids of all those parents are just SOL. Nice.
The thing is, “I” can’t make it five. Or six.
I can’t make them let kids under six spend at least half of every day outside.
The only thing I can do is keep my kids in environments that align with their age as best as possible within the published regulations, and vote for people who support later starts in kindergarten and more developmentally appropriate.
Yes. “My way” only helps my kid in the immediate case. But I don’t think there are any benefits to pretending I don’t know what the data says about where my four year old belongs.
why not just homeschool a few years until you feel they are ready then put them in the grade they are supposed to be in? this seems like the best solution. the early years is really not a lot of academics to catch up on.
"They grade they are supposed to be in" is an arbitrary rule you made up in your little head. This just isn't how it works. There are actual rules and you just can't handle that people play by them for some reason. What is your deal?
Ok, but ypu are saying you are holding because it is an inappropriate environment.. so homeschool for a few years and put them in the closest age cohert later. This isn't brain surgery. You aren't making much sense. Wait at home until 5th homeschooling if that is what you consider the appropriate age but then put your 10/11 year old with age peers.
Anonymous wrote:Public schools aren’t retaining anyone because that costs $$$. I’ve only heard of retention being offered when a kid missed a lot of a grade due to something like a serious medical issue, or at the end of the Covid school years - 2019-20 or 2020-21 - if a kid didn’t progress during the closures. My neighbor had a young for grade 1st grader in 20-21 and FCPS did offer to let her repeat 1st in person.
But let this thread be a heads up to everyone: redshirting is common, perhaps even expected, in private schools, especially for the younger for grade kids. So plan accordingly.
+1, and I would say it’s increasingly common in public school among parents who read the data on developmentally appropriate settings for 4-5. So, assume if you send a four year old they’ll be youngest by a year+, and an early five year old by a year. None of this is secret, or unavailable information to you.
Since most public schools do an age cut off around September 1st, the number of kids attending K at age 4 is very small (and even people who complain about excessive redshirting don't complain about redshirting a kid who would be 4 during the "normal" cut off). In NY (which is the only place with a midyear cut off that results in a lot of 4 year olds being eligible for K) it's common for people to redshirt those kids and no one complains about it.
Ok, but if you are just starting late because you think the school environment is not appropriate for a 4,5,6,7 year old why not homeschool then join the closest age cohert when you feel your child is ready. You're not making much sense here.
The only redshirting people complain about is when people start redshirting kids who would be well over 5 when starting K but they hold them back anyway. Yes, in some privates that's common place, but the school generally encourages it and everyone has a chance to do it -- they like having an older class of K students and often they will strongly encourage redshirting summer or late spring birthdays. Some schools even offer a transitional year for young K students before taking the regular K class, so you still wind up with a fairly age-homogenous class.
But in public that's not the case, and when some parents start deciding their April or May birthday kid needs another year, it can leave other parents stuck with the consequences of those actions without warning. No one is going to get mad that a parent redshirted so their kid could start K at 5, but when you see kids starting K at 6 and a half, it becomes an issue.
Please yell at me now and tell me I'm a "crazy anti-redshirter" for agreeing this specific issue is a problem.
As someone with a young for grade kid, I think it is absolutely insane to consider this a problem whatsoever, and really makes you sound like someone who has no experience with any real problems in life.
My kid with an August birthday who I sent on time (she started K at 5 but was among the youngest in her grade) was viciously bullied by a redshirted child in 1st grade. My kid was 6 years old for the entirety of 1st grade. The bullying child turned 8 in September and was signficantly bigger and taller. Redshirting played a major role in the bullying because while this one child was the leader, there were many older kids in the classroom due to redshirting and when the bully would attack/provoke my kid, she'd cry, and then all the older kids would round on her and call her a baby and tease her for being small and young (she is average height for her age).
I had no idea how prevalent redshirting was when I enrolled my kid in K. She was academically and socially ready for a K classroom full of 5 and 6 year old children. In fact she continues to be at the top of her grade academically and she is well liked by teachers for being a good listener who follows directions and is helpful and kind in the classroom (something that apparently the extra years of preschool or staying home did not help instill in these redshirted kids who are merely bigger and older, not more mature).
I absolutely resent that my child's classroom environment has been dominated by older children who I think should have spent their 5/6 year in K learning out to function in elementary school, but instead spent it elsewhere and arrived at elementary school with their own ideas about how school should work. I resent how common bullying and relational aggression are at the school because of these older-but-less-mature kids.
Call me a crazy anti-redshirted if you want. I think redshirting sucks. Kids should start school at the same age so that they learn the same skills and are generally at the same developmental level. Kids with developmental delays can/should be held back to accommodate their delays, but it shouldn't be at the parents' discretion.
We will be moving school districts before these older kids hit puberty in 3rd grade and we have to deal with that.
As a parent who doesn't care about redshirting one way or another (and has both middle-of-age-for grade and young-for-grade kids, none old-for-grade): the bullying isn't because your kid is small. Bullies will find literally anything to gang up on kids about. One of my kids was bulled for not watching Spongebob Squarepants in a late elementary grade. Does that make sense as a thing to mock a kid over? No. But my kid was a prickly and kind of hard-to-get-to-know kid, so of course they were a target. The actual thing to make fun of was incidental to the act of piling on.
And it's possible (probable?) this older kid is lashing out because:
- they do have delays and you have no idea and the delays are social
- they feel embarassed about your kid doing as well when they are so much older.
PP here. Of course bullying can happen for a whole variety of reasons.
But at my kid's specific school, in specific classrooms where there are a large percent of redshirted kids including one that was significantly older, the bullying was closely related to having a cohort of older, bigger, unsocialized kids. My DD was not the only child targeted, but all the children who were bullied were "on time" kids who were on the younger end of normal for the grade. All the bullies were the oldest kids in class.
Also, it's not just about the age difference. It's also that these redshirted kids were not socialized into elementary school when they were young enough for it help. They arrived at K too old and less malleable. In my child's 1st grade class, those older kids RAN the classroom. This year my kid is in 2nd and due to the bullying issues last year, my kid and others who were targeted are in a classroom without any of the much older kids. The classroom is significantly better, with less conflict and fewer behavioral issues.
I don't have any issue with moderate redshirting for kids with summer birthdays. I don't think you should be allowed to redshirt a kid with a birthday during the school year unless there is a clear reason why delaying kindergarten will help. And I actually think a lot of developmental delays might be made worse by redshirting unless you can show the kids are going to get services to improve the situation. Perhaps some of these delays would be best addressed by having the kid in a classroom with other kids and receiving services through the school.
I honestly do not understand why you continue to keep your child in a school where your DC experiences significant bullying and you believe the classroom activities and level are so wildly inappropriate. It seems weird to me.
You seem very ignorant of the reality that most parents experience. Most parents can’t just switch schools out of the blue.
Right. Which leads parents to make careful decisions about when their kids start school. For example— not sending a kid who may struggle to kindergarten too early.
Unless they don’t know about how prevalent it is because the schools don’t say anything and the other moms apparently don’t volunteer the info. Nice.
What information do you feel is lacking? If you ask your local elementary school they will likely tell you the average kindergarten age. You presumably know your child’s age. Do some research into peer reviewed studies about optimal environments for the child’s age you have and see whether your local or chosen kindergarten matches with that. I’m truly confused what you think someone needs to tell you to make this choice?
We arrived back in the US after mostly raising kids on military bases abroad and we arrived in August. Honestly I didn’t even know red shirting was a thing until I saw some really big kindergarten kids on my son’s first day of school. So no I did t put my five year old on a waitlist for preschool, had never heard of “junior kindergarten” at preschool, etc.
That’s really not an excuse for not researching, talking to others, asking around.
Sweetheart, those are all excuses for "I want my child to have an advantage over yours" and we all know it.
I’m a DP, and leaving aside your tone, it’s not an advantage over your student. Your student has exactly the same right to delay a year as anyone else. Nothing is being taken away from you or your child you just made a different choice. Lose your victim mentality around this.
That PP is just mad they didn't know what they were doing.
I really hate the "savvy parents know to redshirt, it's your fault if you don't" argument, because we're talking about kids.
Of course there are going to be parents who, fir whatever reason, don't know the *unspoken* customs if redshirting in a district, and their kid will wind up at a disadvantage. You can criticize the parents for this but it's the kid who suffers.
Which is why there should be NO UNSPOKEN REDSHIRTING CUSTOMS. This should not be gameable. And relishing the idea that some kids struggle in school because their parents naively thought the published age cutoffs were when you are actually supposed to send your kids, and not just a vague suggestion and all the "smart" parents postpone K a year, is a weird flex.
Have a cut off. Enforce a cut off. Make sure the school work makes sense for kids who meet the cut off. This isn't hard. These are kids. We should all want them ALL to succeed.
Apparently it is hard. The current cutoff sends 4 year olds into the classroom for hours sitting on end, doing age inappropriate activities, with barely any time outdoors. Everyone (even on this thread) agrees that isn’t right for a four year old, and yet that’s The Cutoff. So, apparently, it’s hard.
To your other point, the same published guidelines that you assume everyone does have access to also (at least in FCPS) explains what to do if you don’t want to start your kid. I don’t think this is about whisper networks and secret handshakes. What I think is “savvy” is the parents who have a data-informed sense for what their kids should be doing at 4-5-6 and yes, we should really help parents understand how bad sitting still indoors, doing screen-based learning and endless worksheets really is for early childhood.
So you make the cut off 5. Easy. Everyone agrees 4 is too young for K. So kids should enroll in K in the fall after their 5th birthday. Done.
Or, if you think 5 is too young, then make it 6.
If you don't think kids should be sitting indoors for hours on end, then advocate for that not to be how K works. Is it okay in 1st? No. So sounds like we need to talk to schools about crap curriculums that aren't appropriate for any early elementary kids.
Also your argument that we should just make sure that every parent is "data informed" before making the choice to redshirt ignores reality, which is that some parents are simply never going to get there. Some parents lack the cognitive ability or the language skills or the maturity to do that. Some parents are immigrants who don't speak the language. Some parents just went through a divorce or a death in the family and don't have the bandwidth. Some parents are poor and no matter what the data says, they are going to send their kid to K when the school says they can because they can't afford another year of daycare.
Your way means that the kids of all those parents are just SOL. Nice.
The thing is, “I” can’t make it five. Or six.
I can’t make them let kids under six spend at least half of every day outside.
The only thing I can do is keep my kids in environments that align with their age as best as possible within the published regulations, and vote for people who support later starts in kindergarten and more developmentally appropriate.
Yes. “My way” only helps my kid in the immediate case. But I don’t think there are any benefits to pretending I don’t know what the data says about where my four year old belongs.
why not just homeschool a few years until you feel they are ready then put them in the grade they are supposed to be in? this seems like the best solution. the early years is really not a lot of academics to catch up on.
"They grade they are supposed to be in" is an arbitrary rule you made up in your little head. This just isn't how it works. There are actual rules and you just can't handle that people play by them for some reason. What is your deal?
Ok, but ypu are saying you are holding because it is an inappropriate environment.. so homeschool for a few years and put them in the closest age cohert later. This isn't brain surgery. You aren't making much sense. Wait at home until 5th homeschooling if that is what you consider the appropriate age but then put your 10/11 year old with age peers.
How about, no. Luckily my kids are past kindergarten age now but if you're worried about your precious being around pubescent kids then you can homeschool until you feel they are at an age they can socialize with others.
Anonymous wrote:Public schools aren’t retaining anyone because that costs $$$. I’ve only heard of retention being offered when a kid missed a lot of a grade due to something like a serious medical issue, or at the end of the Covid school years - 2019-20 or 2020-21 - if a kid didn’t progress during the closures. My neighbor had a young for grade 1st grader in 20-21 and FCPS did offer to let her repeat 1st in person.
But let this thread be a heads up to everyone: redshirting is common, perhaps even expected, in private schools, especially for the younger for grade kids. So plan accordingly.
+1, and I would say it’s increasingly common in public school among parents who read the data on developmentally appropriate settings for 4-5. So, assume if you send a four year old they’ll be youngest by a year+, and an early five year old by a year. None of this is secret, or unavailable information to you.
Since most public schools do an age cut off around September 1st, the number of kids attending K at age 4 is very small (and even people who complain about excessive redshirting don't complain about redshirting a kid who would be 4 during the "normal" cut off). In NY (which is the only place with a midyear cut off that results in a lot of 4 year olds being eligible for K) it's common for people to redshirt those kids and no one complains about it.
The only redshirting people complain about is when people start redshirting kids who would be well over 5 when starting K but they hold them back anyway. Yes, in some privates that's common place, but the school generally encourages it and everyone has a chance to do it -- they like having an older class of K students and often they will strongly encourage redshirting summer or late spring birthdays. Some schools even offer a transitional year for young K students before taking the regular K class, so you still wind up with a fairly age-homogenous class.
But in public that's not the case, and when some parents start deciding their April or May birthday kid needs another year, it can leave other parents stuck with the consequences of those actions without warning. No one is going to get mad that a parent redshirted so their kid could start K at 5, but when you see kids starting K at 6 and a half, it becomes an issue.
Please yell at me now and tell me I'm a "crazy anti-redshirter" for agreeing this specific issue is a problem.
As someone with a young for grade kid, I think it is absolutely insane to consider this a problem whatsoever, and really makes you sound like someone who has no experience with any real problems in life.
My kid with an August birthday who I sent on time (she started K at 5 but was among the youngest in her grade) was viciously bullied by a redshirted child in 1st grade. My kid was 6 years old for the entirety of 1st grade. The bullying child turned 8 in September and was signficantly bigger and taller. Redshirting played a major role in the bullying because while this one child was the leader, there were many older kids in the classroom due to redshirting and when the bully would attack/provoke my kid, she'd cry, and then all the older kids would round on her and call her a baby and tease her for being small and young (she is average height for her age).
I had no idea how prevalent redshirting was when I enrolled my kid in K. She was academically and socially ready for a K classroom full of 5 and 6 year old children. In fact she continues to be at the top of her grade academically and she is well liked by teachers for being a good listener who follows directions and is helpful and kind in the classroom (something that apparently the extra years of preschool or staying home did not help instill in these redshirted kids who are merely bigger and older, not more mature).
I absolutely resent that my child's classroom environment has been dominated by older children who I think should have spent their 5/6 year in K learning out to function in elementary school, but instead spent it elsewhere and arrived at elementary school with their own ideas about how school should work. I resent how common bullying and relational aggression are at the school because of these older-but-less-mature kids.
Call me a crazy anti-redshirted if you want. I think redshirting sucks. Kids should start school at the same age so that they learn the same skills and are generally at the same developmental level. Kids with developmental delays can/should be held back to accommodate their delays, but it shouldn't be at the parents' discretion.
We will be moving school districts before these older kids hit puberty in 3rd grade and we have to deal with that.
As a parent who doesn't care about redshirting one way or another (and has both middle-of-age-for grade and young-for-grade kids, none old-for-grade): the bullying isn't because your kid is small. Bullies will find literally anything to gang up on kids about. One of my kids was bulled for not watching Spongebob Squarepants in a late elementary grade. Does that make sense as a thing to mock a kid over? No. But my kid was a prickly and kind of hard-to-get-to-know kid, so of course they were a target. The actual thing to make fun of was incidental to the act of piling on.
And it's possible (probable?) this older kid is lashing out because:
- they do have delays and you have no idea and the delays are social
- they feel embarassed about your kid doing as well when they are so much older.
PP here. Of course bullying can happen for a whole variety of reasons.
But at my kid's specific school, in specific classrooms where there are a large percent of redshirted kids including one that was significantly older, the bullying was closely related to having a cohort of older, bigger, unsocialized kids. My DD was not the only child targeted, but all the children who were bullied were "on time" kids who were on the younger end of normal for the grade. All the bullies were the oldest kids in class.
Also, it's not just about the age difference. It's also that these redshirted kids were not socialized into elementary school when they were young enough for it help. They arrived at K too old and less malleable. In my child's 1st grade class, those older kids RAN the classroom. This year my kid is in 2nd and due to the bullying issues last year, my kid and others who were targeted are in a classroom without any of the much older kids. The classroom is significantly better, with less conflict and fewer behavioral issues.
I don't have any issue with moderate redshirting for kids with summer birthdays. I don't think you should be allowed to redshirt a kid with a birthday during the school year unless there is a clear reason why delaying kindergarten will help. And I actually think a lot of developmental delays might be made worse by redshirting unless you can show the kids are going to get services to improve the situation. Perhaps some of these delays would be best addressed by having the kid in a classroom with other kids and receiving services through the school.
I honestly do not understand why you continue to keep your child in a school where your DC experiences significant bullying and you believe the classroom activities and level are so wildly inappropriate. It seems weird to me.
You seem very ignorant of the reality that most parents experience. Most parents can’t just switch schools out of the blue.
Right. Which leads parents to make careful decisions about when their kids start school. For example— not sending a kid who may struggle to kindergarten too early.
Unless they don’t know about how prevalent it is because the schools don’t say anything and the other moms apparently don’t volunteer the info. Nice.
What information do you feel is lacking? If you ask your local elementary school they will likely tell you the average kindergarten age. You presumably know your child’s age. Do some research into peer reviewed studies about optimal environments for the child’s age you have and see whether your local or chosen kindergarten matches with that. I’m truly confused what you think someone needs to tell you to make this choice?
We arrived back in the US after mostly raising kids on military bases abroad and we arrived in August. Honestly I didn’t even know red shirting was a thing until I saw some really big kindergarten kids on my son’s first day of school. So no I did t put my five year old on a waitlist for preschool, had never heard of “junior kindergarten” at preschool, etc.
That’s really not an excuse for not researching, talking to others, asking around.
Sweetheart, those are all excuses for "I want my child to have an advantage over yours" and we all know it.
I’m a DP, and leaving aside your tone, it’s not an advantage over your student. Your student has exactly the same right to delay a year as anyone else. Nothing is being taken away from you or your child you just made a different choice. Lose your victim mentality around this.
That PP is just mad they didn't know what they were doing.
I really hate the "savvy parents know to redshirt, it's your fault if you don't" argument, because we're talking about kids.
Of course there are going to be parents who, fir whatever reason, don't know the *unspoken* customs if redshirting in a district, and their kid will wind up at a disadvantage. You can criticize the parents for this but it's the kid who suffers.
Which is why there should be NO UNSPOKEN REDSHIRTING CUSTOMS. This should not be gameable. And relishing the idea that some kids struggle in school because their parents naively thought the published age cutoffs were when you are actually supposed to send your kids, and not just a vague suggestion and all the "smart" parents postpone K a year, is a weird flex.
Have a cut off. Enforce a cut off. Make sure the school work makes sense for kids who meet the cut off. This isn't hard. These are kids. We should all want them ALL to succeed.
Apparently it is hard. The current cutoff sends 4 year olds into the classroom for hours sitting on end, doing age inappropriate activities, with barely any time outdoors. Everyone (even on this thread) agrees that isn’t right for a four year old, and yet that’s The Cutoff. So, apparently, it’s hard.
To your other point, the same published guidelines that you assume everyone does have access to also (at least in FCPS) explains what to do if you don’t want to start your kid. I don’t think this is about whisper networks and secret handshakes. What I think is “savvy” is the parents who have a data-informed sense for what their kids should be doing at 4-5-6 and yes, we should really help parents understand how bad sitting still indoors, doing screen-based learning and endless worksheets really is for early childhood.
So you make the cut off 5. Easy. Everyone agrees 4 is too young for K. So kids should enroll in K in the fall after their 5th birthday. Done.
Or, if you think 5 is too young, then make it 6.
If you don't think kids should be sitting indoors for hours on end, then advocate for that not to be how K works. Is it okay in 1st? No. So sounds like we need to talk to schools about crap curriculums that aren't appropriate for any early elementary kids.
Also your argument that we should just make sure that every parent is "data informed" before making the choice to redshirt ignores reality, which is that some parents are simply never going to get there. Some parents lack the cognitive ability or the language skills or the maturity to do that. Some parents are immigrants who don't speak the language. Some parents just went through a divorce or a death in the family and don't have the bandwidth. Some parents are poor and no matter what the data says, they are going to send their kid to K when the school says they can because they can't afford another year of daycare.
Your way means that the kids of all those parents are just SOL. Nice.
The thing is, “I” can’t make it five. Or six.
I can’t make them let kids under six spend at least half of every day outside.
The only thing I can do is keep my kids in environments that align with their age as best as possible within the published regulations, and vote for people who support later starts in kindergarten and more developmentally appropriate.
Yes. “My way” only helps my kid in the immediate case. But I don’t think there are any benefits to pretending I don’t know what the data says about where my four year old belongs.
why not just homeschool a few years until you feel they are ready then put them in the grade they are supposed to be in? this seems like the best solution. the early years is really not a lot of academics to catch up on.
"They grade they are supposed to be in" is an arbitrary rule you made up in your little head. This just isn't how it works. There are actual rules and you just can't handle that people play by them for some reason. What is your deal?
If you really believed that it's totally arbitrary, then you could have a 12 year old and a 3 yr old in the same classroom. Obviously it's not totally arbitrary.
I can see both sides of this argument because it's ultimately about deciding where to draw the lines and naturally different people want to draw them different places. No one is "wrong" -- it's a question of balancing interests.
I find the vitriol on the thread completely unreasonable. Some of you are vicious and I don't understand why.
Anonymous wrote:Public schools aren’t retaining anyone because that costs $$$. I’ve only heard of retention being offered when a kid missed a lot of a grade due to something like a serious medical issue, or at the end of the Covid school years - 2019-20 or 2020-21 - if a kid didn’t progress during the closures. My neighbor had a young for grade 1st grader in 20-21 and FCPS did offer to let her repeat 1st in person.
But let this thread be a heads up to everyone: redshirting is common, perhaps even expected, in private schools, especially for the younger for grade kids. So plan accordingly.
+1, and I would say it’s increasingly common in public school among parents who read the data on developmentally appropriate settings for 4-5. So, assume if you send a four year old they’ll be youngest by a year+, and an early five year old by a year. None of this is secret, or unavailable information to you.
Since most public schools do an age cut off around September 1st, the number of kids attending K at age 4 is very small (and even people who complain about excessive redshirting don't complain about redshirting a kid who would be 4 during the "normal" cut off). In NY (which is the only place with a midyear cut off that results in a lot of 4 year olds being eligible for K) it's common for people to redshirt those kids and no one complains about it.
The only redshirting people complain about is when people start redshirting kids who would be well over 5 when starting K but they hold them back anyway. Yes, in some privates that's common place, but the school generally encourages it and everyone has a chance to do it -- they like having an older class of K students and often they will strongly encourage redshirting summer or late spring birthdays. Some schools even offer a transitional year for young K students before taking the regular K class, so you still wind up with a fairly age-homogenous class.
But in public that's not the case, and when some parents start deciding their April or May birthday kid needs another year, it can leave other parents stuck with the consequences of those actions without warning. No one is going to get mad that a parent redshirted so their kid could start K at 5, but when you see kids starting K at 6 and a half, it becomes an issue.
Please yell at me now and tell me I'm a "crazy anti-redshirter" for agreeing this specific issue is a problem.
As someone with a young for grade kid, I think it is absolutely insane to consider this a problem whatsoever, and really makes you sound like someone who has no experience with any real problems in life.
My kid with an August birthday who I sent on time (she started K at 5 but was among the youngest in her grade) was viciously bullied by a redshirted child in 1st grade. My kid was 6 years old for the entirety of 1st grade. The bullying child turned 8 in September and was signficantly bigger and taller. Redshirting played a major role in the bullying because while this one child was the leader, there were many older kids in the classroom due to redshirting and when the bully would attack/provoke my kid, she'd cry, and then all the older kids would round on her and call her a baby and tease her for being small and young (she is average height for her age).
I had no idea how prevalent redshirting was when I enrolled my kid in K. She was academically and socially ready for a K classroom full of 5 and 6 year old children. In fact she continues to be at the top of her grade academically and she is well liked by teachers for being a good listener who follows directions and is helpful and kind in the classroom (something that apparently the extra years of preschool or staying home did not help instill in these redshirted kids who are merely bigger and older, not more mature).
I absolutely resent that my child's classroom environment has been dominated by older children who I think should have spent their 5/6 year in K learning out to function in elementary school, but instead spent it elsewhere and arrived at elementary school with their own ideas about how school should work. I resent how common bullying and relational aggression are at the school because of these older-but-less-mature kids.
Call me a crazy anti-redshirted if you want. I think redshirting sucks. Kids should start school at the same age so that they learn the same skills and are generally at the same developmental level. Kids with developmental delays can/should be held back to accommodate their delays, but it shouldn't be at the parents' discretion.
We will be moving school districts before these older kids hit puberty in 3rd grade and we have to deal with that.
As a parent who doesn't care about redshirting one way or another (and has both middle-of-age-for grade and young-for-grade kids, none old-for-grade): the bullying isn't because your kid is small. Bullies will find literally anything to gang up on kids about. One of my kids was bulled for not watching Spongebob Squarepants in a late elementary grade. Does that make sense as a thing to mock a kid over? No. But my kid was a prickly and kind of hard-to-get-to-know kid, so of course they were a target. The actual thing to make fun of was incidental to the act of piling on.
And it's possible (probable?) this older kid is lashing out because:
- they do have delays and you have no idea and the delays are social
- they feel embarassed about your kid doing as well when they are so much older.
PP here. Of course bullying can happen for a whole variety of reasons.
But at my kid's specific school, in specific classrooms where there are a large percent of redshirted kids including one that was significantly older, the bullying was closely related to having a cohort of older, bigger, unsocialized kids. My DD was not the only child targeted, but all the children who were bullied were "on time" kids who were on the younger end of normal for the grade. All the bullies were the oldest kids in class.
Also, it's not just about the age difference. It's also that these redshirted kids were not socialized into elementary school when they were young enough for it help. They arrived at K too old and less malleable. In my child's 1st grade class, those older kids RAN the classroom. This year my kid is in 2nd and due to the bullying issues last year, my kid and others who were targeted are in a classroom without any of the much older kids. The classroom is significantly better, with less conflict and fewer behavioral issues.
I don't have any issue with moderate redshirting for kids with summer birthdays. I don't think you should be allowed to redshirt a kid with a birthday during the school year unless there is a clear reason why delaying kindergarten will help. And I actually think a lot of developmental delays might be made worse by redshirting unless you can show the kids are going to get services to improve the situation. Perhaps some of these delays would be best addressed by having the kid in a classroom with other kids and receiving services through the school.
I honestly do not understand why you continue to keep your child in a school where your DC experiences significant bullying and you believe the classroom activities and level are so wildly inappropriate. It seems weird to me.
You seem very ignorant of the reality that most parents experience. Most parents can’t just switch schools out of the blue.
Right. Which leads parents to make careful decisions about when their kids start school. For example— not sending a kid who may struggle to kindergarten too early.
Unless they don’t know about how prevalent it is because the schools don’t say anything and the other moms apparently don’t volunteer the info. Nice.
What information do you feel is lacking? If you ask your local elementary school they will likely tell you the average kindergarten age. You presumably know your child’s age. Do some research into peer reviewed studies about optimal environments for the child’s age you have and see whether your local or chosen kindergarten matches with that. I’m truly confused what you think someone needs to tell you to make this choice?
We arrived back in the US after mostly raising kids on military bases abroad and we arrived in August. Honestly I didn’t even know red shirting was a thing until I saw some really big kindergarten kids on my son’s first day of school. So no I did t put my five year old on a waitlist for preschool, had never heard of “junior kindergarten” at preschool, etc.
That’s really not an excuse for not researching, talking to others, asking around.
Sweetheart, those are all excuses for "I want my child to have an advantage over yours" and we all know it.
I’m a DP, and leaving aside your tone, it’s not an advantage over your student. Your student has exactly the same right to delay a year as anyone else. Nothing is being taken away from you or your child you just made a different choice. Lose your victim mentality around this.
That PP is just mad they didn't know what they were doing.
I really hate the "savvy parents know to redshirt, it's your fault if you don't" argument, because we're talking about kids.
Of course there are going to be parents who, fir whatever reason, don't know the *unspoken* customs if redshirting in a district, and their kid will wind up at a disadvantage. You can criticize the parents for this but it's the kid who suffers.
Which is why there should be NO UNSPOKEN REDSHIRTING CUSTOMS. This should not be gameable. And relishing the idea that some kids struggle in school because their parents naively thought the published age cutoffs were when you are actually supposed to send your kids, and not just a vague suggestion and all the "smart" parents postpone K a year, is a weird flex.
Have a cut off. Enforce a cut off. Make sure the school work makes sense for kids who meet the cut off. This isn't hard. These are kids. We should all want them ALL to succeed.
Apparently it is hard. The current cutoff sends 4 year olds into the classroom for hours sitting on end, doing age inappropriate activities, with barely any time outdoors. Everyone (even on this thread) agrees that isn’t right for a four year old, and yet that’s The Cutoff. So, apparently, it’s hard.
To your other point, the same published guidelines that you assume everyone does have access to also (at least in FCPS) explains what to do if you don’t want to start your kid. I don’t think this is about whisper networks and secret handshakes. What I think is “savvy” is the parents who have a data-informed sense for what their kids should be doing at 4-5-6 and yes, we should really help parents understand how bad sitting still indoors, doing screen-based learning and endless worksheets really is for early childhood.
So you make the cut off 5. Easy. Everyone agrees 4 is too young for K. So kids should enroll in K in the fall after their 5th birthday. Done.
Or, if you think 5 is too young, then make it 6.
If you don't think kids should be sitting indoors for hours on end, then advocate for that not to be how K works. Is it okay in 1st? No. So sounds like we need to talk to schools about crap curriculums that aren't appropriate for any early elementary kids.
Also your argument that we should just make sure that every parent is "data informed" before making the choice to redshirt ignores reality, which is that some parents are simply never going to get there. Some parents lack the cognitive ability or the language skills or the maturity to do that. Some parents are immigrants who don't speak the language. Some parents just went through a divorce or a death in the family and don't have the bandwidth. Some parents are poor and no matter what the data says, they are going to send their kid to K when the school says they can because they can't afford another year of daycare.
Your way means that the kids of all those parents are just SOL. Nice.
The thing is, “I” can’t make it five. Or six.
I can’t make them let kids under six spend at least half of every day outside.
The only thing I can do is keep my kids in environments that align with their age as best as possible within the published regulations, and vote for people who support later starts in kindergarten and more developmentally appropriate.
Yes. “My way” only helps my kid in the immediate case. But I don’t think there are any benefits to pretending I don’t know what the data says about where my four year old belongs.
why not just homeschool a few years until you feel they are ready then put them in the grade they are supposed to be in? this seems like the best solution. the early years is really not a lot of academics to catch up on.
"They grade they are supposed to be in" is an arbitrary rule you made up in your little head. This just isn't how it works. There are actual rules and you just can't handle that people play by them for some reason. What is your deal?
If you really believed that it's totally arbitrary, then you could have a 12 year old and a 3 yr old in the same classroom. Obviously it's not totally arbitrary.
I can see both sides of this argument because it's ultimately about deciding where to draw the lines and naturally different people want to draw them different places. No one is "wrong" -- it's a question of balancing interests.
I find the vitriol on the thread completely unreasonable. Some of you are vicious and I don't understand why.
It's arbitrary because the schools aren't following this strict rule that someone here has made up. I play by my school's rules, not some whackadoodle here and her natural age nonsense.
Anonymous wrote:Public schools aren’t retaining anyone because that costs $$$. I’ve only heard of retention being offered when a kid missed a lot of a grade due to something like a serious medical issue, or at the end of the Covid school years - 2019-20 or 2020-21 - if a kid didn’t progress during the closures. My neighbor had a young for grade 1st grader in 20-21 and FCPS did offer to let her repeat 1st in person.
But let this thread be a heads up to everyone: redshirting is common, perhaps even expected, in private schools, especially for the younger for grade kids. So plan accordingly.
+1, and I would say it’s increasingly common in public school among parents who read the data on developmentally appropriate settings for 4-5. So, assume if you send a four year old they’ll be youngest by a year+, and an early five year old by a year. None of this is secret, or unavailable information to you.
Since most public schools do an age cut off around September 1st, the number of kids attending K at age 4 is very small (and even people who complain about excessive redshirting don't complain about redshirting a kid who would be 4 during the "normal" cut off). In NY (which is the only place with a midyear cut off that results in a lot of 4 year olds being eligible for K) it's common for people to redshirt those kids and no one complains about it.
The only redshirting people complain about is when people start redshirting kids who would be well over 5 when starting K but they hold them back anyway. Yes, in some privates that's common place, but the school generally encourages it and everyone has a chance to do it -- they like having an older class of K students and often they will strongly encourage redshirting summer or late spring birthdays. Some schools even offer a transitional year for young K students before taking the regular K class, so you still wind up with a fairly age-homogenous class.
But in public that's not the case, and when some parents start deciding their April or May birthday kid needs another year, it can leave other parents stuck with the consequences of those actions without warning. No one is going to get mad that a parent redshirted so their kid could start K at 5, but when you see kids starting K at 6 and a half, it becomes an issue.
Please yell at me now and tell me I'm a "crazy anti-redshirter" for agreeing this specific issue is a problem.
As someone with a young for grade kid, I think it is absolutely insane to consider this a problem whatsoever, and really makes you sound like someone who has no experience with any real problems in life.
My kid with an August birthday who I sent on time (she started K at 5 but was among the youngest in her grade) was viciously bullied by a redshirted child in 1st grade. My kid was 6 years old for the entirety of 1st grade. The bullying child turned 8 in September and was signficantly bigger and taller. Redshirting played a major role in the bullying because while this one child was the leader, there were many older kids in the classroom due to redshirting and when the bully would attack/provoke my kid, she'd cry, and then all the older kids would round on her and call her a baby and tease her for being small and young (she is average height for her age).
I had no idea how prevalent redshirting was when I enrolled my kid in K. She was academically and socially ready for a K classroom full of 5 and 6 year old children. In fact she continues to be at the top of her grade academically and she is well liked by teachers for being a good listener who follows directions and is helpful and kind in the classroom (something that apparently the extra years of preschool or staying home did not help instill in these redshirted kids who are merely bigger and older, not more mature).
I absolutely resent that my child's classroom environment has been dominated by older children who I think should have spent their 5/6 year in K learning out to function in elementary school, but instead spent it elsewhere and arrived at elementary school with their own ideas about how school should work. I resent how common bullying and relational aggression are at the school because of these older-but-less-mature kids.
Call me a crazy anti-redshirted if you want. I think redshirting sucks. Kids should start school at the same age so that they learn the same skills and are generally at the same developmental level. Kids with developmental delays can/should be held back to accommodate their delays, but it shouldn't be at the parents' discretion.
We will be moving school districts before these older kids hit puberty in 3rd grade and we have to deal with that.
As a parent who doesn't care about redshirting one way or another (and has both middle-of-age-for grade and young-for-grade kids, none old-for-grade): the bullying isn't because your kid is small. Bullies will find literally anything to gang up on kids about. One of my kids was bulled for not watching Spongebob Squarepants in a late elementary grade. Does that make sense as a thing to mock a kid over? No. But my kid was a prickly and kind of hard-to-get-to-know kid, so of course they were a target. The actual thing to make fun of was incidental to the act of piling on.
And it's possible (probable?) this older kid is lashing out because:
- they do have delays and you have no idea and the delays are social
- they feel embarassed about your kid doing as well when they are so much older.
PP here. Of course bullying can happen for a whole variety of reasons.
But at my kid's specific school, in specific classrooms where there are a large percent of redshirted kids including one that was significantly older, the bullying was closely related to having a cohort of older, bigger, unsocialized kids. My DD was not the only child targeted, but all the children who were bullied were "on time" kids who were on the younger end of normal for the grade. All the bullies were the oldest kids in class.
Also, it's not just about the age difference. It's also that these redshirted kids were not socialized into elementary school when they were young enough for it help. They arrived at K too old and less malleable. In my child's 1st grade class, those older kids RAN the classroom. This year my kid is in 2nd and due to the bullying issues last year, my kid and others who were targeted are in a classroom without any of the much older kids. The classroom is significantly better, with less conflict and fewer behavioral issues.
I don't have any issue with moderate redshirting for kids with summer birthdays. I don't think you should be allowed to redshirt a kid with a birthday during the school year unless there is a clear reason why delaying kindergarten will help. And I actually think a lot of developmental delays might be made worse by redshirting unless you can show the kids are going to get services to improve the situation. Perhaps some of these delays would be best addressed by having the kid in a classroom with other kids and receiving services through the school.
I honestly do not understand why you continue to keep your child in a school where your DC experiences significant bullying and you believe the classroom activities and level are so wildly inappropriate. It seems weird to me.
You seem very ignorant of the reality that most parents experience. Most parents can’t just switch schools out of the blue.
Right. Which leads parents to make careful decisions about when their kids start school. For example— not sending a kid who may struggle to kindergarten too early.
Or, send our kid and get them the help they need so they don’t struggle.
What "help" do you recommend?
IEP’s. Soooo many kids have them. Professional help often paid for by the school district. I’ve see kids get services for adhd, dyslexia, occupational therapy… I think many people like you overestimate your ability and underestimate the ability of professionals with undergrad and grad degrees in education and therapy.
IEPs are for children with disabilities. You have to qualify for them. You can't just "get an IEP."
- Professional with an undergrad and grad degree in education and psychology.
Then what is the issue you feel that you can’t send a 5 to Kinder? I’m telling you, you’re making it something it’s not. It’s not that hard. Trust me.
Some kids just need a bit more time. That’s the help. It’s so weird you can’t understand that. Professionals and parents agree. Busy bodies with faux concerns about other people’s children don’t get an opinion.
No, they don’t. They need to be in school with age appropriate peers
Could you please share the data you’re sourcing this from? That age-identical classrooms are critical to children’s success? Moreso than the developmental appropriateness of the environment? Because candidly I think you’re making this up as you go along.
My four year old and her seven year old cousin are best friends. It’s amazing to see how she brings out leadership and compassion in her older cousin and how her cousin brings out courage and creativity in her.
The discussion is about peers and a child held back isn't necessarily going to be a leader just because they are older. It harms everyone and when you get to HS, do you want your 14 year old in classes with 19-20 year olds as that is whats happening.
You’re right, a child who is redshirted isn’t necessarily going to be a leader and— parents who are redshirting aren’t always doing it for that reason anyway. So don’t worry about the redshirted kids.
You seem to be suggesting a freshman in high school could be taking classes with a senior— while the 20 y/o would be shockingly rare, it’s not more worrying to have a 19 than an 18 y/o senior. What is your panic about here?
It’s it rare at all. Electives, gym, health ed and math are always mixed. My 13-14 year old freshman had three classes with seniors freshman year. An elective that was auditioned in, pe and math.
Ok so please explain your anxiety around a 14 year old being in a class with a 19 year old that doesn’t exist for an 18 year old?
.
19 year olds in high school isn’t redshirting. Those are kids who failed a year, had transfer issues, are foreign students who need more time for the language, were homeschooled or have GED and need the credit etc etc. It happens rarely, but that won’t be solved by banning redshirting. Some areas have specific adult only high schools for ages 18 plus - maybe advocate for that if it’s an issue in your area.
These kids were held back. Except the fall kids who missed the deadline. Let’s call it what it is. It’s a huge issue when these adults are with young teens.
Nonsense. I’m around a ton of teens. This is 100% a non-issue.
The hyperbole from the anti-redshirt posters is so ridiculous. It’s like none of you have contact with any actual teens.
The redshirted kids at my child's middle school who all started puberty a grade earlier than they would have had they started on time absolutely changed the culture if the school and the experience for the non-redshirted kids, for the worse.
I cannot fathom why anyone who has seen a kid through puberty would be like "oh yeah, it would be great to have an age spread of 18 months in 6th and 7th grade. Super cool." It's already a hard time and it's already harder for the kids who start puberty early or late, but now you want to stretch it out even more? Whyyyyyyyyy? It makes no sense.
I am fine if K is for 6/7 year olds. Just make it official and start school later. But this unofficial system where K is for 4-7 yr olds, and people are supposed to case the joint in advance to guess where in that age spread to send their kid? That's dumb. Just pick an age and have everyone send their kid when they hit that age.
Typical onset of puberty for girls is between 8 and 13 years old. For boys, it’s between 9-14 years old. That’s already a 5-year spread within the realm of completely normal.
You need to calm down.
1) Onset is not not equally distributed along those ranges.
2) Redshirting of non-summer birthdays makes the range even wider, which is a substantial issue. It forces families of on time kids to deal with puberty issues a year earlier than even the earliest year they would otherwise deal with it.
3) I feel very calm, thank you -- my kids are through this. Parents choosing to redshirt have not. They are making a choice based on a perceived disadvantage in kindergarten, not understanding the negative impact 4-6 years later. Both for their kid and dir peers.
There is absolutely no evidence for the bolded statement. You don’t understand statistics.
You don't need evidence for basic math.
Redshirting expands the range if ages in one grade. You can argue whether that's a good thing or a bad thing or a neutral thing. But you can't argue it's not a thing.
Without redshirting, the typical 6th grade class would have 11 year olds turning 12, either during the school year or in the summer following. With redshirting, it will have a mix of 11 and 12 year olds at the beginning of the year, and a mix of 12 and 13 year olds at the end PLUS some non-redshirted summer birthdays who are still 11.
Again, you can argue that's not a big deal or that it only amounts to a few extra minutes months, but mathematically, redshirting expands the age range for the grade. Which means, yes, it expands the range of puberty onset.
These are just facts.
That applies equally to the Summer birthdays you’re good with redshirting.
Anonymous wrote:Public schools aren’t retaining anyone because that costs $$$. I’ve only heard of retention being offered when a kid missed a lot of a grade due to something like a serious medical issue, or at the end of the Covid school years - 2019-20 or 2020-21 - if a kid didn’t progress during the closures. My neighbor had a young for grade 1st grader in 20-21 and FCPS did offer to let her repeat 1st in person.
But let this thread be a heads up to everyone: redshirting is common, perhaps even expected, in private schools, especially for the younger for grade kids. So plan accordingly.
+1, and I would say it’s increasingly common in public school among parents who read the data on developmentally appropriate settings for 4-5. So, assume if you send a four year old they’ll be youngest by a year+, and an early five year old by a year. None of this is secret, or unavailable information to you.
Since most public schools do an age cut off around September 1st, the number of kids attending K at age 4 is very small (and even people who complain about excessive redshirting don't complain about redshirting a kid who would be 4 during the "normal" cut off). In NY (which is the only place with a midyear cut off that results in a lot of 4 year olds being eligible for K) it's common for people to redshirt those kids and no one complains about it.
Ok, but if you are just starting late because you think the school environment is not appropriate for a 4,5,6,7 year old why not homeschool then join the closest age cohert when you feel your child is ready. You're not making much sense here.
The only redshirting people complain about is when people start redshirting kids who would be well over 5 when starting K but they hold them back anyway. Yes, in some privates that's common place, but the school generally encourages it and everyone has a chance to do it -- they like having an older class of K students and often they will strongly encourage redshirting summer or late spring birthdays. Some schools even offer a transitional year for young K students before taking the regular K class, so you still wind up with a fairly age-homogenous class.
But in public that's not the case, and when some parents start deciding their April or May birthday kid needs another year, it can leave other parents stuck with the consequences of those actions without warning. No one is going to get mad that a parent redshirted so their kid could start K at 5, but when you see kids starting K at 6 and a half, it becomes an issue.
Please yell at me now and tell me I'm a "crazy anti-redshirter" for agreeing this specific issue is a problem.
As someone with a young for grade kid, I think it is absolutely insane to consider this a problem whatsoever, and really makes you sound like someone who has no experience with any real problems in life.
My kid with an August birthday who I sent on time (she started K at 5 but was among the youngest in her grade) was viciously bullied by a redshirted child in 1st grade. My kid was 6 years old for the entirety of 1st grade. The bullying child turned 8 in September and was signficantly bigger and taller. Redshirting played a major role in the bullying because while this one child was the leader, there were many older kids in the classroom due to redshirting and when the bully would attack/provoke my kid, she'd cry, and then all the older kids would round on her and call her a baby and tease her for being small and young (she is average height for her age).
I had no idea how prevalent redshirting was when I enrolled my kid in K. She was academically and socially ready for a K classroom full of 5 and 6 year old children. In fact she continues to be at the top of her grade academically and she is well liked by teachers for being a good listener who follows directions and is helpful and kind in the classroom (something that apparently the extra years of preschool or staying home did not help instill in these redshirted kids who are merely bigger and older, not more mature).
I absolutely resent that my child's classroom environment has been dominated by older children who I think should have spent their 5/6 year in K learning out to function in elementary school, but instead spent it elsewhere and arrived at elementary school with their own ideas about how school should work. I resent how common bullying and relational aggression are at the school because of these older-but-less-mature kids.
Call me a crazy anti-redshirted if you want. I think redshirting sucks. Kids should start school at the same age so that they learn the same skills and are generally at the same developmental level. Kids with developmental delays can/should be held back to accommodate their delays, but it shouldn't be at the parents' discretion.
We will be moving school districts before these older kids hit puberty in 3rd grade and we have to deal with that.
As a parent who doesn't care about redshirting one way or another (and has both middle-of-age-for grade and young-for-grade kids, none old-for-grade): the bullying isn't because your kid is small. Bullies will find literally anything to gang up on kids about. One of my kids was bulled for not watching Spongebob Squarepants in a late elementary grade. Does that make sense as a thing to mock a kid over? No. But my kid was a prickly and kind of hard-to-get-to-know kid, so of course they were a target. The actual thing to make fun of was incidental to the act of piling on.
And it's possible (probable?) this older kid is lashing out because:
- they do have delays and you have no idea and the delays are social
- they feel embarassed about your kid doing as well when they are so much older.
PP here. Of course bullying can happen for a whole variety of reasons.
But at my kid's specific school, in specific classrooms where there are a large percent of redshirted kids including one that was significantly older, the bullying was closely related to having a cohort of older, bigger, unsocialized kids. My DD was not the only child targeted, but all the children who were bullied were "on time" kids who were on the younger end of normal for the grade. All the bullies were the oldest kids in class.
Also, it's not just about the age difference. It's also that these redshirted kids were not socialized into elementary school when they were young enough for it help. They arrived at K too old and less malleable. In my child's 1st grade class, those older kids RAN the classroom. This year my kid is in 2nd and due to the bullying issues last year, my kid and others who were targeted are in a classroom without any of the much older kids. The classroom is significantly better, with less conflict and fewer behavioral issues.
I don't have any issue with moderate redshirting for kids with summer birthdays. I don't think you should be allowed to redshirt a kid with a birthday during the school year unless there is a clear reason why delaying kindergarten will help. And I actually think a lot of developmental delays might be made worse by redshirting unless you can show the kids are going to get services to improve the situation. Perhaps some of these delays would be best addressed by having the kid in a classroom with other kids and receiving services through the school.
I honestly do not understand why you continue to keep your child in a school where your DC experiences significant bullying and you believe the classroom activities and level are so wildly inappropriate. It seems weird to me.
You seem very ignorant of the reality that most parents experience. Most parents can’t just switch schools out of the blue.
Right. Which leads parents to make careful decisions about when their kids start school. For example— not sending a kid who may struggle to kindergarten too early.
Unless they don’t know about how prevalent it is because the schools don’t say anything and the other moms apparently don’t volunteer the info. Nice.
What information do you feel is lacking? If you ask your local elementary school they will likely tell you the average kindergarten age. You presumably know your child’s age. Do some research into peer reviewed studies about optimal environments for the child’s age you have and see whether your local or chosen kindergarten matches with that. I’m truly confused what you think someone needs to tell you to make this choice?
We arrived back in the US after mostly raising kids on military bases abroad and we arrived in August. Honestly I didn’t even know red shirting was a thing until I saw some really big kindergarten kids on my son’s first day of school. So no I did t put my five year old on a waitlist for preschool, had never heard of “junior kindergarten” at preschool, etc.
That’s really not an excuse for not researching, talking to others, asking around.
Sweetheart, those are all excuses for "I want my child to have an advantage over yours" and we all know it.
I’m a DP, and leaving aside your tone, it’s not an advantage over your student. Your student has exactly the same right to delay a year as anyone else. Nothing is being taken away from you or your child you just made a different choice. Lose your victim mentality around this.
That PP is just mad they didn't know what they were doing.
I really hate the "savvy parents know to redshirt, it's your fault if you don't" argument, because we're talking about kids.
Of course there are going to be parents who, fir whatever reason, don't know the *unspoken* customs if redshirting in a district, and their kid will wind up at a disadvantage. You can criticize the parents for this but it's the kid who suffers.
Which is why there should be NO UNSPOKEN REDSHIRTING CUSTOMS. This should not be gameable. And relishing the idea that some kids struggle in school because their parents naively thought the published age cutoffs were when you are actually supposed to send your kids, and not just a vague suggestion and all the "smart" parents postpone K a year, is a weird flex.
Have a cut off. Enforce a cut off. Make sure the school work makes sense for kids who meet the cut off. This isn't hard. These are kids. We should all want them ALL to succeed.
Apparently it is hard. The current cutoff sends 4 year olds into the classroom for hours sitting on end, doing age inappropriate activities, with barely any time outdoors. Everyone (even on this thread) agrees that isn’t right for a four year old, and yet that’s The Cutoff. So, apparently, it’s hard.
To your other point, the same published guidelines that you assume everyone does have access to also (at least in FCPS) explains what to do if you don’t want to start your kid. I don’t think this is about whisper networks and secret handshakes. What I think is “savvy” is the parents who have a data-informed sense for what their kids should be doing at 4-5-6 and yes, we should really help parents understand how bad sitting still indoors, doing screen-based learning and endless worksheets really is for early childhood.
So you make the cut off 5. Easy. Everyone agrees 4 is too young for K. So kids should enroll in K in the fall after their 5th birthday. Done.
Or, if you think 5 is too young, then make it 6.
If you don't think kids should be sitting indoors for hours on end, then advocate for that not to be how K works. Is it okay in 1st? No. So sounds like we need to talk to schools about crap curriculums that aren't appropriate for any early elementary kids.
Also your argument that we should just make sure that every parent is "data informed" before making the choice to redshirt ignores reality, which is that some parents are simply never going to get there. Some parents lack the cognitive ability or the language skills or the maturity to do that. Some parents are immigrants who don't speak the language. Some parents just went through a divorce or a death in the family and don't have the bandwidth. Some parents are poor and no matter what the data says, they are going to send their kid to K when the school says they can because they can't afford another year of daycare.
Your way means that the kids of all those parents are just SOL. Nice.
The thing is, “I” can’t make it five. Or six.
I can’t make them let kids under six spend at least half of every day outside.
The only thing I can do is keep my kids in environments that align with their age as best as possible within the published regulations, and vote for people who support later starts in kindergarten and more developmentally appropriate.
Yes. “My way” only helps my kid in the immediate case. But I don’t think there are any benefits to pretending I don’t know what the data says about where my four year old belongs.
why not just homeschool a few years until you feel they are ready then put them in the grade they are supposed to be in? this seems like the best solution. the early years is really not a lot of academics to catch up on.
"They grade they are supposed to be in" is an arbitrary rule you made up in your little head. This just isn't how it works. There are actual rules and you just can't handle that people play by them for some reason. What is your deal?
Ok, but ypu are saying you are holding because it is an inappropriate environment.. so homeschool for a few years and put them in the closest age cohert later. This isn't brain surgery. You aren't making much sense. Wait at home until 5th homeschooling if that is what you consider the appropriate age but then put your 10/11 year old with age peers.
How about, no. Luckily my kids are past kindergarten age now but if you're worried about your precious being around pubescent kids then you can homeschool until you feel they are at an age they can socialize with others.
It's not about anyone's kids being more precious. The puberty issue is totally understandable and not about fear of socializing with other kids. It's about the specific range of behaviors associated with puberty and not wanting to spread them out even more.
Middle School was basically invented to corral kids in puberty together because they have specific needs that are not well met in elementary or high school. Redshirting pushes those needs back into elementary but putting what would be MS age kids in elementary classes.
Anonymous wrote:Public schools aren’t retaining anyone because that costs $$$. I’ve only heard of retention being offered when a kid missed a lot of a grade due to something like a serious medical issue, or at the end of the Covid school years - 2019-20 or 2020-21 - if a kid didn’t progress during the closures. My neighbor had a young for grade 1st grader in 20-21 and FCPS did offer to let her repeat 1st in person.
But let this thread be a heads up to everyone: redshirting is common, perhaps even expected, in private schools, especially for the younger for grade kids. So plan accordingly.
+1, and I would say it’s increasingly common in public school among parents who read the data on developmentally appropriate settings for 4-5. So, assume if you send a four year old they’ll be youngest by a year+, and an early five year old by a year. None of this is secret, or unavailable information to you.
Since most public schools do an age cut off around September 1st, the number of kids attending K at age 4 is very small (and even people who complain about excessive redshirting don't complain about redshirting a kid who would be 4 during the "normal" cut off). In NY (which is the only place with a midyear cut off that results in a lot of 4 year olds being eligible for K) it's common for people to redshirt those kids and no one complains about it.
The only redshirting people complain about is when people start redshirting kids who would be well over 5 when starting K but they hold them back anyway. Yes, in some privates that's common place, but the school generally encourages it and everyone has a chance to do it -- they like having an older class of K students and often they will strongly encourage redshirting summer or late spring birthdays. Some schools even offer a transitional year for young K students before taking the regular K class, so you still wind up with a fairly age-homogenous class.
But in public that's not the case, and when some parents start deciding their April or May birthday kid needs another year, it can leave other parents stuck with the consequences of those actions without warning. No one is going to get mad that a parent redshirted so their kid could start K at 5, but when you see kids starting K at 6 and a half, it becomes an issue.
Please yell at me now and tell me I'm a "crazy anti-redshirter" for agreeing this specific issue is a problem.
As someone with a young for grade kid, I think it is absolutely insane to consider this a problem whatsoever, and really makes you sound like someone who has no experience with any real problems in life.
My kid with an August birthday who I sent on time (she started K at 5 but was among the youngest in her grade) was viciously bullied by a redshirted child in 1st grade. My kid was 6 years old for the entirety of 1st grade. The bullying child turned 8 in September and was signficantly bigger and taller. Redshirting played a major role in the bullying because while this one child was the leader, there were many older kids in the classroom due to redshirting and when the bully would attack/provoke my kid, she'd cry, and then all the older kids would round on her and call her a baby and tease her for being small and young (she is average height for her age).
I had no idea how prevalent redshirting was when I enrolled my kid in K. She was academically and socially ready for a K classroom full of 5 and 6 year old children. In fact she continues to be at the top of her grade academically and she is well liked by teachers for being a good listener who follows directions and is helpful and kind in the classroom (something that apparently the extra years of preschool or staying home did not help instill in these redshirted kids who are merely bigger and older, not more mature).
I absolutely resent that my child's classroom environment has been dominated by older children who I think should have spent their 5/6 year in K learning out to function in elementary school, but instead spent it elsewhere and arrived at elementary school with their own ideas about how school should work. I resent how common bullying and relational aggression are at the school because of these older-but-less-mature kids.
Call me a crazy anti-redshirted if you want. I think redshirting sucks. Kids should start school at the same age so that they learn the same skills and are generally at the same developmental level. Kids with developmental delays can/should be held back to accommodate their delays, but it shouldn't be at the parents' discretion.
We will be moving school districts before these older kids hit puberty in 3rd grade and we have to deal with that.
As a parent who doesn't care about redshirting one way or another (and has both middle-of-age-for grade and young-for-grade kids, none old-for-grade): the bullying isn't because your kid is small. Bullies will find literally anything to gang up on kids about. One of my kids was bulled for not watching Spongebob Squarepants in a late elementary grade. Does that make sense as a thing to mock a kid over? No. But my kid was a prickly and kind of hard-to-get-to-know kid, so of course they were a target. The actual thing to make fun of was incidental to the act of piling on.
And it's possible (probable?) this older kid is lashing out because:
- they do have delays and you have no idea and the delays are social
- they feel embarassed about your kid doing as well when they are so much older.
PP here. Of course bullying can happen for a whole variety of reasons.
But at my kid's specific school, in specific classrooms where there are a large percent of redshirted kids including one that was significantly older, the bullying was closely related to having a cohort of older, bigger, unsocialized kids. My DD was not the only child targeted, but all the children who were bullied were "on time" kids who were on the younger end of normal for the grade. All the bullies were the oldest kids in class.
Also, it's not just about the age difference. It's also that these redshirted kids were not socialized into elementary school when they were young enough for it help. They arrived at K too old and less malleable. In my child's 1st grade class, those older kids RAN the classroom. This year my kid is in 2nd and due to the bullying issues last year, my kid and others who were targeted are in a classroom without any of the much older kids. The classroom is significantly better, with less conflict and fewer behavioral issues.
I don't have any issue with moderate redshirting for kids with summer birthdays. I don't think you should be allowed to redshirt a kid with a birthday during the school year unless there is a clear reason why delaying kindergarten will help. And I actually think a lot of developmental delays might be made worse by redshirting unless you can show the kids are going to get services to improve the situation. Perhaps some of these delays would be best addressed by having the kid in a classroom with other kids and receiving services through the school.
I honestly do not understand why you continue to keep your child in a school where your DC experiences significant bullying and you believe the classroom activities and level are so wildly inappropriate. It seems weird to me.
You seem very ignorant of the reality that most parents experience. Most parents can’t just switch schools out of the blue.
Right. Which leads parents to make careful decisions about when their kids start school. For example— not sending a kid who may struggle to kindergarten too early.
Unless they don’t know about how prevalent it is because the schools don’t say anything and the other moms apparently don’t volunteer the info. Nice.
What information do you feel is lacking? If you ask your local elementary school they will likely tell you the average kindergarten age. You presumably know your child’s age. Do some research into peer reviewed studies about optimal environments for the child’s age you have and see whether your local or chosen kindergarten matches with that. I’m truly confused what you think someone needs to tell you to make this choice?
We arrived back in the US after mostly raising kids on military bases abroad and we arrived in August. Honestly I didn’t even know red shirting was a thing until I saw some really big kindergarten kids on my son’s first day of school. So no I did t put my five year old on a waitlist for preschool, had never heard of “junior kindergarten” at preschool, etc.
That’s really not an excuse for not researching, talking to others, asking around.
Sweetheart, those are all excuses for "I want my child to have an advantage over yours" and we all know it.
I’m a DP, and leaving aside your tone, it’s not an advantage over your student. Your student has exactly the same right to delay a year as anyone else. Nothing is being taken away from you or your child you just made a different choice. Lose your victim mentality around this.
That PP is just mad they didn't know what they were doing.
I really hate the "savvy parents know to redshirt, it's your fault if you don't" argument, because we're talking about kids.
Of course there are going to be parents who, fir whatever reason, don't know the *unspoken* customs if redshirting in a district, and their kid will wind up at a disadvantage. You can criticize the parents for this but it's the kid who suffers.
Which is why there should be NO UNSPOKEN REDSHIRTING CUSTOMS. This should not be gameable. And relishing the idea that some kids struggle in school because their parents naively thought the published age cutoffs were when you are actually supposed to send your kids, and not just a vague suggestion and all the "smart" parents postpone K a year, is a weird flex.
Have a cut off. Enforce a cut off. Make sure the school work makes sense for kids who meet the cut off. This isn't hard. These are kids. We should all want them ALL to succeed.
Apparently it is hard. The current cutoff sends 4 year olds into the classroom for hours sitting on end, doing age inappropriate activities, with barely any time outdoors. Everyone (even on this thread) agrees that isn’t right for a four year old, and yet that’s The Cutoff. So, apparently, it’s hard.
To your other point, the same published guidelines that you assume everyone does have access to also (at least in FCPS) explains what to do if you don’t want to start your kid. I don’t think this is about whisper networks and secret handshakes. What I think is “savvy” is the parents who have a data-informed sense for what their kids should be doing at 4-5-6 and yes, we should really help parents understand how bad sitting still indoors, doing screen-based learning and endless worksheets really is for early childhood.
So you make the cut off 5. Easy. Everyone agrees 4 is too young for K. So kids should enroll in K in the fall after their 5th birthday. Done.
Or, if you think 5 is too young, then make it 6.
If you don't think kids should be sitting indoors for hours on end, then advocate for that not to be how K works. Is it okay in 1st? No. So sounds like we need to talk to schools about crap curriculums that aren't appropriate for any early elementary kids.
Also your argument that we should just make sure that every parent is "data informed" before making the choice to redshirt ignores reality, which is that some parents are simply never going to get there. Some parents lack the cognitive ability or the language skills or the maturity to do that. Some parents are immigrants who don't speak the language. Some parents just went through a divorce or a death in the family and don't have the bandwidth. Some parents are poor and no matter what the data says, they are going to send their kid to K when the school says they can because they can't afford another year of daycare.
Your way means that the kids of all those parents are just SOL. Nice.
The thing is, “I” can’t make it five. Or six.
I can’t make them let kids under six spend at least half of every day outside.
The only thing I can do is keep my kids in environments that align with their age as best as possible within the published regulations, and vote for people who support later starts in kindergarten and more developmentally appropriate.
Yes. “My way” only helps my kid in the immediate case. But I don’t think there are any benefits to pretending I don’t know what the data says about where my four year old belongs.
why not just homeschool a few years until you feel they are ready then put them in the grade they are supposed to be in? this seems like the best solution. the early years is really not a lot of academics to catch up on.
"They grade they are supposed to be in" is an arbitrary rule you made up in your little head. This just isn't how it works. There are actual rules and you just can't handle that people play by them for some reason. What is your deal?
If you really believed that it's totally arbitrary, then you could have a 12 year old and a 3 yr old in the same classroom. Obviously it's not totally arbitrary.
I can see both sides of this argument because it's ultimately about deciding where to draw the lines and naturally different people want to draw them different places. No one is "wrong" -- it's a question of balancing interests.
I find the vitriol on the thread completely unreasonable. Some of you are vicious and I don't understand why.
She’s saying the poster is arbitrary because people who redshirt *are* following the rules. So “the grade you’re supposed to be in” is something in the PPs mind because everyone on this thread agrees four year olds shouldn’t go to K, but The Guidelines say they can. So what’s the grade they’re “supposed” to be jn?
Anonymous wrote:Public schools aren’t retaining anyone because that costs $$$. I’ve only heard of retention being offered when a kid missed a lot of a grade due to something like a serious medical issue, or at the end of the Covid school years - 2019-20 or 2020-21 - if a kid didn’t progress during the closures. My neighbor had a young for grade 1st grader in 20-21 and FCPS did offer to let her repeat 1st in person.
But let this thread be a heads up to everyone: redshirting is common, perhaps even expected, in private schools, especially for the younger for grade kids. So plan accordingly.
+1, and I would say it’s increasingly common in public school among parents who read the data on developmentally appropriate settings for 4-5. So, assume if you send a four year old they’ll be youngest by a year+, and an early five year old by a year. None of this is secret, or unavailable information to you.
Since most public schools do an age cut off around September 1st, the number of kids attending K at age 4 is very small (and even people who complain about excessive redshirting don't complain about redshirting a kid who would be 4 during the "normal" cut off). In NY (which is the only place with a midyear cut off that results in a lot of 4 year olds being eligible for K) it's common for people to redshirt those kids and no one complains about it.
Ok, but if you are just starting late because you think the school environment is not appropriate for a 4,5,6,7 year old why not homeschool then join the closest age cohert when you feel your child is ready. You're not making much sense here.
The only redshirting people complain about is when people start redshirting kids who would be well over 5 when starting K but they hold them back anyway. Yes, in some privates that's common place, but the school generally encourages it and everyone has a chance to do it -- they like having an older class of K students and often they will strongly encourage redshirting summer or late spring birthdays. Some schools even offer a transitional year for young K students before taking the regular K class, so you still wind up with a fairly age-homogenous class.
But in public that's not the case, and when some parents start deciding their April or May birthday kid needs another year, it can leave other parents stuck with the consequences of those actions without warning. No one is going to get mad that a parent redshirted so their kid could start K at 5, but when you see kids starting K at 6 and a half, it becomes an issue.
Please yell at me now and tell me I'm a "crazy anti-redshirter" for agreeing this specific issue is a problem.
As someone with a young for grade kid, I think it is absolutely insane to consider this a problem whatsoever, and really makes you sound like someone who has no experience with any real problems in life.
My kid with an August birthday who I sent on time (she started K at 5 but was among the youngest in her grade) was viciously bullied by a redshirted child in 1st grade. My kid was 6 years old for the entirety of 1st grade. The bullying child turned 8 in September and was signficantly bigger and taller. Redshirting played a major role in the bullying because while this one child was the leader, there were many older kids in the classroom due to redshirting and when the bully would attack/provoke my kid, she'd cry, and then all the older kids would round on her and call her a baby and tease her for being small and young (she is average height for her age).
I had no idea how prevalent redshirting was when I enrolled my kid in K. She was academically and socially ready for a K classroom full of 5 and 6 year old children. In fact she continues to be at the top of her grade academically and she is well liked by teachers for being a good listener who follows directions and is helpful and kind in the classroom (something that apparently the extra years of preschool or staying home did not help instill in these redshirted kids who are merely bigger and older, not more mature).
I absolutely resent that my child's classroom environment has been dominated by older children who I think should have spent their 5/6 year in K learning out to function in elementary school, but instead spent it elsewhere and arrived at elementary school with their own ideas about how school should work. I resent how common bullying and relational aggression are at the school because of these older-but-less-mature kids.
Call me a crazy anti-redshirted if you want. I think redshirting sucks. Kids should start school at the same age so that they learn the same skills and are generally at the same developmental level. Kids with developmental delays can/should be held back to accommodate their delays, but it shouldn't be at the parents' discretion.
We will be moving school districts before these older kids hit puberty in 3rd grade and we have to deal with that.
As a parent who doesn't care about redshirting one way or another (and has both middle-of-age-for grade and young-for-grade kids, none old-for-grade): the bullying isn't because your kid is small. Bullies will find literally anything to gang up on kids about. One of my kids was bulled for not watching Spongebob Squarepants in a late elementary grade. Does that make sense as a thing to mock a kid over? No. But my kid was a prickly and kind of hard-to-get-to-know kid, so of course they were a target. The actual thing to make fun of was incidental to the act of piling on.
And it's possible (probable?) this older kid is lashing out because:
- they do have delays and you have no idea and the delays are social
- they feel embarassed about your kid doing as well when they are so much older.
PP here. Of course bullying can happen for a whole variety of reasons.
But at my kid's specific school, in specific classrooms where there are a large percent of redshirted kids including one that was significantly older, the bullying was closely related to having a cohort of older, bigger, unsocialized kids. My DD was not the only child targeted, but all the children who were bullied were "on time" kids who were on the younger end of normal for the grade. All the bullies were the oldest kids in class.
Also, it's not just about the age difference. It's also that these redshirted kids were not socialized into elementary school when they were young enough for it help. They arrived at K too old and less malleable. In my child's 1st grade class, those older kids RAN the classroom. This year my kid is in 2nd and due to the bullying issues last year, my kid and others who were targeted are in a classroom without any of the much older kids. The classroom is significantly better, with less conflict and fewer behavioral issues.
I don't have any issue with moderate redshirting for kids with summer birthdays. I don't think you should be allowed to redshirt a kid with a birthday during the school year unless there is a clear reason why delaying kindergarten will help. And I actually think a lot of developmental delays might be made worse by redshirting unless you can show the kids are going to get services to improve the situation. Perhaps some of these delays would be best addressed by having the kid in a classroom with other kids and receiving services through the school.
I honestly do not understand why you continue to keep your child in a school where your DC experiences significant bullying and you believe the classroom activities and level are so wildly inappropriate. It seems weird to me.
You seem very ignorant of the reality that most parents experience. Most parents can’t just switch schools out of the blue.
Right. Which leads parents to make careful decisions about when their kids start school. For example— not sending a kid who may struggle to kindergarten too early.
Unless they don’t know about how prevalent it is because the schools don’t say anything and the other moms apparently don’t volunteer the info. Nice.
What information do you feel is lacking? If you ask your local elementary school they will likely tell you the average kindergarten age. You presumably know your child’s age. Do some research into peer reviewed studies about optimal environments for the child’s age you have and see whether your local or chosen kindergarten matches with that. I’m truly confused what you think someone needs to tell you to make this choice?
We arrived back in the US after mostly raising kids on military bases abroad and we arrived in August. Honestly I didn’t even know red shirting was a thing until I saw some really big kindergarten kids on my son’s first day of school. So no I did t put my five year old on a waitlist for preschool, had never heard of “junior kindergarten” at preschool, etc.
That’s really not an excuse for not researching, talking to others, asking around.
Sweetheart, those are all excuses for "I want my child to have an advantage over yours" and we all know it.
I’m a DP, and leaving aside your tone, it’s not an advantage over your student. Your student has exactly the same right to delay a year as anyone else. Nothing is being taken away from you or your child you just made a different choice. Lose your victim mentality around this.
That PP is just mad they didn't know what they were doing.
I really hate the "savvy parents know to redshirt, it's your fault if you don't" argument, because we're talking about kids.
Of course there are going to be parents who, fir whatever reason, don't know the *unspoken* customs if redshirting in a district, and their kid will wind up at a disadvantage. You can criticize the parents for this but it's the kid who suffers.
Which is why there should be NO UNSPOKEN REDSHIRTING CUSTOMS. This should not be gameable. And relishing the idea that some kids struggle in school because their parents naively thought the published age cutoffs were when you are actually supposed to send your kids, and not just a vague suggestion and all the "smart" parents postpone K a year, is a weird flex.
Have a cut off. Enforce a cut off. Make sure the school work makes sense for kids who meet the cut off. This isn't hard. These are kids. We should all want them ALL to succeed.
Apparently it is hard. The current cutoff sends 4 year olds into the classroom for hours sitting on end, doing age inappropriate activities, with barely any time outdoors. Everyone (even on this thread) agrees that isn’t right for a four year old, and yet that’s The Cutoff. So, apparently, it’s hard.
To your other point, the same published guidelines that you assume everyone does have access to also (at least in FCPS) explains what to do if you don’t want to start your kid. I don’t think this is about whisper networks and secret handshakes. What I think is “savvy” is the parents who have a data-informed sense for what their kids should be doing at 4-5-6 and yes, we should really help parents understand how bad sitting still indoors, doing screen-based learning and endless worksheets really is for early childhood.
So you make the cut off 5. Easy. Everyone agrees 4 is too young for K. So kids should enroll in K in the fall after their 5th birthday. Done.
Or, if you think 5 is too young, then make it 6.
If you don't think kids should be sitting indoors for hours on end, then advocate for that not to be how K works. Is it okay in 1st? No. So sounds like we need to talk to schools about crap curriculums that aren't appropriate for any early elementary kids.
Also your argument that we should just make sure that every parent is "data informed" before making the choice to redshirt ignores reality, which is that some parents are simply never going to get there. Some parents lack the cognitive ability or the language skills or the maturity to do that. Some parents are immigrants who don't speak the language. Some parents just went through a divorce or a death in the family and don't have the bandwidth. Some parents are poor and no matter what the data says, they are going to send their kid to K when the school says they can because they can't afford another year of daycare.
Your way means that the kids of all those parents are just SOL. Nice.
The thing is, “I” can’t make it five. Or six.
I can’t make them let kids under six spend at least half of every day outside.
The only thing I can do is keep my kids in environments that align with their age as best as possible within the published regulations, and vote for people who support later starts in kindergarten and more developmentally appropriate.
Yes. “My way” only helps my kid in the immediate case. But I don’t think there are any benefits to pretending I don’t know what the data says about where my four year old belongs.
why not just homeschool a few years until you feel they are ready then put them in the grade they are supposed to be in? this seems like the best solution. the early years is really not a lot of academics to catch up on.
"They grade they are supposed to be in" is an arbitrary rule you made up in your little head. This just isn't how it works. There are actual rules and you just can't handle that people play by them for some reason. What is your deal?
Ok, but ypu are saying you are holding because it is an inappropriate environment.. so homeschool for a few years and put them in the closest age cohert later. This isn't brain surgery. You aren't making much sense. Wait at home until 5th homeschooling if that is what you consider the appropriate age but then put your 10/11 year old with age peers.
How about, no. Luckily my kids are past kindergarten age now but if you're worried about your precious being around pubescent kids then you can homeschool until you feel they are at an age they can socialize with others.
It's not about anyone's kids being more precious. The puberty issue is totally understandable and not about fear of socializing with other kids. It's about the specific range of behaviors associated with puberty and not wanting to spread them out even more.
Middle School was basically invented to corral kids in puberty together because they have specific needs that are not well met in elementary or high school. Redshirting pushes those needs back into elementary but putting what would be MS age kids in elementary classes.
Ha. My redshirted 8th grader has delayed puberty. So thankful he's not in high school, a foot shorter than his "peers". Puberty doesn't happen right on time where the oldest kids naturally start first. Similarly my non redshirted daughter is also going to be a late bloomer and looks nothing like her younger but more more physically developed classmates. So, spare me the puberty argument.
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