NOT redshirting an August birthday

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is the best article on it from the Atlantic. It advocates all boys starting later. I don't disagree from my own experiences as a girl student and also from seeing my sons and daughters. Boys just aren't as good as students as girls and lag in sitting still, paying attention and emotional maturity. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/10/boys-delayed-entry-school-start-redshirting/671238/

+1 I used to teach middle school, and by that age is it very obvious which boys have summer birthdays (and were not redshirted)

And, those kids are being age appropriate. How is that an issue? I don’t expect my young for the grade child to behaving a year older than their age as it’s not developmentally appropriate. And, yet academically they are one of the higher preforming students. Teachers need to have appropriate expectations for students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I find all the people claiming their kids would be “so bored” to be odd, but I generally think parents claiming their children are so smart that school bores them to be a little bit of a red flag. I didn’t redshirt, just my general life observations.

But what you are missing is that if you redshirt, your child could wind up 12+ months older than peers in their grade level, as opposed to 9-11 months younger. In K-2nd when there's already a pretty broad range of normal of things like learning to read, I'd rather my average kid be in the group closer to her actual age, even if she's the youngest, than be a whole year-plus older.

I have zero problems with redshirting but personally would not do it unless my kid was showing signs of an social or cognitive delay. In my experience with a kid with a birthday right before the cut off, even an average kid can essentially "play up" to the level of the older kids in class, as long as they have the same PK preparation and no LDs or special needs. My kid might be the youngest in class, but there are plenty of kids who are within only a couple months of her, so it honestly doesn't even register. There are only a few kids who are actually 11 months older, and yes, those kids seem more mature and catch on faster. But a redshirted would be a full year older and then some -- it would make the differences even more pronounced.

It's really not about thinking your kid is so advanced.

Your math is wrong. You're ignoring that there are kids who are redshirted who are 12-15 months older than a non-redshirted kid. So the kid born in late August near the cutoff is 0-15 months younger or 1 week-12 months older than their class. They actually fit more closely in the redshirted class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just remember that if you redshirt, you'll have an 18 year old adult to get through senior year of high school.

Just a reminder- your son will be 18 graduating from high school like the majority of his classmates and he will go off to college, or school, or the military, or work with an added yr of maturity. Not a bad thing.

[Anonymous]

In a lot of areas of the country that start school in early to mid August, the school cutoff is July 31 these days. So all those August and September kids - some of the most common birthday months - have to wait to start school and are 18 for all or almost all of senior year. Just like a kid who has a birthday in January/February will be 18 for about half of senior year. Not really a big deal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most people make this decision based not on whether their 2.5 (or 4.5) year old “seems ready”, but thinking about 5/10/15 years down the line and preferring their kid to not be the youngest in the class at that point.

I don't get why people are so convinced that being younger will be a liability but being older would not be. For both boys and girls, being significantly older (a year plus) can create issues when they enter puberty before any of their classmates. Barring delays that could make it hard for them to keep up in PK/K, most kids will do better socially and academically if they stay with the age cohort closest in age to them, even if they are on the younger end of that range.

This has literally never happened to a redshirted kid.
-a redshirted kid with a mostly- redshirted friend group (because the ones that were a year younger were…clearly a year younger).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I find all the people claiming their kids would be “so bored” to be odd, but I generally think parents claiming their children are so smart that school bores them to be a little bit of a red flag. I didn’t redshirt, just my general life observations.

But what you are missing is that if you redshirt, your child could wind up 12+ months older than peers in their grade level, as opposed to 9-11 months younger. In K-2nd when there's already a pretty broad range of normal of things like learning to read, I'd rather my average kid be in the group closer to her actual age, even if she's the youngest, than be a whole year-plus older.

I have zero problems with redshirting but personally would not do it unless my kid was showing signs of an social or cognitive delay. In my experience with a kid with a birthday right before the cut off, even an average kid can essentially "play up" to the level of the older kids in class, as long as they have the same PK preparation and no LDs or special needs. My kid might be the youngest in class, but there are plenty of kids who are within only a couple months of her, so it honestly doesn't even register. There are only a few kids who are actually 11 months older, and yes, those kids seem more mature and catch on faster. But a redshirted would be a full year older and then some -- it would make the differences even more pronounced.

It's really not about thinking your kid is so advanced.

Your math is wrong. You're ignoring that there are kids who are redshirted who are 12-15 months older than a non-redshirted kid. So the kid born in late August near the cutoff is 0-15 months younger or 1 week-12 months older than their class. They actually fit more closely in the redshirted class.

My math isn’t wrong, you are just assuming a situation where redshirting is common! In my district, redshirting is very hard to do so you will have, at most, one or two redshirted kids in class. And those kids pretty much always have delays that resulted in the consent to redshirt. Many classes have no redshirted kids at all. So even if you child was born the day before the cut off, they will be in a classroom where 99-100% of kids are within the same 12 month window.

This is the problem with liberal redshirting policies— it pushes more parents redshirt because if they don’t, their kid could be the youngest by as much as 15 or 16 months, which is too big of a gap. Again, if a child has a delay that makes redshirting make sense, it should happen. Better than trying to hold them back a grade later. But redshirting just for its own sake creates a push for everyone to do so, and then what is the point?

Someone has to be the youngest in the class. You can play “not it” if you want, but there’s nothing to stop everyone else from playing the same game.

[Anonymous]

Many of you are not really arguing for redshirting, which implies a decision based on the specific kid’s readiness.

You are arguing essentially for shifting the cutoff to May or June so that summer birthdays start school a year later. Because you are assuming that most parents of kids with summer birthdays (and especially boys) will wait to enroll. So your decision to redshirt isn’t based on measuring your kid against his actual grade cohort (which would include all the summer birthdays). You’re measuring him against the boys you will assume to be redshirt from the prior year and wind up in your kid’s class.

If you want to move the cut off, move the cut off. But this idea that you should redshirt because other people redshirt gets really circular. This is why cutoffs exist. Someone has to be youngest.

[Anonymous]

It’s dumbing kids down, letting a kid repeat a year with younger kids and not be challenged, in the name of ensuring you have a boy who is the biggest and oldest in a class because he’s like a full year older in some cases. For what reason? Being able to push the kids who go on time off the slide? Or be the first picked for teams in gym class? Some of the kids in my son’s 1st grade and daughter’s 3rd grade classes were spring kids held back and there are more than a year older than my kids who I sent on time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s dumbing kids down, letting a kid repeat a year with younger kids and not be challenged, in the name of ensuring you have a boy who is the biggest and oldest in a class because he’s like a full year older in some cases. For what reason? Being able to push the kids who go on time off the slide? Or be the first picked for teams in gym class? Some of the kids in my son’s 1st grade and daughter’s 3rd grade classes were spring kids held back and there are more than a year older than my kids who I sent on time.

This. To be clear, I am not against redshirting when it is merited. You can absolutely assess kindergarten readiness, and there are kids who are not ready, either cognitively or socio-emotionally. I think another year of preschool for those kids, to work on those skills and set them up for success (and by success, I mean the ability to meet grade-level goals, not the ability to dominate over the entire class) is a great idea. I don't even think it has to be limited to

But it's selfish to hold back a kid who is otherwise ready just because of his late birthday or size. In every class, some kids will be younger. Some kids will be smaller. It's part of the normal variation and it's fine. When you redshirt for these reasons, what you are really saying is "I want someone else's kid to be the youngest, I want someone else's kid to be the smallest." Okay, but where does that end? Let your kid go to school with the children his own age, and have some faith in him that he will figure it out.

[Anonymous]

OP: the majority of people who can afford to, do. The people who can’t spend a lot of time creating narratives to justify not doing it

[Anonymous]

The modern school system was established in 1910 when life expectancy was 50 years. Pushing kids out of the school system by 18 and out of college by 21/22 was created during a time when life expectancy was 50 years. Life expectancy today is 80 years. When you're expected to only live until 50 it was important to join the workforce at 18/21. An 18 year old today is very different from an 18 year old a hundred years ago. I don't understand the rush to push kids out of the system. My DS who's in HS is a summer baby. He wasn't redshirted and he's doing fine academically and is social but he still looks like a little kid and people often assume he's younger. If I had to do it again, I might have redshirted him because in the whole scheme of things one more year in school is by no means going to put him behind in the very long life we expect his generation to have but, rather, help him be that much more prepared because he will have had more time to mature.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The modern school system was established in 1910 when life expectancy was 50 years. Pushing kids out of the school system by 18 and out of college by 21/22 was created during a time when life expectancy was 50 years. Life expectancy today is 80 years. When you're expected to only live until 50 it was important to join the workforce at 18/21. An 18 year old today is very different from an 18 year old a hundred years ago. I don't understand the rush to push kids out of the system. My DS who's in HS is a summer baby. He wasn't redshirted and he's doing fine academically and is social but he still looks like a little kid and people often assume he's younger. If I had to do it again, I might have redshirted him because in the whole scheme of things one more year in school is by no means going to put him behind in the very long life we expect his generation to have but, rather, help him be that much more prepared because he will have had more time to mature.

So why not a gap year? That's becoming more common anyway.

I did not view starting my summer birthday child "on time" as a rush to get them out of the house and employed by 18. It just made sense -- if a child is 5 by the time K starts, and they have no delays, they can usually not only handle K but are often excited about learning to read and getting more academic instruction. At least that was the case with mine. I think another year of singing songs and free-play in preschool would have been okay but felt a little bit repetitive at some point.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP: the majority of people who can afford to, do. The people who can’t spend a lot of time creating narratives to justify not doing it

This is not true. For instance, in my district, redshirting is nearly impossible so no one does it, even people with money. They probably do it at the private schools, but there are plenty of UMC families in the publics who can absolutely afford another year of childcare and they still all send their kids on time.

Some of you live in a bubble.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The modern school system was established in 1910 when life expectancy was 50 years. Pushing kids out of the school system by 18 and out of college by 21/22 was created during a time when life expectancy was 50 years. Life expectancy today is 80 years. When you're expected to only live until 50 it was important to join the workforce at 18/21. An 18 year old today is very different from an 18 year old a hundred years ago. I don't understand the rush to push kids out of the system. My DS who's in HS is a summer baby. He wasn't redshirted and he's doing fine academically and is social but he still looks like a little kid and people often assume he's younger. If I had to do it again, I might have redshirted him because in the whole scheme of things one more year in school is by no means going to put him behind in the very long life we expect his generation to have but, rather, help him be that much more prepared because he will have had more time to mature.

So why not a gap year? That's becoming more common anyway.

I did not view starting my summer birthday child "on time" as a rush to get them out of the house and employed by 18. It just made sense -- if a child is 5 by the time K starts, and they have no delays, they can usually not only handle K but are often excited about learning to read and getting more academic instruction. At least that was the case with mine. I think another year of singing songs and free-play in preschool would have been okay but felt a little bit repetitive at some point.

We would absolutely be supportive of a gap year. My point is it should be ab individual choice and people shouldn't feel too bound by the cut off age because, as some pointed out, that even varies by school system. Parents also shouldn't feel "bad" or "embarrassed", as one poster commented, because their kid will be the oldest (someone's gotta be!) or 18 for their year of senior year. That's just silly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The modern school system was established in 1910 when life expectancy was 50 years. Pushing kids out of the school system by 18 and out of college by 21/22 was created during a time when life expectancy was 50 years. Life expectancy today is 80 years. When you're expected to only live until 50 it was important to join the workforce at 18/21. An 18 year old today is very different from an 18 year old a hundred years ago. I don't understand the rush to push kids out of the system. My DS who's in HS is a summer baby. He wasn't redshirted and he's doing fine academically and is social but he still looks like a little kid and people often assume he's younger. If I had to do it again, I might have redshirted him because in the whole scheme of things one more year in school is by no means going to put him behind in the very long life we expect his generation to have but, rather, help him be that much more prepared because he will have had more time to mature.

So why not a gap year? That's becoming more common anyway.

I did not view starting my summer birthday child "on time" as a rush to get them out of the house and employed by 18. It just made sense -- if a child is 5 by the time K starts, and they have no delays, they can usually not only handle K but are often excited about learning to read and getting more academic instruction. At least that was the case with mine. I think another year of singing songs and free-play in preschool would have been okay but felt a little bit repetitive at some point.

We would absolutely be supportive of a gap year. My point is it should be ab individual choice and people shouldn't feel too bound by the cut off age because, as some pointed out, that even varies by school system. Parents also shouldn't feel "bad" or "embarrassed", as one poster commented, because their kid will be the oldest (someone's gotta be!) or 18 for their year of senior year. That's just silly.

That should have said "for their entire senior year"