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

[Anonymous]

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

The cutoff here is August 31 / September 1, so my kid born in late August was one of the youngest in their grade, but they were academically ready for school. They were always one of the top students in their grade. Socially I think it may have been harder those first 2-3 years because of age but long term it didn't matter. I think being even more bored in school would've been more harmful to their long-term development.

[Anonymous]

OP, this is absurd. You are blaming all your child's failures on the fact that he began school a few months earlier than most. That might have explained some difficulties in early elementary school, but the kids even out pretty quickly by high school. Certainly by college, it's just ridiculous to think that your 17-year-old didn't graduate on time because he was "too immature" compared to the 17.5 and 18-year-olds. Plenty of kids don't graduate on time. You are making excuses for him. Hopefully he won't pick that up from your and continue to blame every failure in his life on his early K start, instead of, say, not working hard enough.

[Anonymous]

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

So weird that OP thinks starting her kid in K way too early is "not redshirting." I'm pretty sure anyone posting that they want to start their "ready" child in K when their bday is in November would be mostly told that it's a terrible idea. Not even sure where that's allowed.

[Anonymous]

Like everything, it depends. My husband and brother were younger for their grade starting college at 17. They said that they learned to work hard to keep up with their friends, a skill that’s benefited them in the world.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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

The cutoff here is August 31 / September 1, so my kid born in late August was one of the youngest in their grade, but they were academically ready for school. They were always one of the top students in their grade. Socially I think it may have been harder those first 2-3 years because of age but long term it didn't matter. I think being even more bored in school would've been more harmful to their long-term development.

Agree, red shirting a kid who is ready can be more harmful if hey are bored at school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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

op is an odd one. Esol too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's not obvious, otherwise there wouldn't be numerous studies on the subject. But it's true.

As a reference, read Rethinking Giftedness by Subotnik et al.
Quote (p24): "There is general consensus in the field, supported by the extant literature, that acceleration is a uniquely appropriate instructional strategy for gifted learners (Argys, Rees, & Brewer, 1996; Colangelo, Assouline, & Gross, 2004).
Research evidence about the efficacy of acceleration is overwhelmingly positive." (followed by several paragraphs with examples).

[Anonymous]

I had a friend in college who started when he was 26. He dropped out in the first year.

[Anonymous]

This sounds fake but there is clearly more to it - pre-cal junior/senior year is the slowest math track generally. OP child had some SN - learning disabilities or something else going on and should have gotten them evaluated, IEP and tutoring. If they couldn't handle pre-cal, they should have done another, easier math class as not everyone has that kind of math smarts even if they are smart kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I had a friend in college who started when he was 26. He dropped out in the first year.

He probably had a full-time and perhaps a family to support. The reason he waited that long to start college was probably because his parents couldn't/wouldn't pay for him to go college when he was 17/18, so he spent the next 8/9 years working full time to save up enough for college. However, he would still have had to have that job when he started.

[Anonymous]

This is such a weird post. I’m still trying to figure out if it’s tongue in cheek or sure serious. Please don’t be serious

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, this is absurd. You are blaming all your child's failures on the fact that he began school a few months earlier than most. That might have explained some difficulties in early elementary school, but the kids even out pretty quickly by high school. Certainly by college, it's just ridiculous to think that your 17-year-old didn't graduate on time because he was "too immature" compared to the 17.5 and 18-year-olds. Plenty of kids don't graduate on time. You are making excuses for him. Hopefully he won't pick that up from your and continue to blame every failure in his life on his early K start, instead of, say, not working hard enough.

You said it perfectly

[Anonymous]

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lol. Well done, OP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is such a weird post. I’m still trying to figure out if it’s tongue in cheek or sure serious. Please don’t be serious

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

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

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

I didn't make these studies up.

[Anonymous]

Why on earth would a kid blame themselves for being late to get a license? Half the kids in my child’s friend group have just graduated high school without even attempting to get their licenses.

This post is crap, I tell ya, crap!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is such a weird post. I’m still trying to figure out if it’s tongue in cheek or sure serious. Please don’t be serious

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

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

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

I didn't make these studies up.

There are plenty of articles on both sides of it. You can always find a study or article to support your beliefs. https://www.vnews.com/Archives/2013/09/kindergarten-vn-xxxxxx

My young for the grade child does very well in school and the exact opposite of OP.