Since this is anonymous, why did you REALLY redshirt your kid?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
As an April baby I graduated high school two weeks after my 18th birthday. I remember being ecstatic to fly the nest and go to college that Fall. I was a relatively shy and introverted teenager who got on really well with my parents but I was ready to move out at 18! I really would have struggled if I was redshirted and forced to postpone that rite of passage for a year.

Same here. I did ok in high school. I did really well in college. It was a good change for me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
As an April baby I graduated high school two weeks after my 18th birthday. I remember being ecstatic to fly the nest and go to college that Fall. I was a relatively shy and introverted teenager who got on really well with my parents but I was ready to move out at 18! I really would have struggled if I was redshirted and forced to postpone that rite of passage for a year.

You were already older than 2/3 to 3/4 of your classmates, so redshirting you wouldn't have made sense. It's only applicable to kids born between October and December, so this is irrelevant.

People are holding back kids starting in March or April now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My boy was just not that mature. Sometimes I feel like he’s is still not, even being one the older kids now. Boys just mature later. It was a good decision for him and us.

He’s less mature because he’s with a much younger peer group and he’s going to behave with his peer group age, not birth age. Boys don’t mature later. They mature when they are ready. Holding back does harm in allowing them to mature, not help.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I redshirted my August born son. He's in 4th grade now, and whenever anyone asks him his grade, he says, "I'm really in 5th grade but my mom made me redo pre-k". He just didn't seem ready to leave the cute Montessori preschool that he attended at the time, and he's doing really well socially and academically, so I still think I made the right decision. Also, he's on a highly ranked travel hockey team (not in DC area anymore) and he's totally obsessed, so if he wants to play college hockey someday, he probably would have had to play a year of pg somewhere anyway.

Does he make you proud that he's outperforming kids 5-to-16 months younger than him?

4th grader on a travel team. Sounds fake.

I don’t know anything about hockey, but 3rd grade is when most sports seem to start travel teams

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I redshirted to give my kid an advantage academically and physically, and to make it socially easier since it's much easier to be among the oldest in a group than to be the youngest. Let some other kid deal with always being the shortest and the slowest.

That's it. It's the same reason anyone redshirts. I don't understand wha the debate even is. People want what is best for their kid.

Because it’s not really a true advantage and socially they should be with peers.

If people truly believed that there would be no debate.

The research on the subject indicates that it does provide a short-term advantage but overall is a negative.

That's not true. I have good reason to believe that I am living a much happier life than I would be if I hadn't been redshirted. Growing up, I thought I wanted to get married and have children like most people. However, because I was redshirted, I finished my schooling a year later, and thus, started my career a year later, and by the time I became financially stable enough to support a family, I realized that I would be much happier being single and childless. Had I not been redshirted, I may very well have had children before coming to the realization that I didn't want any, by which time it would've been too late.

Glad it worked out for you, but the majority of cases it ends up being a disadvantage in the long term based on actual statistics and data.

Would you mind showing us these statistics and data?

I found it on Google.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
As an April baby I graduated high school two weeks after my 18th birthday. I remember being ecstatic to fly the nest and go to college that Fall. I was a relatively shy and introverted teenager who got on really well with my parents but I was ready to move out at 18! I really would have struggled if I was redshirted and forced to postpone that rite of passage for a year.

Same here. I did ok in high school. I did really well in college. It was a good change for me.

That was exactly my experience. I graduated high school with no college credits despite the full 4 years to graduate. But I graduated college in 3.5 years with a graduate credit under my belt.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:I redshirted to give my kid an advantage academically and physically, and to make it socially easier since it's much easier to be among the oldest in a group than to be the youngest. Let some other kid deal with always being the shortest and the slowest.

That's it. It's the same reason anyone redshirts. I don't understand wha the debate even is. People want what is best for their kid.

Because it’s not really a true advantage and socially they should be with peers.

If people truly believed that there would be no debate.

The research on the subject indicates that it does provide a short-term advantage but overall is a negative.

That's not true. I have good reason to believe that I am living a much happier life than I would be if I hadn't been redshirted. Growing up, I thought I wanted to get married and have children like most people. However, because I was redshirted, I finished my schooling a year later, and thus, started my career a year later, and by the time I became financially stable enough to support a family, I realized that I would be much happier being single and childless. Had I not been redshirted, I may very well have had children before coming to the realization that I didn't want any, by which time it would've been too late.

Glad it worked out for you, but the majority of cases it ends up being a disadvantage in the long term based on actual statistics and data.

Would you mind showing us these statistics and data?

I found it on Google.

DP: The evidence I can find generally seems to say on average there is either a disadvantage or no difference in academic achievement associated with red-shirting. Doesn't talk about sports or social life though and most of the data is a little old.

Grissom, James B.
Education Policy Analysis Archives, v12 n49 Sep 2004
There is continuing controversy about the optimal or appropriate age at which children should start school. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between age and achievement. It is an attempt to evaluate the hypothesis that older students fare better academically than their younger classmates. Findings indicate that on average for students in elementary school there is positive linear relationship between age and achievement for age normal peers. Even though there is positive linear relationship, the difference in average test scores between the oldest and youngest students is not great and by the time students reach 10th grade the positive linear relationship has disappeared. For overage students there is on average a negative linear relationship between age and achievement at all grade levels. That is, the negative relationship between age and achievement remains constant over time. These results argue against modifying entrance age policies, delaying school entry, implementing transitional kindergarten or first grade programs or retaining students to improve educational achievement. Policies and practices that make students older than their classmates inversely affect their educational achievement. (Contains 26 figures, 10 tables and 4 footnotes.)

This 2017 study looks specifically at kids with ADHD who are red-shirted and finds no advantage to being red-shirted:

Academic red-shirting via voluntary delayed school entry is a debatable practice for students but has been argued a potentially viable practice for children with a range of disabilities by providing students “the gift of time.” The current study (n = 21,409) indicated that children with ADHD (n = 1057) were more likely to be red-shirted as compared to children without ADHD (n = 20,352). We examined the academic trajectories of those children with ADHD who were red-shirted versus children with ADHD who were not red-shirted. Results revealed no meaningful association of red-shirting with academic achievement across time. We subsequently examined the relationship of red-shirting and academic achievement among children with ADHD who received medication (n = 426) versus children with ADHD who did not receive medication (n = 631). Among children with medicated ADHD, the negative association of red-shirting with achievement across time was stronger but medication received was also associated with more severe symptoms of inattention across time, which may account for this relationship. Academic red-shirting does not appear to be especially beneficial for students with ADHD (medicated or not) in terms of academic achievement across time.

2006 article:
The appropriate age for students to begin school is an issue of debate for educators, administrators, and parents. Parents worry that young children may not be able to compete with older classmates; schools worry that young students will not be able to meet rigorous academic standards associated with school accountability. Past literature is inconclusive as to the overall effect of age at school entry. Some research suggests that younger students have lower average achievement in early elementary school, while others find that students with summer birthdates, who are assumed to be younger at school entry, gain more education on average. At present, little is known about the impact of age at school entry on education attainment as students transition from high school into college and the labor market. This study uses data from the National Education Longitudinal Survey to examine long-term effects of age at school entry on both educational and social outcomes, with special attention to those students who enter kindergarten a year later than their peers. The results of this study suggest that delaying kindergarten does not create any long-term advantages for students.

[Anonymous]

Because my kid's birthday is 3 weeks before the cutoff and kid has ADHD and kid plays contact sports (which of course I didn't know would happen when we enrolled him in kindergarten, although even at that age it was clear he was a good athlete in that he was nonstop energy and very competitive and his parents are athletes).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because my kid's birthday is 3 weeks before the cutoff and kid has ADHD and kid plays contact sports (which of course I didn't know would happen when we enrolled him in kindergarten, although even at that age it was clear he was a good athlete in that he was nonstop energy and very competitive and his parents are athletes).

Three weeks before the cut-off doesn't count as red-shirting. That's just going on time. If it was three weeks after the cut-off that would be red-shirting.

[Anonymous]

To offset the challenges boys have in school https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/01/30/whats-the-matter-with-men

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because my kid's birthday is 3 weeks before the cutoff and kid has ADHD and kid plays contact sports (which of course I didn't know would happen when we enrolled him in kindergarten, although even at that age it was clear he was a good athlete in that he was nonstop energy and very competitive and his parents are athletes).

Three weeks before the cut-off doesn't count as red-shirting. That's just going on time. If it was three weeks after the cut-off that would be red-shirting.

???