PSA for the kindergarten red shirters

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How far back to people usually redshirt? My son was born April 5, and I don't want him to be the youngest in the class. Are most April boys held back?

June through September are the usual ages for waiting an extra year.

Do most kids with these bdays get redshirted? If so, why don't the school districts just change the cut off to May 31?

FWIW - my summer born DCs were not held back and are doing very well academically, with the older in HGC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How far back to people usually redshirt? My son was born April 5, and I don't want him to be the youngest in the class. Are most April boys held back?

June through September are the usual ages for waiting an extra year.

Do most kids with these bdays get redshirted? If so, why don't the school districts just change the cut off to May 31?

FWIW - my summer born DCs were not held back and are doing very well academically, with the older in HGC.

No "most" kids do not get redshirted. One poster seems to think there are massive numbers of kids being held back - but no one has concrete information. I do not think that many are held back each year. honestly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Why not just admit the redshirting?

Because people are sanctimonious jerks about redshirting. Read any thread about redshirting on this board for an example.

Reading DCUM has made me actively support redshirting.

Um, no, the reshirters are the sanctimonious jerks. They have to be, to support their gaming of the system.

gaming the system??? LOL.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Why not just admit the redshirting?

Because people are sanctimonious jerks about redshirting. Read any thread about redshirting on this board for an example.

Reading DCUM has made me actively support redshirting.

Um, no, the reshirters are the sanctimonious jerks. They have to be, to support their gaming of the system.

It amuses me to no end that other people spend so much more emotional energy worrying over my decision to redshirt my child than I ever did. Believe me, I spend none on wondering why you chose to send your child when you did.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How far back to people usually redshirt? My son was born April 5, and I don't want him to be the youngest in the class. Are most April boys held back?

June through September are the usual ages for waiting an extra year.

Do most kids with these bdays get redshirted? If so, why don't the school districts just change the cut off to May 31?

FWIW - my summer born DCs were not held back and are doing very well academically, with the older in HGC.

No "most" kids do not get redshirted. One poster seems to think there are massive numbers of kids being held back - but no one has concrete information. I do not think that many are held back each year. honestly.

not to mention that summer birthdays and boys (both of which tend to be the ones held back) are only a certain percentage of a class. And only a percentage of those are held back. So the number cannot be huge.

[Anonymous]

There are 6 out of 12 boys from the same school on my child's soccer team who are redshirted. HALF! I get it that it's not a widespread problem. It's difficult to discuss because it's a very localized problem. Most schools have parents that can't afford this option, but at our school everyone can.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Why not just admit the redshirting?

Because people are sanctimonious jerks about redshirting. Read any thread about redshirting on this board for an example.

Reading DCUM has made me actively support redshirting.

Um, no, the reshirters are the sanctimonious jerks. They have to be, to support their gaming of the system.

It amuses me to no end that other people spend so much more emotional energy worrying over my decision to redshirt my child than I ever did. Believe me, I spend none on wondering why you chose to send your child when you did.

No kidding. We thought an extra year of a play-based JrK would be better for our summer DS. So that's what we did. The entire consideration took about 3 minutes. No regrets.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Why not just admit the redshirting?

Because people are sanctimonious jerks about redshirting. Read any thread about redshirting on this board for an example.

Reading DCUM has made me actively support redshirting.

Um, no, the reshirters are the sanctimonious jerks. They have to be, to support their gaming of the system.

It amuses me to no end that other people spend so much more emotional energy worrying over my decision to redshirt my child than I ever did. Believe me, I spend none on wondering why you chose to send your child when you did.

No kidding. We thought an extra year of a play-based JrK would be better for our summer DS. So that's what we did. The entire consideration took about 3 minutes. No regrets.

They aren't worrying about your kids. They're worrying about theirs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are 6 out of 12 boys from the same school on my child's soccer team who are redshirted. HALF! I get it that it's not a widespread problem. It's difficult to discuss because it's a very localized problem. Most schools have parents that can't afford this option, but at our school everyone can.

This is in your all boy soccer team. Take those 6 boys and split them between multiple co-ed classrooms and the percentage is not much at all.

[Anonymous]

There's another soccer team with a similar profile and the school is not a large one. To say having this many redshirted children doesn't affect the rest of the class especially in FCPS where there's a lot of tracking within the same grade level is being obtuse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There's another soccer team with a similar profile and the school is not a large one. To say having this many redshirted children doesn't affect the rest of the class especially in FCPS where there's a lot of tracking within the same grade level is being obtuse.

In soccer, you can only play with the team of your grade level if your birthday is in September. If it's a redshirted summer birthday boy they have to play the next grade up. So these Sept birthday redshirt kids are not that much different than the kids in class with October birthdays.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are 6 out of 12 boys from the same school on my child's soccer team who are redshirted. HALF! I get it that it's not a widespread problem. It's difficult to discuss because it's a very localized problem. Most schools have parents that can't afford this option, but at our school everyone can.

How would you even know that boys on your kid's soccer team were redshirted? How would you know every kid's birth date and what grade they were in?

Almost everywhere, youth soccer is split up not by grade but by birth date generally a Aug 1st cutoff. So grade is not even relevant making it surprising that you seem to know grade / birth date info for every kid on the team.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Why not just admit the redshirting?

Because people are sanctimonious jerks about redshirting. Read any thread about redshirting on this board for an example.

Reading DCUM has made me actively support redshirting.

Me too. I used to be anti-redshirting, until I read the posts from the anti-redshirters on DCUM.

It's becoming sort of a DCUM sport: watching the "on time" mommies work themselves into a lather over the "6 yr old K" kids. Funny stuff.

I think that a good percentage of the anti-redshirt people on this board are probably really, really sheltered and have encountered few real problems in life. I don't know how else to explain the lather and hysteria.

I know what you mean. I feel this way too. If they had any idea of what true hardship was, why would they be spending so much time on this picayune matter? Why? So, in a strange sense, I feel for them, b/c it must be very difficult to be this type of person who gets so emotionally bothered by small things.

[Anonymous]

Did anyone hear last night on NPR (the Tom Ashbrook program "On Point")? The discussion was about red-shirting, this very topic.

http://onpoint.wbur.org/2014/09/16/redshirting

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There's another soccer team with a similar profile and the school is not a large one. To say having this many redshirted children doesn't affect the rest of the class especially in FCPS where there's a lot of tracking within the same grade level is being obtuse.

Okay so if this is such a grave problem for your child - what are you going to do about it? Coming to DCUM to complain isn't going to help anyone. Have you met with your child's teacher to see if they concur there is a huge problem??