Reply to I’m starting my late July birthday child (boy) in kindergarten on time.

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Just don’t be overly weird about your kid being young for grade, like a lot of DCUM posters are, and to be frank, you sound like you are heading towards. It’s just not that big a deal. Don’t brag about your kid being the youngest. Don’t teach them that it makes them somehow special. Don’t be invested in your kid’s identity as the youngest. Don’t drop their birthday into as many total unrelated conversations as you can, especially when they are standing right next to you. Don’t make a big deal about how much older some of their classmates are. Just please, if you possibly can, please be normal and not supremely weird about age.

Signed,
The youngest in the class[/quote]

I think a lot of parents need to hear this.
Thank you.

[/quote]

I will say as a parent of a youngest, I rarely mention it. The only time I will is when the conversation turns to birthdays (like what month) and when I say her late July birthday, it’s almost always assumed that she’s turning a year older than she actually is. And that really irks me that the assumption is we held her vs. sending on time. Redshirting should be the exception, not the norm. I get a little annoyed feeling like we’re the odd ones for just sending our kid on time. [/quote]

NP. Yes, this. 
Where we live, our cutoff is Oct 15z My 3rd grader has kids in his grade, where August is the oldest redshirt. That is one thing. However things  have drastically changed in the younger grades and my first grader with a June bday has many many kids a full year older than him. It is a thorn in our side now because other peoples choices to do this now impacts my son. Developmentally, kids grow a lot in one year. I see it with my older son every year he is just so much stronger, bigger, able to handle academics more, etc. So when my younger son is now doing everything with kids a year older than him, he is immediately at a disadvantage and on an unfair playing field. I can only imagine the opportunities he wont have for sports as he gets older considering he will be competing for spots on teams with kids who are a year older. So, for those of us with kids born in months that didnt used to be a redshirted month, but now it is and we didnt get that memo, it is very frustrating.[/quote]

Hm. As a former youngest in the class, I am pretty skeptical that you both don’t mention it much and aren’t weird about it. You clearly spend a lot of time thinking about how old your kid is compared to the others. I just don’t believe that you spend all this time thinking about relative age and observing the entire class closely but then are totally chill about relative age. I’m sorry but as a youngest kid, that does not ring true to me. [/quote]

Also, it is one thing to be the youngest in a grade without the redshirting situation (like when us 40 somethings grew up) and its an entirely different thing to be the youngest among a group of kids who are actually supposed to be in the grade above you by many months. So all the adults here chiming in that they were the youngest didnt necessarily have the experience our kids are having now.[/quote]

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