Reply to Long: Redshirting August birthday girl?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote]
	   Anonymous wrote:

Isn't a lot of this leader vs. follower stuff really just about the child's innate personality and it wouldn't matter whether you redshirt or not? . . .

. . . And as an anthropologist, I can tell you that your personality is to either be a leader or a follower. You can build skills later in life to try to overcome your natural tendencies here, but this isn't something most kids or even teenagers can (or want to) do. Studies have shown that males don't actually have gr[eat] impulse control until their 20s. . .

This response strikes me as overly simplistic and inconsistent with my (albeit limited) experience. Our DS is four and is very aware of social hierarchies, which, among children his age, seem to be mostly age-related. If you put him in a classroom with a 12-month age range where he's on the low end, he'll follow whatever the oldest boys do. If you put him in the same classroom with the same teacher and the same 12-month age range but make him one of the oldest, he'll do what the teacher wants him to do and he'll expect the other children to follow him. I'm not speaking hypothetically here -- this pattern has repeated in his last two daycare rooms as the oldest kids have transitioned up to older rooms throughout the year and so he's progressed from being the youngest to being the oldest while other conditions have remained largely constant.[/quote]

Actually, your post is overly simplistic and is based on a monkey-see monkey-do theory.  Science has shown us that males have much slower frontal and prefrontal lobe brain development - the areas of the brain responsible for impulse control and reasoning.  Now of course this doesn't mean older kids aren't more exciting - the first kid in a classroom who has the motor skills and reasoning capabilities for say, an X box game, will almost certainly be viewed as really exciting and appealing by the younger boys who haven't discovered this yet.  Beyond that, I can't follow your logic.  Are you saying a 6 year old will be able to follow instructions in kindergarten better than a 5 year old, and therefore will be more likely to influence the behavior of other kids?  I have to disagree with you.  A five year old who is a better reader and writer than a 6 year old in the same class is not going to try to mimic the behavior of the less advanced 6 year old, just because that child is older and larger.  This is all about skill development and capabilities.  If you hold your child back a year, perhaps this would give an otherwise delayed child the edge on a younger group of kids, but this doesn't mean this child is going to suddenly be interested in engaging in "leadership" or extroverted behaviors - it doesn't mean he'll lead the pack on the playground, or run for (or win) class president, or have the motivation or organize a group for a good cause some day.

It sounds to me like your son is an inherent follower - not a bad thing.  When he's the youngest, he looks to the older kids to set the tone.  When he's the oldest, he looks to the next oldest person (the teacher) to set the tone.  In no scenario here is he leading anything.

I'm not saying redshirting is bad or that it shouldn't be done.  On the contrary, I could see how it could help some children with self esteem issues, especially if they were likely to be on the bottom of the pack in an earlier class.  [/quote]

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