Reply to Why don’t schools make you just through some hoops for redshirting?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Redshirting parents are doing what they think is best for their kid. That is in fact the job of parents.

And there are rules. You have to be enrolled in kindergarten by six. People who redshirt a winter birthday are still following those rules. Adding more rules isn’t going to make it less likely that parents try to choose better for their kids, just restrict the franchise.

We have a September birthday and we’ll likely redshirt her because we know there will be kids who turn seven in her kindergarten and we think it’s unfair for her to be four. That doesn’t make it wrong for the other parents to have made the choice to hold back their five y/o.[/quote]

That’s not fair to hold her back because of others poor choices.  [/quote]

Why? She’ll be five when she starts kindergarten and won’t be the oldest or the youngest kid in her class, since we know the boys born March-May will likely redshirt and other September kids will be as well.

She’ll spend her “extra” year in a private outdoor-focused preK. She’s not being deprived or being treated unfairly, she’s getting an experience plenty of us what would for our kids— an extra year of childhood.[/quote]

She isn't getting an extra year of childhood, she's losing an extra year of being an adult.  She will turn 18 regardless.  And, that sounds like a bad idea at an outdoor-focused preschool vs. an academic one.  We started our September kid at 4/5 and it's been good.  When I ask them, they are glad we didn't hold them back.  They don't remember preschool at all so the benefit was far smaller than you think.  How do you think she'll feel when her true peers go off to college and she's still stuck for a year in high school.  It may sound good now but when your kids get high school age, it's very different.  [/quote]
I guess you just have to realize that not all kids are okay to start kindergarten at age 4/5.  We sent our first "on time" as a 4-turning-5 yo and she was constantly in trouble and ended up in the principal's office almost daily the entire first month of school.  All of K and first she'd sob at bedtime every night about how much she hated school and how she was a bad kid and they didn't want her there. Then she'd sob again the next morning and we'd fight her to get out the door.  Then she'd get in trouble again and again.  Really, it wasn't "good."  We made it through and she's okay now, with only occasional issues, but we're about to start middle school with her as the youngest and smallest kid in the grade and I'm holding my breath all over again.

(She attended a quality preschool program for two years before K, so she should have been prepared for K. She doesn't have special needs.  She was just being a 4 yo and there is a reason that every 4 yos doesn't to kindergarten -- they just don't have the maturity to handle it yet.)

My DD is smart as can be and at the top of her class academically, so she's probably be bored a grade below (and is why we sent her on time), but she'd be a better fit in the lower grade socially, physically and emotionally.  If we'd started her with the grade below, I think she would have fit right in with those peers.  Having gone "on time" her experience is more akin to a kid who was skipped ahead a grade and spends much of their childhood feeling socially behind and emotionally stressed by expectations that she can't ever seem to meet.[/quote]

You don't know when puberty will hit so being the smallest now means nothing and with genetics, she may always be small.  Maybe it's a bad school fit and a school change would help?  Or, maybe other things are going on that you are just ignoring and blaming age.  And, if she is being compared to older kids, and scapegoated for the older kids bad behavior.

She was not exactly 4.  She was turning 5 within a few weeks of starting school.  And, 5 the entire year, which is the age she should be for K.

Even if you held her back, how do you know that would have helped?  She may have the same issues.  Get her support.[/quote]
I'm not sure why you don't think I know my kid.  It's really wrong that you're second guessing me having never met my daughter.

No, she doesn't have issues other than being young and somewhat immature compared to her peers.  Why exactly do you think she wouldn't fit in better socially in the class below when she wouldn't be the oldest (probably a dozen kids are older) and when she's the absolute youngest in her current grade. My experience is that oldest kids in a family often skew a little young without older siblings to "teach" them.  My daughter is in that vein, not in any way special needs.

Also, she's going to be late to puberty.  It's 5th grade and not a mystery which girls are already turning that corner.  Mine isn't even close.  I'm not guessing based on 5 yos.  You can tell.

What support exactly do you suggest for a kid who feels left out because all the other girls are talking about boys and crushes and she has no interest in that yet?   What about for the kid who can't stay up as late at sleepovers and crashes emotionally? Is there an IEP for that?

It's such magical thinking that kids 2 weeks younger for her must be the perfect fit for the grade below, but because she's three weeks older she would be too old and a bully if she was in the same grade as them.  Or that she's somehow an entire grade more mature because she was born two weeks earlier than kids on the other side of the cutoff.  Kid development just isn't that black and white.  [/quote]

Give up - the antiredshirters not only can’t do math (You’LL HaVE a 19 YeAr OLd sEnIoR!!)  but believe that there is some special magic to having an exactly 12 month age range in the classroom, as if celestial bodies dictate the proper class grouping.

Logic will not help. [/quote]

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