Reply to Moving from private to public-Hold back a year or not?

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[quote=Anonymous]My son was somewhat in your situation; due to a change in circumstances during my DS's last preschool year we ended up going to a school different from the one originally planned where the cutoff date was later in the year. In other words, he wasn't old enough for the first school for K but would have gone to K in the second school, so he was unintentionally redshirted. He's now much older and though it wasn't planned, I'm glad that it worked out the way it did so far. I also think I stressed overly much about it and he would have been fine either way. My DS is happy that he's in the grade he's in and not a year older. He likes being one of the oldest. He probably would have been fine as one of the youngest, too, though.

The one thing I would suggest is that if you do keep him back, explain your decision using neutral, date-based terms, not in terms of "readiness." One thing I am glad about is that we can honestly tell DS that he was held back because of the difference in date cutoffs between the schools, not because we felt that he wasn't ready for kindergarten. It gives him good ammunition against meanness from other kids. If you read on DCUM you can see there are a few parents on here are nasty towards kids who have been redshirted, and their kids pick up on that. Sometimes children use relative age as a source of meanness. My DS is generally left alone but over the years he's told me stories about various kids trying to give him a hard time because he was one of the older ones in the class. I think it comes from their parents. One of the meanest kids in DS's younger grades was one of the younger kids who had definitely been told how smart he was by his parents a few too many times. That kid went after the older ones based on age. My DS was able to shrug it off, but I think having a neutral "The dates changed with the change in schools" explanation for his age relative to the others helped his confidence. If you have your DS repeat, I would phrase it that you're following the dates of the school and leave it at that.

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