Reply to How to “redshirt” in DC?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My kid (boy) is a late September birthday and the top of his class academically. You have no way to tell at 1 how your kid is going to be in school…[/quote]

+1.  It would have been a disaster if we redshirted DS who would be so bored.

My bday is in Sept and I was always the youngest in the class.  No issues.  Did very well in school when I started and all subsequent years.[/quote]

I'm really glad you had a good experience. I feel like there's no truly optimum option for my kid with a summer birthday. She's super smart but shy and a little anxious. Redshirting didn't feel like it made sense because she was academically very ready for kindergarten and already reading on her own. But socially and emotionally I do think she could have used another year of preschool -- she's probably socio-emotionally a bit immature for her age and when you throw in being youngest that starts to look really obvious. So it didn't feel like any solution was an obvious choice.

DC ties your hands. I guess we could have tried to redshirt her in PK but at that time it didn't occur to us -- she was 3 and seemed about as mature as other 3 yr olds at the time. It wasn't until the summer before K that we started to see the merit in another year of PK but by then she was in the system "on time" and was clearly academically ready.

It is what it is. We do our best to support her and give her what she needs. Some teachers are better than others both in terms of providing appropriate academic challenge and recognizing that she is a little behind other kids in stuff like emotional regulation. I'm sure it's not easy for them either.

If we could afford private I'd probably just do that because it's probably the only way to get her what she really needs both academically and socio-emotionally. But we can't so here we are.[/quote]

Just throwing this out there - redshirting won’t necessarily be great for your kid. Even a kid who doesn’t have a late birthday in the cohort can struggle. I have a December baby who was one of the oldest in her class, one of the most academically advanced, but she found it hard to manage socio-emotionally. She came from daycare/private preschool so it’s not a matter of setting, it’s DCPS or individual teacher. Her PK and K teachers worked with her. Her first grade teacher was horrible about it (literally no communication even when the principals tried to require it). So even if you redshirted an August or September kiddo, especially if you have reason to believe they need the extra time for skills/social reasons, not going to guarantee they won’t struggle. So if anyone is stressed about it, I recommend just going with the flow and supplementing/advocating. That’s life. [/quote]

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