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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]A question about fairness!

How is it fair for red shirted kids to be in a class with my late June birthday kid? Developmentally they are going to be ahead, do the teachers care or take this into consideration?? It doesn't seem fair. Some can be almost 9 months older.[/quote]

You could naturally have kids who are 364 days apart. Redshirting adds a bit to this, but it’s usually not that far off — kids with Aug bdays holding off. Your kid will be fine. [/quote]

The problem comes in when kids are 14-18 month difference and the teachers are not looking at what's developmentally appropriate for too old for the grade kids as well as younger for the grade kids.  My kid is absolutely fine but we've had teachers with unrealistic expectations when comparing the students, some who were 12-18 months older.[/quote]

+1, and this exacerbates an existing issue, which is that kindergarten curriculums are already increasingly not developmentally appropriate, with too many expectations for kids to sit quietly in chairs and work independently or focus on worksheets or instruction for long periods of time. This is not something that is reasonable to expect (or force on) the average 5 year old, but redshirting conceals how inappropriate these expectations are by putting a certain number of kids in the classroom who are a year older (actually 1st graders) and therefore do better with these parameters.

What we should be doing is shifting kindergarten expectations across the board to better meat 5/6 year old kids where they are at. Instead of leaving it to parents to hold their kids back in order on a case by case basis.[/quote]

-1 of course K is developmentally appropriate.  My child technically started at 4 and had no issue doing the work or sitting.  Why?  Because we, the preschools and others adequately prepared the child.  Sounds like you didn't prepare your child well if they were struggling that much.  If kids have developmental delays all the more reason to start them so they are with age appropriate peers with an age appropriate curriculum and IEP/SPED services that they parents most likely aren't doing privately.[/quote]
My very-young-for-grade kid started kindergarten on time and cried every single day.  She hated kindergarten.  She'd sob and sob that all she wanted to do was play and didn't want to go to school.  It was too much sitting and listening for her.  She was well behaved and had done three years of a good preschool, but was absolutely miserable.  First grade was also pretty tough.  She'd matured more by 2nd grade, but those first two years were super hard.  She's always been far above grade level academically, so we didn't hold her back, but at a big emotional cost.  I wish K and 1st were less academic and more play.  She would have done much better.[/quote]

+1, we sent on time because we couldn't afford to hold back and because there was no reason to except age. She was above grade academically and could meet the behavioral expectations. It just sucked.

My observation of a class with redshirted and nonredshirted kids is that the issue is really not lack of academic preparedness. It's that children this age cannot spend as much time on academics as K now requires of them. And also, I'm not really convinced the extra time on phonics and math benefits them. The kids are tired, ansty, anxious for more social interaction, and need more releases (physical release via more exercise and outdoor time, but also creative release and playing -- just more chance to relax and not be working so hard).

I think the intense focus on academics tends to bore kids like mine who understand the concepts quickly an don't really need to spend 3 hours a day drilling phonics and math -- they need some exposure and then a chance to explore on their own. Meanwhile, the kids who don't get these concepts quickly don't benefit either -- they are spending. significant portion of their school day feeling frustrated by concepts they aren't getting. They need more play-based learning that help them get familiar with concepts in a less pressure-filled way. While my kid would whiz through a worksheet and then get bored, these kids would struggle with the worksheet and get frustrated. It's honestly a narrow group of kids in the middle who are engaged with this sort of approach.

I wish we'd been able to afford Montessori for early elementary. I don't love everything about it, but for a kid like mine who is self-motivated and picks things up easily, this would have allowed for a lot more fun and freedom at that age. I still feel like we're addressing mood issue that emerged during K, when she just got so bored and angry, and started pushing back hard on the myriad of rules (some of which truly were arbitrary and dumb, frankly).

I don't regret no redshirting. I regret sending my kid to public elementary school at all, but we didn't have a choice.[/quote]

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