Anonymous wrote:I have seen May-July birthday boys who went on time at Beauvoir. I have also seen April and May birthdays that were redshirted…

This makes me so happy I'm not part of that whole scene. Ridiculous.

May birthdays have become the new tricky birthday, which is kind of ridiculous, but here we are.

Sympathies to pp who mentioned the tension between social reality and academic impossibility. Even for our May DS, who we were always told would “be bored” if he didn’t go on time (and for May bday’s, it’s very, very on time), and who does well enough socially, it’s still been hard, because there’s so much redshirting.

I’m not sure how to address the issue, because I’m not knocking redshirting, esp for behavioral or academic issues. But it sure makes for one unbalanced group of boys, age wise.

Anonymous wrote:I regret not red shirting my May bday son. He's 14 now so too late. Doing OK but it'd be a very different story if he were one year older. It's an enormous advantage and I would recommend to anyone I know to give the gift to their kid.

There's a pretty significant downside, in that that it's a whole year out of your child's young adulthood.

Redshirting seems like it helps

Kids with potential to be elite athletes in a sport dominated by school-grade based teams (though doubling 8th grade seems like a better choice.)
Kids -- mainly boys -- with any risk factors for ADHD (late birthdays in general have 30% higher diagnoses) or similar problems.
Kids with signs of learning disabilities, or other developmental issues that intersect with schoolwork.

I will say that we had an obviously ADHD kid who has/had a couple other problems, and, while it would socially have been a lot better for him to be redshirted, it was academically impossible.

Anonymous wrote:I regret not red shirting my May bday son. He's 14 now so too late. Doing OK but it'd be a very different story if he were one year older. It's an enormous advantage and I would recommend to anyone I know to give the gift to their kid.

Me too. I was told my May bday son was too "old" to hold back. He's 2e so he was reading and understood multiplication in preschool. I was told that no starting him on time would make him bored. Emotionally, he wasn't ready to go to K. But what did I know, I was just the parent. He was in PEP for PK3 and part of PK4. PEP concluded that he had achieved all his goals and no longer required services. Hence he went into K without an IEP.

Looking back, I really wish I had waited a year. He's now in 9th and just now starting to catch up emotionally to his peers.

I regret not red shirting my May bday son. He's 14 now so too late. Doing OK but it'd be a very different story if he were one year older. It's an enormous advantage and I would recommend to anyone I know to give the gift to their kid.

WES had very little redshirting and most summer boys are younger ones.

All of them would take a summer birthday boy. But there's going to be a significant variation within the school as to how many redshirted kids there will be, by year. And those numbers may change after kindergarten -- my son's good friend and he were both summer birthdays, sent 'on time'. But my son, despite significant non-academic issues (some of them because he was young, more of them because he's cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs), moved to first grade the next year, and his friend needed a second year of Kindergarten for things to click.

Most will be honest with you, if you ask, about whether it’s viable for your kid to go “on time” or wait. No school prefers younger boys over older ones—why would they?

I have seen May-July birthday boys who went on time at Beauvoir. I have also seen April and May birthdays that were redshirted…

My summer birthday son who is the "right" age for his grade is at GDS. There are several boys in his grade who were "sent on time". It's about equal in terms of boys who were "sent on time" or "red-shirted". School did a good job at balancing the classes.

For a child who is truly wanted, most schools will have a conversation with the parents. After the conversation, some kids get red-shirted, some kids start “on time” (by arbitrary DMV standards) and for other kids, the school refuses to admit “on time” and the parents go a different direction.

Anonymous wrote:Why would you want your boy to be a year younger than the other boys in the class?

He wouldn’t be a year younger than everybody else. Plenty of students start “on time” rather than being held back.

Why would you want your boy to be a year younger than the other boys in the class?

Nope

Do any of the top private schools welcome/encourage boys with summer birthdays to apply to kindergarten on time, where it would be the norm and not the outlier for my kid to be just turned 5?