Anonymous wrote:An acquaintance was just expressing her concerns that her red-shirted K DC would be in a class with non-red-shirted K kids. She's worried that her DC will be held back academically since her DC is older.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Gee, much better to have an 18 year old senior than a 17 year old going off to college.

Parents who don't want their kids going off to college at 17 should just have their kids take a gap year. Redshirting because of post high school concerns is just dumb. I mean, how do you even know your kid will want to go to college? College isn't for everyone. The question parents should be asking themselves is "Is my child ready for Kindergarten now?", not "Will my child be ready for college 13 years from now?".

Anonymous wrote:Sports age requirements just don't line up with school ages anyway. My November birthday kid is in the right grade at school but a few different sports and activities separate kids out by age as of calendar year. So my child was always with kids in the next grade up and frequently competed against kids almost a year older. There's no perfect way to do it and when your child's birthday is near a cutoff you just learn to work with the different age requirements.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I did not red shirt my kids, and had never thought about the out-of-school activities angle until my kids started doing a lot of them in K and 1st grade. Basically, a lot of after school stuff is by age, not grade. So, for example, if your child had a July birthday and you held him back to start K at 6 instead of at 5 when he was eligible, he might have to play on a soccer team with the kids who are in the class above him at school instead of with most of his friends from his grade. Just letting you know because I never heard anyone talk about this when I was hearing about people were considering holding their kids back. It might make things a little awkward/annoying for the kid for sports (which are all usually out of school when you are little) and other activities. Just something to consider.

If that would make a parent decide not to redshirt, they shouldn't have considered redshirting in the first place. Many people redshirt because of developmental delays, so sports being awkward or annoying wouldn't even be a factor that is relevant.

Anonymous wrote:I did not red shirt my kids, and had never thought about the out-of-school activities angle until my kids started doing a lot of them in K and 1st grade. Basically, a lot of after school stuff is by age, not grade. So, for example, if your child had a July birthday and you held him back to start K at 6 instead of at 5 when he was eligible, he might have to play on a soccer team with the kids who are in the class above him at school instead of with most of his friends from his grade. Just letting you know because I never heard anyone talk about this when I was hearing about people were considering holding their kids back. It might make things a little awkward/annoying for the kid for sports (which are all usually out of school when you are little) and other activities. Just something to consider.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Gee, much better to have an 18 year old senior than a 17 year old going off to college.

Parents who don't want their kids going off to college at 17 should just have their kids take a gap year. Redshirting because of post high school concerns is just dumb. I mean, how do you even know your kid will want to go to college? College isn't for everyone. The question parents should be asking themselves is "Is my child ready for Kindergarten now?", not "Will my child be ready for college 13 years from now?".

Anonymous wrote:Gee, much better to have an 18 year old senior than a 17 year old going off to college.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There was a thread on DCUM a couple months back about how prevalent redshirting is in public schools in the area. I think the general consensus came to <10% if I'm remembering correctly. Maybe an outlier school here or there.

Private schools are different - much more prevalent.

It's not really red shirting in private, as most will not include summer birthdays in their cutoff.

Anonymous wrote:There was a thread on DCUM a couple months back about how prevalent redshirting is in public schools in the area. I think the general consensus came to <10% if I'm remembering correctly. Maybe an outlier school here or there.

Private schools are different - much more prevalent.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There's another soccer team with a similar profile and the school is not a large one. To say having this many redshirted children doesn't affect the rest of the class especially in FCPS where there's a lot of tracking within the same grade level is being obtuse.

In soccer, you can only play with the team of your grade level if your birthday is in September. If it's a redshirted summer birthday boy they have to play the next grade up. So these Sept birthday redshirt kids are not that much different than the kids in class with October birthdays.