Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:18:59 poster: We're at a private Catholic school in Fairfax County. There is 1 girl in the summer birthdays. There are probably 70 kids in their grade.

Are you saying there is one 7-year-old girl in K right now? Or that she's a 6-year-old in K, who will turn 7 this summer? Or that she's turning 6 this summer?

Or something else entirely? Sorry to be confused.

PP again. I think I just figured it out. Are you the 18:59 poster just adding more detail to your prior post? If so, that makes perfect sense, and I understand you.

(I had thought you were someone else responding to the 18:59 poster.)

Anonymous wrote:18:59 poster: We're at a private Catholic school in Fairfax County. There is 1 girl in the summer birthdays. There are probably 70 kids in their grade.

Are you saying there is one 7-year-old girl in K right now? Or that she's a 6-year-old in K, who will turn 7 this summer? Or that she's turning 6 this summer?

Or something else entirely? Sorry to be confused.

Anonymous wrote: We all agreed it was best for him to delay a year. He will be 18 years old when he graduates, not 19, not 20.

congratulations for making the best decision for your ds.
Even if he was 19 or 20 when he finishes school, whose business is that??
And if he decides he wants to spend a year as an exchange student, he very well might be.

Heaven forbid, the little darlings are going to attend college where some of the graduates are about 40 year old!!! Imagine that

Anonymous wrote:I heard from a psychologist that some affluent parents deliberately get a false diagnosis of ADD, so their children can be allotted more time for tests and school assignments. It makes me wonder how many people on this thread who claim that their children were redshirted for "developmental" reasons are really being honest...

My son was redshirted for developmental issues, not ADD. He has been in speech therapy since he was 3. We thought he needed an extra year to work on speech therapy. During the time we were deciding on whether to send him to kindergarten, he was starting to be self-conscious about his speech and developed a stutter because of it. With the extra year of therapy, the stutter disappeared. He will probably still need speech therapy for at another year, but he is not self-conscious anymore. We made the decision after talking with his preschool teacher, future kindergarten teacher, county IEP person, a private speech therapist, an aunt who is a speech therapist, my FIL who was the director of special education for a school district, and my husband who was redshirted himself as a child. We all agreed it was best for him to delay a year. He will be 18 years old when he graduates, not 19, not 20.

18:59 poster: We're at a private Catholic school in Fairfax County. There is 1 girl in the summer birthdays. There are probably 70 kids in their grade.

I heard from a psychologist that some affluent parents deliberately get a false diagnosis of ADD, so their children can be allotted more time for tests and school assignments. It makes me wonder how many people on this thread who claim that their children were redshirted for "developmental" reasons are really being honest...

pp, do you mind saying where your child goes to school? i'm interested to hear that many redshirted (boys and girls or just boys?) in k - we want to do that for our son, so we'd like to find somewhere that it is common.

I can't believe there are several 7 year olds in a kindergarten class. There are 6 redshirted kids in my son's K class, including my son, and they won't turn 7 until the summer. My son will be 18 when he graduates from high school.

Anonymous wrote:

This is becoming an epidemic of overgrown 7 year olds, hanging around with 5 year olds! It's embarrassing to see, frankly.

Exactly, and the sooner the schools and school systems get on the ball and develop guidelines and stick to them, the better.

Anonymous wrote:A very close relative redshirted her (May birthday) DC this year--WPPSI score in the high 90s and no developmental delays. She just thought that in this competitive admissions process, her DC would appear to be a stronger, more mature and more compelling applicant if compared to "younger" kids. So for those of you pretending that anyone who redshirts must be doing so for "honorable" reasons, you can drop the Pollyanna act.

I have also known parents who have done this, purely so their child "does better". If everyone ends up doing this, nothing will have changed. Then we will find parents redshirting for two years.
Schools are complicit in this. They should look for appropriate reasons to redshirt, not just "well, it can't hurt, so why not" and "it will make him/her do better against younger peers" and so on.

There will always be some kids who are less good than the average in a classroom -- they may be yours, mine, or someone else's. That alone is not a reason to hold them back. If they're not able to "get it" with their peers, chances are they will not get it with younger kids.

This is becoming an epidemic of overgrown 7 year olds, hanging around with 5 year olds! It's embarrassing to see, frankly.

Anonymous wrote:Get a life!! Our child is a spring baby and was held back due to relatively unique development and maturity issues. He has never had an issue with it, and neither has any of his classmates. He now is in middle school. Get a life!!

I am not the PP you responded to but: what do you mean by "unique development" exactly? Can you spell it out a bit better?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And isn't your 6-year-old a little young for 1st grade? If she's "right aged" and still only 6 1/2 in May, then she's pretty close to the cut-off herself. If my recollection is right, most schools expect 1st graders to turn 7 by August 2010 at the latest. When's her birthday? Perhaps the problem is that your DD should be in the K class instead.

Most schools expect first graders to turn 7 AFTER Sept 1 ....

Right, 1st graders are "supposed" to turn 7 after Sept 1 of the year they start 1st, and before Sept 1 of the year they start 2nd grade (i.e., August 2010 at the latest). So if PP's 6 1/2 year old 1st grader does not turn 7 in the next 3 months, she's "too young" for her current grade.

FWIW & IMO, I think PP's post is a perfect example of why it's silly to get too hung up on dates and age cut-offs. Even if PP's 6 1/2 year old is "too young" to be in 1st grade according to the cut-off dates, she should be allowed to advance to 1st grade if she's emotionally/academically ready for it. Similarly, if a boy older than the cut-off is not ready for the next grade, then there's no reason he shouldn't be held back.

Anonymous wrote:And isn't your 6-year-old a little young for 1st grade? If she's "right aged" and still only 6 1/2 in May, then she's pretty close to the cut-off herself. If my recollection is right, most schools expect 1st graders to turn 7 by August 2010 at the latest. When's her birthday? Perhaps the problem is that your DD should be in the K class instead.

Most schools expect first graders to turn 7 AFTER Sept 1.

Maryland:
http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/info/enroll/requirements.aspx
Kindergarten, age 5 by September 1

Virginia:
http://www.fcps.edu/news/register.htm
Virginia law states that a child may not enter kindergarten if he/she is not five by September 30

DC:
http://dcps.dc.gov/DCPS/Learn+About+Schools/Kindergarten
For kindergarten, your child must turn five (5) years of age on or before September 30th to be eligible.

And isn't your 6-year-old a little young for 1st grade? If she's "right aged" and still only 6 1/2 in May, then she's pretty close to the cut-off herself. If my recollection is right, most schools expect 1st graders to turn 7 by August 2010 at the latest. When's her birthday? Perhaps the problem is that your DD should be in the K class instead.