6:47 here.

40 kids in the class, otherwise, yes.

Anonymous wrote:You know how Harvard decided a few years ago to end early admission? And because it's H.A.R.V.A.R.D, well, everyone took notice and additional schools followed suit. It's probably doing the right thing for the right reasons, and because it's Harvard .... it can.

I wish one or more elite private schools in DC would, for once and all, put children in the correct grade. When the admission committee is holding the application of a nearly 6 yr old, I wish, say, Sidwell's admission committee would have the balls to say Hey guess what? You don't belong in kindergarten. I wish that Beauvoir, for example, would put 4 year olds in preK and 5 year olds in K. The applicants whose child will turn 7 will have to apply elsewhere, in my dream scenario.

Your reference in your OP to Harvard's ending early admissions is inapt: Harvard ended the practice of admitting applicants in the fall of senior year in favor of requiring all applicants to wait for an admissions decision on April 1. Contrary to your implication, Harvard did NOT end the practice of admitting applicants of different chronological ages as entering freshmen. In a freshmen class you might find a few 16-year-olds, a lot of 17-or-18-year-olds, one or two 15-year-olds, and maybe a 25-year-old or two.

Anonymous wrote:My DC is in K with 39 other children, almost 20% have already turned 7 .... There is about an 18 month spread.

Name the school. That way others can agree with your facts.

And to make sure I'm hearing you correctly, are you saying 6-7 kids in a class of 39 ("almost 20%" of 39) have now turned 7 years old? And if the max spread is "about 18 months," with some of the youngest turning 6 over this summer, then that means the very oldest kid just turned 7 sometime in January-February of 2010, correct? And the other 5-6 kids turned 7 sometime between March 2010 and May 2010, right?

Thanks for clarifying these items.

My DC is in K with 39 other children, almost 20% have already turned 7. The maturity and size difference of the kids who are that much older is stark. I would also add that the youngest in the class are just turning 6, or will turn 6 over the summer. There is about an 18 month spread.

The kids who have already turned 7 will not be able to play on the same youth soccer teams, or other sports and the bulk of their classmates in the fall. They already know this and are generally not happy about it.

Anonymous wrote:I've checked in on this thread off and on, so I don't know if anyone named names, but I am still not buying the OP's story.

No, no one has ever named names. I am not buying either. Since it's now June, a whole other group of K kids with early-summer & late-spring birthdays are now turning 7 (in other words, kids that were held back by 4 whole months!), so maybe someone will finally back up her redshirting claims now by naming a school and the number of 7-year-olds in K. I'm still waiting.

I've checked in on this thread off and on, so I don't know if anyone named names, but I am still not buying the OP's story. If you went strictly by age cut off, my kid would have been the oldest in the K class. DC turned 5 two weeks after the deadline, DC was 6 two weeks after starting Kindergarten. There is only 1 kid who was older (so one "red shirt"), and that kid turned 7 at the very end of the school year.

I am now getting ready to send kid #2 to the same school. That kid, with a summer birthday, will be one of the youngest. I have no concerns that a roving band of 7 year olds is lying in wait for DC#2 in the K class. Interestingly, that kid is also very tall. I wonder if everyone will think I red shirted DC#2 when the exact opposite is true?

I think there may be some merit to your post. My DC is in a class where some of the kids are older and the class bullies are the two older children. According to their mothers, it's because they are bored being in the class with younger children. They seem to get a kick out of using their larger sizes to intimidate the smaller children and often pick on them.

Anonymous wrote:It's a problem when it's too late: when a "held back" kid whose parents really know they should have been at the grade ahead but worried their kid was not going to be a classroom star at any grade becomes Big Moose. There's a lot of Big Moose boys walking around, knowing they failed their parents the first time around and insecure that they're still no better off. Then they bully others who are on grade level, younger and smaller and...brighter.

Anonymous wrote:Hi, I'm the "big moose" poster. Was I insulting your child? No, I was making a reference to the general audience that sometimes kids get pushed into the lower grade by their parents, and sometimes the kids themselves know they should remain with their peer group. If you as a parent feel insulted directly clearly you are too muddled up in identifying your kids as separate from you. Therein lies a whole new problem. At the end of the day, the admissions people at the schools should be very responsible about how much influence they allow parents to dictate what's best for their kids' educational needs when in fact the school houses the educators.

I'm the PP you're responding to. Actually, both my DC's are young for grade, so I don't think this is a case of me taking it personally. I just don't like hearing kids described with pejorative terms, or adults assuming that they will feel or act in a certain negative way.

Anonymous wrote:Hi, I'm the "big moose" poster. Was I insulting your child? No, I was making a reference to the general audience that sometimes kids get pushed into the lower grade by their parents, and sometimes the kids themselves know they should remain with their peer group. If you as a parent feel insulted directly clearly you are too muddled up in identifying your kids as separate from you. Therein lies a whole new problem. At the end of the day, the admissions people at the schools should be very responsible about how much influence they allow parents to dictate what's best for their kids' educational needs when in fact the school houses the educators.

A lot of the time the school is the one driving the decision.

Hi, I'm the "big moose" poster. Was I insulting your child? No, I was making a reference to the general audience that sometimes kids get pushed into the lower grade by their parents, and sometimes the kids themselves know they should remain with their peer group. If you as a parent feel insulted directly clearly you are too muddled up in identifying your kids as separate from you. Therein lies a whole new problem. At the end of the day, the admissions people at the schools should be very responsible about how much influence they allow parents to dictate what's best for their kids' educational needs when in fact the school houses the educators.

Obviously kids won't be redshirted at a private school unless the school endorses it. So your beef really isn't with the parents, but with the school. If you don't like a school's policy on redshirting, take your business elsewhere.

Anonymous wrote:Remember how we tell our kids when they're young to "worry about yourself" when they complain about getting a vanilla cupcake when their friend got a chocolate one?

Perhaps parents can follow this advice, too? Do what you believe is right for your child and don't worry about a 7 year old in kindergarten. Just assume that everyone is doing the best they can for their children.

Gosh i wish i had found the doctors that diagnose slow processing for high school kids scoring over 2000 on SAT's who have been at select privates for a decade.

PP-

But there IS an issue when you have children who are in a class they otherwise should not be in. When you have older children in Kindergarten, they result in the curriculum being advanced beyond the capabilities of the younger children. At my current school, we had so many older kids in K that we had to raise the cut-off age because the younger 5-year-olds couldn't keep up. That is a failure on so many levels. If a child is truly not prepared for a given grade level that he/she is otherwise chronologically aged for, then they need more than just an extra year of time to truly meet their needs. Teachers are trained in differentiation, meaning they can support kids who might be a bit below grade level. When parents or schools hold children back simply because they don't meet every single criteria for advancement, this is NOT the best thing for the child by any stretch of the imagination.

Remember how we tell our kids when they're young to "worry about yourself" when they complain about getting a vanilla cupcake when their friend got a chocolate one?

Perhaps parents can follow this advice, too? Do what you believe is right for your child and don't worry about a 7 year old in kindergarten. Just assume that everyone is doing the best they can for their children.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

This is just ridiculous. Stop slamming kids who were held back - maybe some have parents who wanted to gain an edge, but many had parents who were trying to do the right thing for their children. There is no correlation between being on the older end of the age range and bullying, and I doubt that most kids who were held back feel that they failed their parents - unless they hear adults referring to them as "big moose" - that would sap anyone's self esteem.

But sometimes (and often times) holding back is not the right thing to do, yet parents do it anyways.

Not disagreeing, but is the best solution to insult those children, call them names, suggest that they should feel they disappointed their parents, and chart a path to bullying?

FWIW, the bullies in my childrens' classes have often been the younger/smaller kids, at least as often as they are the larger kids.

Most of the redshirts at my DS's privates are those whose parents had athletic aspirations for them. Not being part of the parent [particularly lax social set] some assumed my child was RS. This thread is silly for those of us with older DS's since we have heard the chat extended to high school and beyond.