Anyone know if redshirting is common in vienna? We just moved here and I find this whole conversation a bit shocking. DS turned 5 in April and I assumed he'd be smack dab in the middle of his class age-wise but maybe not. So odd.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hate this. Hate this hate this.

I should be able to send my March bday 5yo to kindergarten the following fall without being worried that he'll be toward the bottom of the pack in size, self-control, concentration etc. Full day mandatory kindergarten is bad enough. K should be centers and free play and recess and alphabets. Not worksheets and reading groups. He's a bright kid and will do just fine, but it shouldn't even be on my RADAR as a concern.

Put your kid in school!

You sound pretty entitled.

No, parents who think they can game the system to make their children the smartest/tallest/most athletic/most mature are the entitled ones. PP just wants her child to be in kindergarten with other kindergarteners, not first and second graders.

Pretty typical DCUM response there--to call the mom who says "maybe everyone should just try and follow the rules" entitled. Some people are so entitled they don't even know what it means anymore.

Anonymous wrote:Have not read the whole thread, but I think it's pretty shortsighted that you are just worried about the other parents asking YOU. The kids all know the others' ages by first grade. My child even refers to one redshirter as "the 8 year old." Your kid and all his friends will know he was held back, and in case you hadn't realized, he will likely be on sports teams with kids in the grade above him, not with his friends. So over all this business.

This is just funny to me. I was held back in the 70s and the kids did not know it (I didn't even really know it). No one even mentioned it until I got my learner's permit before everyone and they thought that was cool. I just don't think the kids focus on it as much as the parents.

Have not read the whole thread, but I think it's pretty shortsighted that you are just worried about the other parents asking YOU. The kids all know the others' ages by first grade. My child even refers to one redshirter as "the 8 year old." Your kid and all his friends will know he was held back, and in case you hadn't realized, he will likely be on sports teams with kids in the grade above him, not with his friends. So over all this business.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hate this. Hate this hate this.

I should be able to send my March bday 5yo to kindergarten the following fall without being worried that he'll be toward the bottom of the pack in size, self-control, concentration etc. Full day mandatory kindergarten is bad enough. K should be centers and free play and recess and alphabets. Not worksheets and reading groups. He's a bright kid and will do just fine, but it shouldn't even be on my RADAR as a concern.

Put your kid in school!

You sound pretty entitled.

No, parents who think they can game the system to make their children the smartest/tallest/most athletic/most mature are the entitled ones. PP just wants her child to be in kindergarten with other kindergarteners, not first and second graders.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think it is fair to say parents should never redshirt for maturity issues. My son is 5 and with a summer birthday, was the youngest kid in his class. His best friend for most of the year just urned 7. Their friendship faded because DS felt his friend was "acting too immature and crying all the time when he didn't get his own way." That is a kid who needed to be held back, and his parents made a good choice.

I'm not sure I understand. Your on-time DS is no longer friends with a red-shirted DS, because that boy is too immature. Being redshirted doesn't seem to have helped him. Who knows? He may have been better off going on time, where he would be immature and potentially better served academically.

I don't get it either.

Anonymous wrote:
Original PP here. As it stands now, classrooms have an 18+ month range. I actually don't mind him being the youngest--I mind him being the youngest by well over a year. I mind having schools that have unreasonable expectations of 5yos because half the kids are a year older. I mind that so many kids are being denied an opportunity to start school on time because parents who would otherwise send them are worried about the red-shirt cohort. It's distorting the whole system. For the kids who really need an extra, I have the utmost understanding. My brother repeated kindergarten because my parents gave it a go (August bday), and it would probably been better if he'd repeated preschool instead. But the child from this example has a perfectly reasonable birthday and seems to be on a perfectly reasonable development trajectory. The only gain I see here is at the expense of his classmates.

Bravo. Exactly.

Anonymous wrote:I don't think it is fair to say parents should never redshirt for maturity issues. My son is 5 and with a summer birthday, was the youngest kid in his class. His best friend for most of the year just urned 7. Their friendship faded because DS felt his friend was "acting too immature and crying all the time when he didn't get his own way." That is a kid who needed to be held back, and his parents made a good choice.

I'm not sure I understand. Your on-time DS is no longer friends with a red-shirted DS, because that boy is too immature. Being redshirted doesn't seem to have helped him. Who knows? He may have been better off going on time, where he would be immature and potentially better served academically.

I don't think it is fair to say parents should never redshirt for maturity issues. My son is 5 and with a summer birthday, was the youngest kid in his class. His best friend for most of the year just urned 7. Their friendship faded because DS felt his friend was "acting too immature and crying all the time when he didn't get his own way." That is a kid who needed to be held back, and his parents made a good choice.

I hate this. Hate this hate this.

I should be able to send my March bday 5yo to kindergarten the following fall without being worried that he'll be toward the bottom of the pack in size, self-control, concentration etc. Full day mandatory kindergarten is bad enough. K should be centers and free play and recess and alphabets. Not worksheets and reading groups. He's a bright kid and will do just fine, but it shouldn't even be on my RADAR as a concern.

Put your kid in school!



At least you are honest--you want someone else to have the youngest kid.

Original PP here. As it stands now, classrooms have an 18+ month range. I actually don't mind him being the youngest--I mind him being the youngest by well over a year. I mind having schools that have unreasonable expectations of 5yos because half the kids are a year older. I mind that so many kids are being denied an opportunity to start school on time because parents who would otherwise send them are worried about the red-shirt cohort. It's distorting the whole system. For the kids who really need an extra, I have the utmost understanding. My brother repeated kindergarten because my parents gave it a go (August bday), and it would probably been better if he'd repeated preschool instead. But the child from this example has a perfectly reasonable birthday and seems to be on a perfectly reasonable development trajectory. The only gain I see here is at the expense of his classmates.

I think five is just too young to begin formal schooling, and I don't blame parents who do what they can to delay it.

My DS has an October birthday and missed the cutoff in Virginia by three weeks. I'm very pleased with this timing. I would rather pay for another year of preschool than stick him into school. He is doing very well academically but his concentration sucks, and his ability to follow instructions has a short span. He doesn't need to be in school right now.

My brother, whose birthday is April 29, repeated kindergarten on the advice of his kindergarten teacher and pediatrician. The district expected rising first graders to have some ability to read, and my brother couldn't. He was also socially immature and a bit withdrawn. My mom thought that he had not coped well with her and my dad's divorce (probably true) and thought that he would do better later with an additional year of kindergarten. It is possible that some of those issues could have been alleviated by him attending any kind of preschool program, but it was expensive in our town and also not the norm for that community. Either way, he was physically larger than many of the other kids in his class, but we never lied about his age or had any issues with birthday parties. I don't know if there were other red-shirted kids in his class. I do think that there were other potential solutions to the issue, and I think that he would probably have caught up with the rest of the class. During his second kindergarten year, he figured out the reading thing and the social skills and did well and continued to do well.

Socially, though, it's kind of a big deal for a kid. You know how kids are. They're blunt and can be jerks about stuff. "How come you're a year older than everyone else?" "I went to kindergarten twice." "YOU GOT HELD BACK??" These are stigmas that we teach them, either subtly or explicitly, and they absolutely come out in kid conversation. I know that my brother felt embarrassed about that in middle school. He graduated from high school a couple weeks after he turned 19, which at that point he considered a plus because the bar entry age in our town was 19 (21 to drink) so he could go to bar shows earlier than many of his friends.

If your child's ADHD diagnosis is based solely on his ability to sit still and follow school rules, you need to expect more from your medical professionals. 5-year-olds are not developmentally ready to sit quietly in a classroom for hours on end. One of the primary things that kindergarten (or whatever the entry year into school is) does is teach children those social skills. They spend the year working on them. Some kids pick it up faster than others.

I think that people like the OP and many other red-shirters forget that the decision to start kindergarten a year late is not just about kindergarten. Children are at various academic levels when they start kindergarten. Those levels do not mean that they are categorically "academically advanced" or "delayed" or that their social skills are permanently immature.

"My kindergartener is already reading on a third grade level. He is so bored in school. It must be because he is gifted." No. He is the same age as a second grader but he is doing his second grade work in a kindergarten class. So mot gifted. Just 'big for his age' or old for his age. You pick.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

If he will be 19 when he graduates then yes, he will be 15 in the 8th grade which is ridiculous.

Why is it ridiculous?

Not PP, but when people like me gradate at 17, it's ridiculous to be two years behind. And ridiculous to have a junior high student with a learners permit. And a freshman with a drivers license. Do I need to go on?

It's ridiculous for an eighth grader to be 15 because you graduated from high school at 17? I don't understand that. Also, I had a learner's permit in junior high school; at the time, in my state, you could get a learner's permit when you turned 14, which I did halfway through ninth grade, which was in junior high school.

Somebody who was redshirted with a March birthday is five months (in Maryland) or six months (in Virginia) older than the oldest students in the class who went on time. Half a year can be a big difference in kindergarten. Is half a year a big difference in eighth grade? Or twelfth grade? I don't think so.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

If he will be 19 when he graduates then yes, he will be 15 in the 8th grade which is ridiculous.

Why is it ridiculous?

Not PP, but when people like me gradate at 17, it's ridiculous to be two years behind. And ridiculous to have a junior high student with a learners permit. And a freshman with a drivers license. Do I need to go on?