I hope other parents keep in mind that people have many reasons for starting their summer birthdays late if they have the option. For us, we had been in virtual school the entire year prior and had no idea what returning to real interaction/social life would be like so we opted for an in person preK with a smaller class instead of going into K (planning for public). There was so much uncertainty, especially how the year would go in public school. Covid was relatively traumatic for us and I hate to think people may judge my sweet kid now or in the future.

Do what you think is best for you son.

But the “good” privates do usually redshirt summer birthdays. That’s probably why you’re getting questions about it. It’s not the norm.

My daughter is a July birthday (next week!) and she went on time. There are rare occasions where I can tell she's a little younger than her classmates, but 95% of the time it's a non-issue. I have sometimes played the game "what if I'd held her back" and I honestly can't even imagine. She's doing SO well in school and is coming into 3rd grade blazing.

He'll be fine.

Anonymous wrote:Good for you! My DD misses the cut-off and could not start K last year. She was bored out of her mind in pre-K.

I had one of those too (missed it by a couple of days) and that preK year was the hardest. Since she's started K, I have zero regrets. She's now in high school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Good for you! My DD misses the cut-off and could not start K last year. She was bored out of her mind in pre-K.

Same. I have two kids with summer birthdays who started on time and one with a November birthday who is endlessly bored in her class. The summer birthday kids are absolutely fine. AAP - all honors, well adjusted, top sports teams, etc. I cannot for the life of me understand why any parent would change the trajectory of their kids based on a few months difference in preschool. It makes absolutely no sense. Kids learn and adapt. What parents perceive as a big deal in kindergarten is forgettable by 7th grade. Absent a medical disability or child with special needs, I think this redshirting business is helicopter parenting at its worst. Our friends redshirted their spring birthday kid because his writing wasn't perfect in preschool, a skill he could easily pick up in the summer or over a few days at home. And now he's more than 16 months older than his peers in some cases.

Makes no sense.

A tip: You are going to have a very, very tough row to hoe if you remain this judgmental, uncomprehending, and nosy about the parenting decisions of other people. Also, your own kids will just start keeping a lot of secrets from you when they become teens. My kids are all nearly grown and I’ve seen this pattern in the judgmental parents so many times now.

DP. It's not nosy or uncomprehending at all -- it's a fair assessment. And judgment is okay when someone else's behavior impacts you. Which redshirting does. Parents who redshirt do it to give their kids an advantage. It's designed to game the system to benefit their child. My kid is in that system. So yes, I will judge. This isn't like judging how someone parents in their own home or how they spend money or whatever.

You aren’t missing anything. My rising 3rd grader is a July boy and started on time. He got high 90s percentiles for all of his tests and he’s thriving despite a year of remote 1st grade. My cannot imagine holding him back. He would be so bored.

For all the people who think we just don’t know yet because he’s only 8 - my husband and I both turned 18 the summer before college. We were both on the top 10 of our HS class and went to Ivy / Top25 schools. I have honestly thought about my age compared to my peers two times in my whole life. The first is when my friends could all drive before me and the 2nd was the semester before I turned 21 when all my sorority sisters often went to bars without me.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Good for you! My DD misses the cut-off and could not start K last year. She was bored out of her mind in pre-K.

Same. I have two kids with summer birthdays who started on time and one with a November birthday who is endlessly bored in her class. The summer birthday kids are absolutely fine. AAP - all honors, well adjusted, top sports teams, etc. I cannot for the life of me understand why any parent would change the trajectory of their kids based on a few months difference in preschool. It makes absolutely no sense. Kids learn and adapt. What parents perceive as a big deal in kindergarten is forgettable by 7th grade. Absent a medical disability or child with special needs, I think this redshirting business is helicopter parenting at its worst. Our friends redshirted their spring birthday kid because his writing wasn't perfect in preschool, a skill he could easily pick up in the summer or over a few days at home. And now he's more than 16 months older than his peers in some cases.

Makes no sense.

Totally agree. We started our summer birthday kid on time and it has worked out great. She winds up in the middle of the pack on most things and even a bit more advanced in a couple areas where she shines. She is not even the smallest kid in class most years.

I think redshirting is largely done for competitive reasons -- wanting your kid not not simply be middle of the pack but to be THE biggest, most advanced kid in class. That stupid Malcolm Gladwell book made a bunch of people decide that the only way for their kid to succeed is to give them these little edges in age and timing. But what happens is that a few parents do it, and then other parents feel threatened, and then lots of parents do it, and then it is pointless anyway.

Your kid does not need to "win" kindergarten, and it's ok (preferable even) of they aren't always the best at everything. Do people really think that snowplowing their kid's way through school will ultimately benefit them as adults? No. It will keep them from learning resilience and social skills that are necessary to succeed in an interconnected world where you can't always game the system. And if starting your kid "on time" results in some struggles -- you work with them in overcoming them! That's one of the primary goals of parenting and childhood, to figure out how to navigate the world and develop skills that will serve you the rest of your life. These parents are actually shortchanging their kids.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Good for you! My DD misses the cut-off and could not start K last year. She was bored out of her mind in pre-K.

Same. I have two kids with summer birthdays who started on time and one with a November birthday who is endlessly bored in her class. The summer birthday kids are absolutely fine. AAP - all honors, well adjusted, top sports teams, etc. I cannot for the life of me understand why any parent would change the trajectory of their kids based on a few months difference in preschool. It makes absolutely no sense. Kids learn and adapt. What parents perceive as a big deal in kindergarten is forgettable by 7th grade. Absent a medical disability or child with special needs, I think this redshirting business is helicopter parenting at its worst. Our friends redshirted their spring birthday kid because his writing wasn't perfect in preschool, a skill he could easily pick up in the summer or over a few days at home. And now he's more than 16 months older than his peers in some cases.

Makes no sense.

A tip: You are going to have a very, very tough row to hoe if you remain this judgmental, uncomprehending, and nosy about the parenting decisions of other people. Also, your own kids will just start keeping a lot of secrets from you when they become teens. My kids are all nearly grown and I’ve seen this pattern in the judgmental parents so many times now.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Good for you! My DD misses the cut-off and could not start K last year. She was bored out of her mind in pre-K.

Same. I have two kids with summer birthdays who started on time and one with a November birthday who is endlessly bored in her class. The summer birthday kids are absolutely fine. AAP - all honors, well adjusted, top sports teams, etc. I cannot for the life of me understand why any parent would change the trajectory of their kids based on a few months difference in preschool. It makes absolutely no sense. Kids learn and adapt. What parents perceive as a big deal in kindergarten is forgettable by 7th grade. Absent a medical disability or child with special needs, I think this redshirting business is helicopter parenting at its worst. Our friends redshirted their spring birthday kid because his writing wasn't perfect in preschool, a skill he could easily pick up in the summer or over a few days at home. And now he's more than 16 months older than his peers in some cases.

Makes no sense.

+100000000000

Anonymous wrote:Good for you! My DD misses the cut-off and could not start K last year. She was bored out of her mind in pre-K.

Same. I have two kids with summer birthdays who started on time and one with a November birthday who is endlessly bored in her class. The summer birthday kids are absolutely fine. AAP - all honors, well adjusted, top sports teams, etc. I cannot for the life of me understand why any parent would change the trajectory of their kids based on a few months difference in preschool. It makes absolutely no sense. Kids learn and adapt. What parents perceive as a big deal in kindergarten is forgettable by 7th grade. Absent a medical disability or child with special needs, I think this redshirting business is helicopter parenting at its worst. Our friends redshirted their spring birthday kid because his writing wasn't perfect in preschool, a skill he could easily pick up in the summer or over a few days at home. And now he's more than 16 months older than his peers in some cases.

Makes no sense.

Good for you! My DD misses the cut-off and could not start K last year. She was bored out of her mind in pre-K.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Am making this decision currently. I’ve spoken to a lot of people who went through this…of people who did redshirt for summer bdays, I haven’t spoken to a single person who regrets it. With people who didn’t redshirt, I’ve spoken to some who don’t regret it thus far but some who do. I find myself thinking about not just now/the next year (she would do perfectly fine going now) but 10 years down the road

Will you be ok if your daughter is the first in her class to go through puberty, who expresses normal adolescent defiance when most of her peers are still "little kids"? As someone who went through puberty on the later side I remember feeling no personal embarrassment about that (though I remember lying to friends in middle school that I'd stay gotten my period!) But I do remember the girls who were wearing bras first had a pretty tough time for a year or so.

I myself have a July birthday (turned 5 right before K) and my own DD has a November birthday so she turned 5 after K started, but our school district is very strict on their anti redshirt policy and the academic cutoff is the full calendar year (so all kids born in 2021 will start K the same year). As a result there's virtually no talk about redshirting.

This was a lot of my thought process with my DD. She's a late July birthday and we started her on time. Thus far, I'm glad we did - she's doing well academically and she's pretty mature for her age (you can't tell she's the youngest) - but that aside, she's very tall for her age. She is the youngest in her class and one of the tallest. I went through puberty early, she likely will too. I can't imagine her being the oldest in her grade because she already really stands out and puberty is just so awkward as it is.

Anonymous wrote:Am making this decision currently. I’ve spoken to a lot of people who went through this…of people who did redshirt for summer bdays, I haven’t spoken to a single person who regrets it. With people who didn’t redshirt, I’ve spoken to some who don’t regret it thus far but some who do. I find myself thinking about not just now/the next year (she would do perfectly fine going now) but 10 years down the road

Will you be ok if your daughter is the first in her class to go through puberty, who expresses normal adolescent defiance when most of her peers are still "little kids"? As someone who went through puberty on the later side I remember feeling no personal embarrassment about that (though I remember lying to friends in middle school that I'd stay gotten my period!) But I do remember the girls who were wearing bras first had a pretty tough time for a year or so.

I myself have a July birthday (turned 5 right before K) and my own DD has a November birthday so she turned 5 after K started, but our school district is very strict on their anti redshirt policy and the academic cutoff is the full calendar year (so all kids born in 2021 will start K the same year). As a result there's virtually no talk about redshirting.

Anonymous wrote:Am making this decision currently. I’ve spoken to a lot of people who went through this…of people who did redshirt for summer bdays, I haven’t spoken to a single person who regrets it. With people who didn’t redshirt, I’ve spoken to some who don’t regret it thus far but some who do. I find myself thinking about not just now/the next year (she would do perfectly fine going now) but 10 years down the road

I regretted being pushed into it. It was not the right choice and child skipped a grade to make up for it. Don’t dumb down your kid.

Am making this decision currently. I’ve spoken to a lot of people who went through this…of people who did redshirt for summer bdays, I haven’t spoken to a single person who regrets it. With people who didn’t redshirt, I’ve spoken to some who don’t regret it thus far but some who do. I find myself thinking about not just now/the next year (she would do perfectly fine going now) but 10 years down the road