Anonymous wrote:You’ll have to reach out to your school board. A redshirted spring/summer birthday would be turning six before K not 7.

+1 this is something else going on, if they’re 7 at this point in the year, in kindergarten

Anonymous wrote:Ever since Covid, people have started redshirting winter birthdays. It's ridiculous. I have a second grader, so her grade is enormous and contains everyone who (understandably) didn't want to send their kid to virtual Kindergarten. TONS of kids that were already 7 in the fall of Kindergarten including girls. It is not fun.

I think that was a tiny blip. I'm now aware of that practice continuing post-virtual instruction.

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Anonymous wrote:Red shirting is bullshit. It’s basically outright cheating unless you are a month or two away from the cutoff.

Even in soccer leagues we have strict age cut offs to prevent older kids from being in same team as the younger ones. But somehow school sports think it’s just hunky dory to have almost two years differential in age on a boys team in middle school where there is a huge difference in size and aggression with age.

Cheating is breaking the rules. What rules is redshirting breaking? The schools know exactly how old the kids are.

The problem is that age cutoffs are presented as a rule but then are treated as a suggestion. OP is saying that it would be better to create more clarity around that so that families could make informed decisions.

I think the main reason redshirting gets a bad name is because in certain districts, people get blindsided by it. This happens because the rule is not clearly explained, and people are surprised to discover how much of an age gap there can be in the same grade. If you make the rule more clear and communicate it to everyone, there won't be surprises and people can make informed decisions.

My sister when through this with her kids. She had no clue redshirting was even a thing with her oldest, who has a summer birthday and wound up in a grade with a lot of much older kids and it was not a great fit. She just followed the age cut off thinking that was the rule and not realizing others didn't view it that way. And once your kid is in a grade like that, it's hard to go back and change it because there is a lot more stigma around "holding back" than redshirting, plus often kids are on target academically and the repercussions are just social, so then you are stuck with no good options.

She wised up with her second, who she redshirted with a July birthday and he's much happier. But that's only because she had the trial and error of the first, who got screwed. A clearly defined rule would have made for a better school experience for my nephew (and potentially also his classmates).

Clarity is good.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You’ll have to reach out to your school board. A redshirted spring/summer birthday would be turning six before K not 7.

I’m talking about our current class. 3 kids are 7 already and it’s February. This is a Sep 1 cutoff public school.

This makes no sense. When are their birthdays?

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Anonymous wrote:Why would schools ban it? It is to their benefit if kids test better and behave better. The school district doesn’t care that you feel it is “cheating” and your kids will somehow be out-shined by older kids in the same grade. That isn’t their concern.

Most redshirted kids actually behave worse because they're bored out of their minds. They're also more mature, so there's a lot of bullying.

[[citation needed]]

Anonymous wrote:You’ll have to reach out to your school board. A redshirted spring/summer birthday would be turning six before K not 7.

+1

Even a redshirted winter birthday would be turning 6 before K, not 7.

Anonymous wrote:Why would schools ban it? It is to their benefit if kids test better and behave better. The school district doesn’t care that you feel it is “cheating” and your kids will somehow be out-shined by older kids in the same grade. That isn’t their concern.

Most redshirted kids actually behave worse because they're bored out of their minds. They're also more mature, so there's a lot of bullying.

Ever since Covid, people have started redshirting winter birthdays. It's ridiculous. I have a second grader, so her grade is enormous and contains everyone who (understandably) didn't want to send their kid to virtual Kindergarten. TONS of kids that were already 7 in the fall of Kindergarten including girls. It is not fun.

Why would schools ban it? It is to their benefit if kids test better and behave better. The school district doesn’t care that you feel it is “cheating” and your kids will somehow be out-shined by older kids in the same grade. That isn’t their concern.

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Anonymous wrote:Be glad the cutoff is 9/1.

In New York State, it’s 12/31. And people still redshirt summer boys at least, so the gap is huge.

That’s too much. Public schools really need to mandate it. Anything that is 6months from the cutoff should require a medical/learning condition of some sort that they are receiving services for.

Nonsense. You parent your kids, let other people parent theirs.

The point is that it affects others. It affects the class dynamic. It changes the age and size range etc in the class.

This. I don't understand the attitude that redshirting is a purely individual choice. Obviously there's a social/cooperative dynamic or there wouldn't be age cut offs at all. They'd just tell parents to send kids when they felt like it.

I don't have any issues with redshirting when appropriate but I don't think it should just be a unilateral parent choice unless you're talking about kids right near the cut off where it's not really going to make a difference for the cohort (a redshirted August birthday is always either going to be the oldest or youngest, but only by a bit so I don't care what parents choose in those cases).

Make up your minds. Does it hurt others or only hold your own kid back if you redshirt? So many people post about what a tragedy it is to redshirt your kid and the message it sends to them and how their young for grade kid is running circles around everyone. So what's the problem? I think it's pretty clear people use the faux concern as a cover because they are insecure about their own kids.

You are dragging in every other conversation about redshirting and (angrily, and without reason) lumping them all together. I can tell you are just chomping at the bit to yell at "anti-redshirters" and you don't actually read the posts because your arguments make no sense in the context of this thread.

OP isn't making an argument against all redshirting, she's looking for a more formalized process. Like giving parents discretion within an age window but requiring a more formal process (an evaluation, a diagnosis, some kind of application for approval) outside that window. This is not an "anti-redshirt" position. It's a "pro-clarity" position. It would still enable people to redshirt and it would have zero impact on the vast majority of redshirting decisions, which involve kids within a couple months of the cut off. But it would give schools a bit more control over age cohorts and therefore give parents a bit more confidence that their kid is in the right cohort with kids who are at a similar maturity level.

There are school districts (like DCPS, for instance) where they actually require some kind of documentation/permissions process for ANY redshirting decision, so OP is not even suggesting a particularly restrictive policy. Just more restrictive than "do whatever you want."

I think red shirting should be banned from 3 months before the cutoff. No one should be turning 7 in K at all. Some do turn 7 in the summer after K.

Anonymous wrote:Red shirting is bullshit. It’s basically outright cheating unless you are a month or two away from the cutoff.

Even in soccer leagues we have strict age cut offs to prevent older kids from being in same team as the younger ones. But somehow school sports think it’s just hunky dory to have almost two years differential in age on a boys team in middle school where there is a huge difference in size and aggression with age.

Cheating is breaking the rules. What rules is redshirting breaking? The schools know exactly how old the kids are.

Red shirting is bullshit. It’s basically outright cheating unless you are a month or two away from the cutoff.

Even in soccer leagues we have strict age cut offs to prevent older kids from being in same team as the younger ones. But somehow school sports think it’s just hunky dory to have almost two years differential in age on a boys team in middle school where there is a huge difference in size and aggression with age.

My BIL insisted that they hold my nephew back so that he'd be "stronger, taller and cooler" than the other kids. It didn't work. Well, he's taller, but that is genetics.

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Anonymous wrote:Just enroll your kid in kindergarten already. Yes, your kid will be among the youngest and the early years of grade school will have more twists and turns, but in the long run it's better. That way, your student graduates from high school at 17 instead of 19 or 20.

Our summer birthday started college at almost 18 and will graduate with a bachelor's at 21. A lot of her redshirted peers in the same grade are already 23. They'll graduate with a bachelor's at 24/25/26. Half their 20s are already over, and now what? Grad school? They'll be almost 30 by the time they hit the workforce...

Look ahead 20 years, OP. Redshirting actually holds your kid back later.

+1

Agree. It is unfair to make your kid graduate high school when they are 19 or almost 19.

Right on cue, the inability to do math pops up.

np. I was like OP's child. My birthday almost always fell the first week of school. I turned 17 at the start of my senior year in high school, and turned 18 at the start of undergrad. If I had been redshirted, I would have turned 19 (not 18) during the first week of college, my freshman year.

A kid who is redshirted with a May or June birthday would be 6 in September of their kindergarten year, but 7 at the end of that same academic year, assuming the academic calendar ends in June. Twelve years later, that same kid would be 18 at the start of their senior year and just turning 19 at the end.

Unlike pp, I don't really care whether you or anyone else redshirts, but she's right about kids graduating at age 19 or almost 19. It is possible.