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Anonymous wrote:If you redshirt your kids, the other kids will figure out what age your child is (most likely your child will simply tell them) and therefore their parents will too. It's less that people are cataloguing the ages and birthdays of every child and more that when you encounter an 8 year old in 1st or a 10 yr old in 3rd, it is notable, and kids and adults alike will share that info.

The fact that people discover this does not make them creepy stalkers. Again, usually this information is learned from the child themselves when they tell other kids what their age is, which is a very normal thing for kids to share with one another.

You can't control other people finding out and you can't control how they will feel about it when they do. Proceed accordingly.

+1, most talk about it and are proud to be old

Exactly. It's often a point of pride for kids in younger grades to be the oldest, so the redshirted kids get revealed very quickly. This can also be where the resentment starts, if you've got a redshirted kid in the classroom boasting about being the oldest. It's meaningless but it draws attention to it in a negative way.

If you redshirt, talk to your kids about how being a year older or younger isn't important. Make sure they understand that being older doesn't make them better, and find a way to explain why you redshirted that doesn't put other kids down. You don't want your redshirted kid lording it over other children.

TBH it's more likely that they will be uncomfortable and self conscious about being older than everyone else, like they're too old to be in the grade they're in.

Let us know how it goes when the other children make fun of your kid for being too old to be in his or her grade.

Because it will never happen.

said the person who has literally never met a child

How would the kids know what “too old” was unless psycho mom had a sit down and talked about it? Real kids only care about who’s birthday is next and if they are going to the party.

This is a strange world you live in where the moms know the ages of literally hundreds of children at their kids' schools, but the kids have no idea how old anyone is or what grade you're supposed to be in each grade.

There is no correct age per grade since school year isn’t the calendar year. Kids have birthdays all year round.

Have fun explaining that to all the kids at school.

Do you have any kids in school? It’s a non issue.

Pfft. If you have a kid who is older than some children in the grade ahead of them, the other kids will sniff that out in about three seconds and the entire grade will know within days. Some will think it's cool. Some won't care. Some will ask what is wrong with you.

The redshirted kid with be a year older than their peers forever. Elementary school. Middle school. High school. College. It will always be an issue, to varying degrees.

You do realize that college students vary wildly in age, right? Kids take a gap year between HS and college. Kids transfer colleges and their credits might not always transfer exactly. They take a year off for health reasons, or they join the military and have to take time off for training or because they actually get deployed. Or they have a kid! Allll kinds of stuff happens. Even throughout K-12 school, different areas have different cutoffs. The places that start school early in early-mid August in the Midwest and the South often have 7/30 cutoffs. The August and September birthday kids (and there are a lot, these are some of the most common birthdays of the year) didn’t meet the cutoff where they started school.

Ok, Spock, but were you never a child? It's easy to say "'don't sweat it" when you're a middle aged parent with the benefit of experience and hindsight and you don't actually have to do it. Not sweating it though is an altogether different matter when you're young and in the thick of it. If you can't see why a child would be self conscious about being older than all of their peers, then I don't know what to tell you other than you're just being willfully blind.

Hey Ashley, this is a you problem and nothing else.

I know it's probably hard, if you're a parent redshirting a child, to acknowledge that you're causing a lot more problems for your kid than you're solving (and so unnecessarily!), but don't say no one warned you.

Redshirting has been a thing in affluent areas at least since I was in elementary school in the 90s. Show any data about its “problems” please.

It's funny how reluctant we are to flunk children, even when they are not even in the ballpark of being at grade level in things like reading or math, because we worry about the social stigma and what it will do to their confidence and what it will mean for the rest of their lives.

But if we call it "redshirting," instead of "flunking," then people suddenly put quotation marks around the word 'problems' and demand to see academic papers on its supposed downsides.

Because starting K a year later isn’t the same thing. If your friends see you repeating 4th grade again, it’s a bit different. I would have thought this was obvious.

The thing about kindergartners is that they eventually become fourth graders, and they'll still be a year older than all their friends, and just in time for them to start becoming self conscious about ways in which they are different from the other kids.

Ok— once again, share the data on how redshirted fourth graders show such adverse emotional and social outcomes. At least 30 years of available data.

Congrats! You get the award for the most obtuse person on DCUM.

So…nothing. Just your hurt feelings.

Eh, it just seems like a moronic request.

If you say so, but a very quick google shows a pretty sizable body of data on the benefits of being older. So this assertion that there’s all sorts of problems seems…fake.

https://ohiofamiliesengage.osu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Redshirting-Kindergarten.pdf

Anonymous wrote:This all seems very backwards. You want your kid to be the youngest. They will learn the most. The older kids will be bored.

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Anonymous wrote:5 year olds (and 4.9 year olds) are mature enough to start kindergarten, it is only when 6 year olds join KG, water gets muddied! I support the hard cut-off rule.
I think the baseline for maturity is getting skewed big time by older children in kindergarten. Parents who want to cheat will find a way to cheat and it is getting out of hand.

Only poor ones though. Private schools do not think “4.9” year olds are mature enough for kindergarten. Amazing what poverty does to make children ready to learn right?!?

It's also easier to reduce the number of ND kids in your student population if you're enrolling at age 6.

I never thought of this, but it’s so true. 5 seems to the age many kids start to get diagnosed with adhd, autism, etc.

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Anonymous wrote:If you redshirt your kids, the other kids will figure out what age your child is (most likely your child will simply tell them) and therefore their parents will too. It's less that people are cataloguing the ages and birthdays of every child and more that when you encounter an 8 year old in 1st or a 10 yr old in 3rd, it is notable, and kids and adults alike will share that info.

The fact that people discover this does not make them creepy stalkers. Again, usually this information is learned from the child themselves when they tell other kids what their age is, which is a very normal thing for kids to share with one another.

You can't control other people finding out and you can't control how they will feel about it when they do. Proceed accordingly.

+1, most talk about it and are proud to be old

Exactly. It's often a point of pride for kids in younger grades to be the oldest, so the redshirted kids get revealed very quickly. This can also be where the resentment starts, if you've got a redshirted kid in the classroom boasting about being the oldest. It's meaningless but it draws attention to it in a negative way.

If you redshirt, talk to your kids about how being a year older or younger isn't important. Make sure they understand that being older doesn't make them better, and find a way to explain why you redshirted that doesn't put other kids down. You don't want your redshirted kid lording it over other children.

TBH it's more likely that they will be uncomfortable and self conscious about being older than everyone else, like they're too old to be in the grade they're in.

Let us know how it goes when the other children make fun of your kid for being too old to be in his or her grade.

Because it will never happen.

said the person who has literally never met a child

How would the kids know what “too old” was unless psycho mom had a sit down and talked about it? Real kids only care about who’s birthday is next and if they are going to the party.

This is a strange world you live in where the moms know the ages of literally hundreds of children at their kids' schools, but the kids have no idea how old anyone is or what grade you're supposed to be in each grade.

There is no correct age per grade since school year isn’t the calendar year. Kids have birthdays all year round.

Have fun explaining that to all the kids at school.

Do you have any kids in school? It’s a non issue.

Pfft. If you have a kid who is older than some children in the grade ahead of them, the other kids will sniff that out in about three seconds and the entire grade will know within days. Some will think it's cool. Some won't care. Some will ask what is wrong with you.

The redshirted kid with be a year older than their peers forever. Elementary school. Middle school. High school. College. It will always be an issue, to varying degrees.

You do realize that college students vary wildly in age, right? Kids take a gap year between HS and college. Kids transfer colleges and their credits might not always transfer exactly. They take a year off for health reasons, or they join the military and have to take time off for training or because they actually get deployed. Or they have a kid! Allll kinds of stuff happens. Even throughout K-12 school, different areas have different cutoffs. The places that start school early in early-mid August in the Midwest and the South often have 7/30 cutoffs. The August and September birthday kids (and there are a lot, these are some of the most common birthdays of the year) didn’t meet the cutoff where they started school.

Ok, Spock, but were you never a child? It's easy to say "'don't sweat it" when you're a middle aged parent with the benefit of experience and hindsight and you don't actually have to do it. Not sweating it though is an altogether different matter when you're young and in the thick of it. If you can't see why a child would be self conscious about being older than all of their peers, then I don't know what to tell you other than you're just being willfully blind.

Hey Ashley, this is a you problem and nothing else.

I know it's probably hard, if you're a parent redshirting a child, to acknowledge that you're causing a lot more problems for your kid than you're solving (and so unnecessarily!), but don't say no one warned you.

Redshirting has been a thing in affluent areas at least since I was in elementary school in the 90s. Show any data about its “problems” please.

It's funny how reluctant we are to flunk children, even when they are not even in the ballpark of being at grade level in things like reading or math, because we worry about the social stigma and what it will do to their confidence and what it will mean for the rest of their lives.

But if we call it "redshirting," instead of "flunking," then people suddenly put quotation marks around the word 'problems' and demand to see academic papers on its supposed downsides.

Because starting K a year later isn’t the same thing. If your friends see you repeating 4th grade again, it’s a bit different. I would have thought this was obvious.

The thing about kindergartners is that they eventually become fourth graders, and they'll still be a year older than all their friends, and just in time for them to start becoming self conscious about ways in which they are different from the other kids.

Ok— once again, share the data on how redshirted fourth graders show such adverse emotional and social outcomes. At least 30 years of available data.

Congrats! You get the award for the most obtuse person on DCUM.

So…nothing. Just your hurt feelings.

Eh, it just seems like a moronic request.

If you say so, but a very quick google shows a pretty sizable body of data on the benefits of being older. So this assertion that there’s all sorts of problems seems…fake.

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Anonymous wrote:If you redshirt your kids, the other kids will figure out what age your child is (most likely your child will simply tell them) and therefore their parents will too. It's less that people are cataloguing the ages and birthdays of every child and more that when you encounter an 8 year old in 1st or a 10 yr old in 3rd, it is notable, and kids and adults alike will share that info.

The fact that people discover this does not make them creepy stalkers. Again, usually this information is learned from the child themselves when they tell other kids what their age is, which is a very normal thing for kids to share with one another.

You can't control other people finding out and you can't control how they will feel about it when they do. Proceed accordingly.

+1, most talk about it and are proud to be old

Exactly. It's often a point of pride for kids in younger grades to be the oldest, so the redshirted kids get revealed very quickly. This can also be where the resentment starts, if you've got a redshirted kid in the classroom boasting about being the oldest. It's meaningless but it draws attention to it in a negative way.

If you redshirt, talk to your kids about how being a year older or younger isn't important. Make sure they understand that being older doesn't make them better, and find a way to explain why you redshirted that doesn't put other kids down. You don't want your redshirted kid lording it over other children.

TBH it's more likely that they will be uncomfortable and self conscious about being older than everyone else, like they're too old to be in the grade they're in.

Let us know how it goes when the other children make fun of your kid for being too old to be in his or her grade.

Because it will never happen.

said the person who has literally never met a child

How would the kids know what “too old” was unless psycho mom had a sit down and talked about it? Real kids only care about who’s birthday is next and if they are going to the party.

This is a strange world you live in where the moms know the ages of literally hundreds of children at their kids' schools, but the kids have no idea how old anyone is or what grade you're supposed to be in each grade.

There is no correct age per grade since school year isn’t the calendar year. Kids have birthdays all year round.

Have fun explaining that to all the kids at school.

Do you have any kids in school? It’s a non issue.

Pfft. If you have a kid who is older than some children in the grade ahead of them, the other kids will sniff that out in about three seconds and the entire grade will know within days. Some will think it's cool. Some won't care. Some will ask what is wrong with you.

The redshirted kid with be a year older than their peers forever. Elementary school. Middle school. High school. College. It will always be an issue, to varying degrees.

You do realize that college students vary wildly in age, right? Kids take a gap year between HS and college. Kids transfer colleges and their credits might not always transfer exactly. They take a year off for health reasons, or they join the military and have to take time off for training or because they actually get deployed. Or they have a kid! Allll kinds of stuff happens. Even throughout K-12 school, different areas have different cutoffs. The places that start school early in early-mid August in the Midwest and the South often have 7/30 cutoffs. The August and September birthday kids (and there are a lot, these are some of the most common birthdays of the year) didn’t meet the cutoff where they started school.

Ok, Spock, but were you never a child? It's easy to say "'don't sweat it" when you're a middle aged parent with the benefit of experience and hindsight and you don't actually have to do it. Not sweating it though is an altogether different matter when you're young and in the thick of it. If you can't see why a child would be self conscious about being older than all of their peers, then I don't know what to tell you other than you're just being willfully blind.

Hey Ashley, this is a you problem and nothing else.

I know it's probably hard, if you're a parent redshirting a child, to acknowledge that you're causing a lot more problems for your kid than you're solving (and so unnecessarily!), but don't say no one warned you.

Redshirting has been a thing in affluent areas at least since I was in elementary school in the 90s. Show any data about its “problems” please.

DP but the biggest problem with redshirting is reflected in the continuing debate and controversy over it.

If redshirting were really just about helping a few kids who are on the bubble gain a bit more maturity, I don't think it would be a big issue. It becomes debated because of what people are talking about on the thread now -- this idea that being the youngest, in itself, is a major disadvantage. If this is the reason for redshirting, it's just a snake eating its own tail. For every kid that is redshirted, it creates another kid who needs to be redshirted to avoid being the youngest. We can't redshirt all the kids.

Someone HAS to be the youngest. If that's your reason for redshirting, then it should be banned because there's no way to implement it fairly and it just creates controversy and resentment.

However, if redshirting exists because some kids have social delays or need extra time in PK, then redshirting is fine, since that's not really about age so much as it's about maturity, which can vary by age. But to implement this kind of redshirting, we should probably have some kind of assessment done by the school. Because there are enough people who are just genuinely afraid of their kids being the youngest that they will simply claim their child has maturity issues to avoid it.

This is a tautology. Redshirting has benefits, other parents resent those benefits, therefore redshirting is the problem because other parents resent it?

By all means if something that’s been happening for decades causes problems *for kids* feel free to share. Otherwise it’s just loud sour grapes because it’s something that was equally available to all of the students and only some parents availed themselves of.

If you redshirt a child to keep him from being the youngest, you will solve that problem for one child and create that problem for another child.

So then that child's parents will redshirt, to keep him from being the youngest. Thus creating that problem for another child.

So the third child's parents will redshirt him, to keep him from being the youngest. Thus creating that problem for another child.

When you have February and March birthdays being redshirted, you have to ask yourself if this makes sense, and where does it end? And is there another way to solve this problem if being the youngest.

Does your state not have laws about compulsory school attendance? That’s where it ends. It’s not the wild west where anything goes.

This. All districts have rules. Within those rules, parents make the decisions that make the most sense for their child. Not making those decisions because other parents (and again, only DCUM parents) resent them is foolish.

OP's whole point is that she's in a jurisdiction where the rules are not clear and don't appear to have firm limits, and she's suggesting a clearer policy where summer birthdays may be redshirted but not beyond that. Which I agree with. Redshirting February and March birthdays is absurd and will just result in December and January birthdays wanting to do it. They will have to draw the lines somewhere and I would suggest doing it in June or July depending on when school ends, or pursuing a different solution like transitional K for younger kids or mixed age classrooms in elementary.

Despite what some on this board thing, I'm not anti-redshirting, I just know that some minority of parents will always try to push the limits of whatever rule is in place. There are always people who just don't think the rules apply to them. Instead of indulging those parents by making exceptions for them, districts should have stricter enforcement of cutoffs and clearly communicate them to parents.

The rules were clear, even OP acknowledges she was absolutely allowed to redshirt her kid.

What she wasn’t given was information about *other children* to make her decision about her own child, and now she’s mad other parents (with the same information she had…) made different choices.

You can keep saying "other people's kids" but duh that impacts the whole class and the cohort, there are externalities. OP was not given a fair read of the situation.

There’s no “fair read” of the situation. When I had this discussion with FCPS they said that the redshirting rates vary widely by school and by year. OP could have gotten 100% personal data from her preferred kindergarten and it would be wrong this year.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:5 year olds (and 4.9 year olds) are mature enough to start kindergarten, it is only when 6 year olds join KG, water gets muddied! I support the hard cut-off rule.
I think the baseline for maturity is getting skewed big time by older children in kindergarten. Parents who want to cheat will find a way to cheat and it is getting out of hand.

Only poor ones though. Private schools do not think “4.9” year olds are mature enough for kindergarten. Amazing what poverty does to make children ready to learn right?!?

4.9 year olds are absolutely in private schools. But they have extended PK and transitional K classrooms for younger kids. The idea the 4 and 5 year olds aren't old enough for classrooms is just incorrect, and private schools agree. At the most elite privates, children have generally been in some kind of organized classroom for 2-4 years by the time they enter K.

The preference for redshirting in private schools is driven by a desire to have kids all at a minimum academic level prior to starting K, to make it easier for teachers at each level and to enable more accelerated curriculum. If all children have basic reading skills at the beginning of K, it enables you to do all kinds of additional academic enrichment not only in K but at every level,because stronger reading skills enable kids to accelerated in math, science, and social studies as well. To get kids to this level, they generally have to go to school. It's called pre-K or transitional K, but often the curriculum is no different from a K classroom in a public school.

Meanwhile, redshirting in publics does not have this benefit, because it's disjointed and you will still have kids starting K without basic reading and other academic skills. When redshirting is done by parent choice instead of school initiative, it's totally divorced from the school's goals and curriculum. Plus publics have to take all comers, so they will be accommodating kids at all academic levels no matter what. Redshirting serves no real purpose in public and redshirted kids may receive no additional support during their redshirted year to get them up to a certain academic level. And even if they do, they will have peers who aren't at that level so it won't matter. Teachers will still have to differentiate and classrooms will focus on the on-grade coursework and bringing kids who are before grade level up to grade level.

So no, redshirting in private schools is not about a superior understanding of how 6 year olds are better suited to K. It has to do with establishing an academic minimum to facilitate more homogenous classes and ease of teaching.

- private school teacher

These privates sound bad. Most of these kids are not reading as the preschools are not academic. My kids were reading at three. Waiting till six makes no sense. I’m not making it easier for the teacher, I’m giving my kids and education.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:5 year olds (and 4.9 year olds) are mature enough to start kindergarten, it is only when 6 year olds join KG, water gets muddied! I support the hard cut-off rule.
I think the baseline for maturity is getting skewed big time by older children in kindergarten. Parents who want to cheat will find a way to cheat and it is getting out of hand.

Only poor ones though. Private schools do not think “4.9” year olds are mature enough for kindergarten. Amazing what poverty does to make children ready to learn right?!?

It's also easier to reduce the number of ND kids in your student population if you're enrolling at age 6.

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Anonymous wrote:If you redshirt your kids, the other kids will figure out what age your child is (most likely your child will simply tell them) and therefore their parents will too. It's less that people are cataloguing the ages and birthdays of every child and more that when you encounter an 8 year old in 1st or a 10 yr old in 3rd, it is notable, and kids and adults alike will share that info.

The fact that people discover this does not make them creepy stalkers. Again, usually this information is learned from the child themselves when they tell other kids what their age is, which is a very normal thing for kids to share with one another.

You can't control other people finding out and you can't control how they will feel about it when they do. Proceed accordingly.

+1, most talk about it and are proud to be old

Exactly. It's often a point of pride for kids in younger grades to be the oldest, so the redshirted kids get revealed very quickly. This can also be where the resentment starts, if you've got a redshirted kid in the classroom boasting about being the oldest. It's meaningless but it draws attention to it in a negative way.

If you redshirt, talk to your kids about how being a year older or younger isn't important. Make sure they understand that being older doesn't make them better, and find a way to explain why you redshirted that doesn't put other kids down. You don't want your redshirted kid lording it over other children.

TBH it's more likely that they will be uncomfortable and self conscious about being older than everyone else, like they're too old to be in the grade they're in.

Let us know how it goes when the other children make fun of your kid for being too old to be in his or her grade.

Because it will never happen.

said the person who has literally never met a child

How would the kids know what “too old” was unless psycho mom had a sit down and talked about it? Real kids only care about who’s birthday is next and if they are going to the party.

This is a strange world you live in where the moms know the ages of literally hundreds of children at their kids' schools, but the kids have no idea how old anyone is or what grade you're supposed to be in each grade.

There is no correct age per grade since school year isn’t the calendar year. Kids have birthdays all year round.

Have fun explaining that to all the kids at school.

Do you have any kids in school? It’s a non issue.

Pfft. If you have a kid who is older than some children in the grade ahead of them, the other kids will sniff that out in about three seconds and the entire grade will know within days. Some will think it's cool. Some won't care. Some will ask what is wrong with you.

The redshirted kid with be a year older than their peers forever. Elementary school. Middle school. High school. College. It will always be an issue, to varying degrees.

You do realize that college students vary wildly in age, right? Kids take a gap year between HS and college. Kids transfer colleges and their credits might not always transfer exactly. They take a year off for health reasons, or they join the military and have to take time off for training or because they actually get deployed. Or they have a kid! Allll kinds of stuff happens. Even throughout K-12 school, different areas have different cutoffs. The places that start school early in early-mid August in the Midwest and the South often have 7/30 cutoffs. The August and September birthday kids (and there are a lot, these are some of the most common birthdays of the year) didn’t meet the cutoff where they started school.

Ok, Spock, but were you never a child? It's easy to say "'don't sweat it" when you're a middle aged parent with the benefit of experience and hindsight and you don't actually have to do it. Not sweating it though is an altogether different matter when you're young and in the thick of it. If you can't see why a child would be self conscious about being older than all of their peers, then I don't know what to tell you other than you're just being willfully blind.

Hey Ashley, this is a you problem and nothing else.

I know it's probably hard, if you're a parent redshirting a child, to acknowledge that you're causing a lot more problems for your kid than you're solving (and so unnecessarily!), but don't say no one warned you.

Redshirting has been a thing in affluent areas at least since I was in elementary school in the 90s. Show any data about its “problems” please.

DP but the biggest problem with redshirting is reflected in the continuing debate and controversy over it.

If redshirting were really just about helping a few kids who are on the bubble gain a bit more maturity, I don't think it would be a big issue. It becomes debated because of what people are talking about on the thread now -- this idea that being the youngest, in itself, is a major disadvantage. If this is the reason for redshirting, it's just a snake eating its own tail. For every kid that is redshirted, it creates another kid who needs to be redshirted to avoid being the youngest. We can't redshirt all the kids.

Someone HAS to be the youngest. If that's your reason for redshirting, then it should be banned because there's no way to implement it fairly and it just creates controversy and resentment.

However, if redshirting exists because some kids have social delays or need extra time in PK, then redshirting is fine, since that's not really about age so much as it's about maturity, which can vary by age. But to implement this kind of redshirting, we should probably have some kind of assessment done by the school. Because there are enough people who are just genuinely afraid of their kids being the youngest that they will simply claim their child has maturity issues to avoid it.

This is a tautology. Redshirting has benefits, other parents resent those benefits, therefore redshirting is the problem because other parents resent it?

By all means if something that’s been happening for decades causes problems *for kids* feel free to share. Otherwise it’s just loud sour grapes because it’s something that was equally available to all of the students and only some parents availed themselves of.

If you redshirt a child to keep him from being the youngest, you will solve that problem for one child and create that problem for another child.

So then that child's parents will redshirt, to keep him from being the youngest. Thus creating that problem for another child.

So the third child's parents will redshirt him, to keep him from being the youngest. Thus creating that problem for another child.

When you have February and March birthdays being redshirted, you have to ask yourself if this makes sense, and where does it end? And is there another way to solve this problem if being the youngest.

Does your state not have laws about compulsory school attendance? That’s where it ends. It’s not the wild west where anything goes.

This. All districts have rules. Within those rules, parents make the decisions that make the most sense for their child. Not making those decisions because other parents (and again, only DCUM parents) resent them is foolish.

OP's whole point is that she's in a jurisdiction where the rules are not clear and don't appear to have firm limits, and she's suggesting a clearer policy where summer birthdays may be redshirted but not beyond that. Which I agree with. Redshirting February and March birthdays is absurd and will just result in December and January birthdays wanting to do it. They will have to draw the lines somewhere and I would suggest doing it in June or July depending on when school ends, or pursuing a different solution like transitional K for younger kids or mixed age classrooms in elementary.

Despite what some on this board thing, I'm not anti-redshirting, I just know that some minority of parents will always try to push the limits of whatever rule is in place. There are always people who just don't think the rules apply to them. Instead of indulging those parents by making exceptions for them, districts should have stricter enforcement of cutoffs and clearly communicate them to parents.

The rules were clear, even OP acknowledges she was absolutely allowed to redshirt her kid.

What she wasn’t given was information about *other children* to make her decision about her own child, and now she’s mad other parents (with the same information she had…) made different choices.

You can keep saying "other people's kids" but duh that impacts the whole class and the cohort, there are externalities. OP was not given a fair read of the situation.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:5 year olds (and 4.9 year olds) are mature enough to start kindergarten, it is only when 6 year olds join KG, water gets muddied! I support the hard cut-off rule.
I think the baseline for maturity is getting skewed big time by older children in kindergarten. Parents who want to cheat will find a way to cheat and it is getting out of hand.

Only poor ones though. Private schools do not think “4.9” year olds are mature enough for kindergarten. Amazing what poverty does to make children ready to learn right?!?

4.9 year olds are absolutely in private schools. But they have extended PK and transitional K classrooms for younger kids. The idea the 4 and 5 year olds aren't old enough for classrooms is just incorrect, and private schools agree. At the most elite privates, children have generally been in some kind of organized classroom for 2-4 years by the time they enter K.

The preference for redshirting in private schools is driven by a desire to have kids all at a minimum academic level prior to starting K, to make it easier for teachers at each level and to enable more accelerated curriculum. If all children have basic reading skills at the beginning of K, it enables you to do all kinds of additional academic enrichment not only in K but at every level,because stronger reading skills enable kids to accelerated in math, science, and social studies as well. To get kids to this level, they generally have to go to school. It's called pre-K or transitional K, but often the curriculum is no different from a K classroom in a public school.

Meanwhile, redshirting in publics does not have this benefit, because it's disjointed and you will still have kids starting K without basic reading and other academic skills. When redshirting is done by parent choice instead of school initiative, it's totally divorced from the school's goals and curriculum. Plus publics have to take all comers, so they will be accommodating kids at all academic levels no matter what. Redshirting serves no real purpose in public and redshirted kids may receive no additional support during their redshirted year to get them up to a certain academic level. And even if they do, they will have peers who aren't at that level so it won't matter. Teachers will still have to differentiate and classrooms will focus on the on-grade coursework and bringing kids who are before grade level up to grade level.

So no, redshirting in private schools is not about a superior understanding of how 6 year olds are better suited to K. It has to do with establishing an academic minimum to facilitate more homogenous classes and ease of teaching.

- private school teacher

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Anonymous wrote:If you redshirt your kids, the other kids will figure out what age your child is (most likely your child will simply tell them) and therefore their parents will too. It's less that people are cataloguing the ages and birthdays of every child and more that when you encounter an 8 year old in 1st or a 10 yr old in 3rd, it is notable, and kids and adults alike will share that info.

The fact that people discover this does not make them creepy stalkers. Again, usually this information is learned from the child themselves when they tell other kids what their age is, which is a very normal thing for kids to share with one another.

You can't control other people finding out and you can't control how they will feel about it when they do. Proceed accordingly.

+1, most talk about it and are proud to be old

Exactly. It's often a point of pride for kids in younger grades to be the oldest, so the redshirted kids get revealed very quickly. This can also be where the resentment starts, if you've got a redshirted kid in the classroom boasting about being the oldest. It's meaningless but it draws attention to it in a negative way.

If you redshirt, talk to your kids about how being a year older or younger isn't important. Make sure they understand that being older doesn't make them better, and find a way to explain why you redshirted that doesn't put other kids down. You don't want your redshirted kid lording it over other children.

TBH it's more likely that they will be uncomfortable and self conscious about being older than everyone else, like they're too old to be in the grade they're in.

Let us know how it goes when the other children make fun of your kid for being too old to be in his or her grade.

Because it will never happen.

said the person who has literally never met a child

How would the kids know what “too old” was unless psycho mom had a sit down and talked about it? Real kids only care about who’s birthday is next and if they are going to the party.

This is a strange world you live in where the moms know the ages of literally hundreds of children at their kids' schools, but the kids have no idea how old anyone is or what grade you're supposed to be in each grade.

There is no correct age per grade since school year isn’t the calendar year. Kids have birthdays all year round.

Have fun explaining that to all the kids at school.

Do you have any kids in school? It’s a non issue.

Pfft. If you have a kid who is older than some children in the grade ahead of them, the other kids will sniff that out in about three seconds and the entire grade will know within days. Some will think it's cool. Some won't care. Some will ask what is wrong with you.

The redshirted kid with be a year older than their peers forever. Elementary school. Middle school. High school. College. It will always be an issue, to varying degrees.

You do realize that college students vary wildly in age, right? Kids take a gap year between HS and college. Kids transfer colleges and their credits might not always transfer exactly. They take a year off for health reasons, or they join the military and have to take time off for training or because they actually get deployed. Or they have a kid! Allll kinds of stuff happens. Even throughout K-12 school, different areas have different cutoffs. The places that start school early in early-mid August in the Midwest and the South often have 7/30 cutoffs. The August and September birthday kids (and there are a lot, these are some of the most common birthdays of the year) didn’t meet the cutoff where they started school.

Ok, Spock, but were you never a child? It's easy to say "'don't sweat it" when you're a middle aged parent with the benefit of experience and hindsight and you don't actually have to do it. Not sweating it though is an altogether different matter when you're young and in the thick of it. If you can't see why a child would be self conscious about being older than all of their peers, then I don't know what to tell you other than you're just being willfully blind.

Hey Ashley, this is a you problem and nothing else.

I know it's probably hard, if you're a parent redshirting a child, to acknowledge that you're causing a lot more problems for your kid than you're solving (and so unnecessarily!), but don't say no one warned you.

Redshirting has been a thing in affluent areas at least since I was in elementary school in the 90s. Show any data about its “problems” please.

DP but the biggest problem with redshirting is reflected in the continuing debate and controversy over it.

If redshirting were really just about helping a few kids who are on the bubble gain a bit more maturity, I don't think it would be a big issue. It becomes debated because of what people are talking about on the thread now -- this idea that being the youngest, in itself, is a major disadvantage. If this is the reason for redshirting, it's just a snake eating its own tail. For every kid that is redshirted, it creates another kid who needs to be redshirted to avoid being the youngest. We can't redshirt all the kids.

Someone HAS to be the youngest. If that's your reason for redshirting, then it should be banned because there's no way to implement it fairly and it just creates controversy and resentment.

However, if redshirting exists because some kids have social delays or need extra time in PK, then redshirting is fine, since that's not really about age so much as it's about maturity, which can vary by age. But to implement this kind of redshirting, we should probably have some kind of assessment done by the school. Because there are enough people who are just genuinely afraid of their kids being the youngest that they will simply claim their child has maturity issues to avoid it.

This is a tautology. Redshirting has benefits, other parents resent those benefits, therefore redshirting is the problem because other parents resent it?

By all means if something that’s been happening for decades causes problems *for kids* feel free to share. Otherwise it’s just loud sour grapes because it’s something that was equally available to all of the students and only some parents availed themselves of.

If you redshirt a child to keep him from being the youngest, you will solve that problem for one child and create that problem for another child.

So then that child's parents will redshirt, to keep him from being the youngest. Thus creating that problem for another child.

So the third child's parents will redshirt him, to keep him from being the youngest. Thus creating that problem for another child.

When you have February and March birthdays being redshirted, you have to ask yourself if this makes sense, and where does it end? And is there another way to solve this problem if being the youngest.

Does your state not have laws about compulsory school attendance? That’s where it ends. It’s not the wild west where anything goes.

This. All districts have rules. Within those rules, parents make the decisions that make the most sense for their child. Not making those decisions because other parents (and again, only DCUM parents) resent them is foolish.

OP's whole point is that she's in a jurisdiction where the rules are not clear and don't appear to have firm limits, and she's suggesting a clearer policy where summer birthdays may be redshirted but not beyond that. Which I agree with. Redshirting February and March birthdays is absurd and will just result in December and January birthdays wanting to do it. They will have to draw the lines somewhere and I would suggest doing it in June or July depending on when school ends, or pursuing a different solution like transitional K for younger kids or mixed age classrooms in elementary.

Despite what some on this board thing, I'm not anti-redshirting, I just know that some minority of parents will always try to push the limits of whatever rule is in place. There are always people who just don't think the rules apply to them. Instead of indulging those parents by making exceptions for them, districts should have stricter enforcement of cutoffs and clearly communicate them to parents.

The rules were clear, even OP acknowledges she was absolutely allowed to redshirt her kid.

What she wasn’t given was information about *other children* to make her decision about her own child, and now she’s mad other parents (with the same information she had…) made different choices.

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:If you redshirt your kids, the other kids will figure out what age your child is (most likely your child will simply tell them) and therefore their parents will too. It's less that people are cataloguing the ages and birthdays of every child and more that when you encounter an 8 year old in 1st or a 10 yr old in 3rd, it is notable, and kids and adults alike will share that info.

The fact that people discover this does not make them creepy stalkers. Again, usually this information is learned from the child themselves when they tell other kids what their age is, which is a very normal thing for kids to share with one another.

You can't control other people finding out and you can't control how they will feel about it when they do. Proceed accordingly.

+1, most talk about it and are proud to be old

Exactly. It's often a point of pride for kids in younger grades to be the oldest, so the redshirted kids get revealed very quickly. This can also be where the resentment starts, if you've got a redshirted kid in the classroom boasting about being the oldest. It's meaningless but it draws attention to it in a negative way.

If you redshirt, talk to your kids about how being a year older or younger isn't important. Make sure they understand that being older doesn't make them better, and find a way to explain why you redshirted that doesn't put other kids down. You don't want your redshirted kid lording it over other children.

TBH it's more likely that they will be uncomfortable and self conscious about being older than everyone else, like they're too old to be in the grade they're in.

Let us know how it goes when the other children make fun of your kid for being too old to be in his or her grade.

Because it will never happen.

said the person who has literally never met a child

How would the kids know what “too old” was unless psycho mom had a sit down and talked about it? Real kids only care about who’s birthday is next and if they are going to the party.

This is a strange world you live in where the moms know the ages of literally hundreds of children at their kids' schools, but the kids have no idea how old anyone is or what grade you're supposed to be in each grade.

There is no correct age per grade since school year isn’t the calendar year. Kids have birthdays all year round.

Have fun explaining that to all the kids at school.

Do you have any kids in school? It’s a non issue.

Pfft. If you have a kid who is older than some children in the grade ahead of them, the other kids will sniff that out in about three seconds and the entire grade will know within days. Some will think it's cool. Some won't care. Some will ask what is wrong with you.

The redshirted kid with be a year older than their peers forever. Elementary school. Middle school. High school. College. It will always be an issue, to varying degrees.

You do realize that college students vary wildly in age, right? Kids take a gap year between HS and college. Kids transfer colleges and their credits might not always transfer exactly. They take a year off for health reasons, or they join the military and have to take time off for training or because they actually get deployed. Or they have a kid! Allll kinds of stuff happens. Even throughout K-12 school, different areas have different cutoffs. The places that start school early in early-mid August in the Midwest and the South often have 7/30 cutoffs. The August and September birthday kids (and there are a lot, these are some of the most common birthdays of the year) didn’t meet the cutoff where they started school.

Ok, Spock, but were you never a child? It's easy to say "'don't sweat it" when you're a middle aged parent with the benefit of experience and hindsight and you don't actually have to do it. Not sweating it though is an altogether different matter when you're young and in the thick of it. If you can't see why a child would be self conscious about being older than all of their peers, then I don't know what to tell you other than you're just being willfully blind.

Hey Ashley, this is a you problem and nothing else.

I know it's probably hard, if you're a parent redshirting a child, to acknowledge that you're causing a lot more problems for your kid than you're solving (and so unnecessarily!), but don't say no one warned you.

Redshirting has been a thing in affluent areas at least since I was in elementary school in the 90s. Show any data about its “problems” please.

DP but the biggest problem with redshirting is reflected in the continuing debate and controversy over it.

If redshirting were really just about helping a few kids who are on the bubble gain a bit more maturity, I don't think it would be a big issue. It becomes debated because of what people are talking about on the thread now -- this idea that being the youngest, in itself, is a major disadvantage. If this is the reason for redshirting, it's just a snake eating its own tail. For every kid that is redshirted, it creates another kid who needs to be redshirted to avoid being the youngest. We can't redshirt all the kids.

Someone HAS to be the youngest. If that's your reason for redshirting, then it should be banned because there's no way to implement it fairly and it just creates controversy and resentment.

However, if redshirting exists because some kids have social delays or need extra time in PK, then redshirting is fine, since that's not really about age so much as it's about maturity, which can vary by age. But to implement this kind of redshirting, we should probably have some kind of assessment done by the school. Because there are enough people who are just genuinely afraid of their kids being the youngest that they will simply claim their child has maturity issues to avoid it.

This is a tautology. Redshirting has benefits, other parents resent those benefits, therefore redshirting is the problem because other parents resent it?

By all means if something that’s been happening for decades causes problems *for kids* feel free to share. Otherwise it’s just loud sour grapes because it’s something that was equally available to all of the students and only some parents availed themselves of.

If you redshirt a child to keep him from being the youngest, you will solve that problem for one child and create that problem for another child.

So then that child's parents will redshirt, to keep him from being the youngest. Thus creating that problem for another child.

So the third child's parents will redshirt him, to keep him from being the youngest. Thus creating that problem for another child.

When you have February and March birthdays being redshirted, you have to ask yourself if this makes sense, and where does it end? And is there another way to solve this problem if being the youngest.

Does your state not have laws about compulsory school attendance? That’s where it ends. It’s not the wild west where anything goes.

This. All districts have rules. Within those rules, parents make the decisions that make the most sense for their child. Not making those decisions because other parents (and again, only DCUM parents) resent them is foolish.

OP's whole point is that she's in a jurisdiction where the rules are not clear and don't appear to have firm limits, and she's suggesting a clearer policy where summer birthdays may be redshirted but not beyond that. Which I agree with. Redshirting February and March birthdays is absurd and will just result in December and January birthdays wanting to do it. They will have to draw the lines somewhere and I would suggest doing it in June or July depending on when school ends, or pursuing a different solution like transitional K for younger kids or mixed age classrooms in elementary.

Despite what some on this board thing, I'm not anti-redshirting, I just know that some minority of parents will always try to push the limits of whatever rule is in place. There are always people who just don't think the rules apply to them. Instead of indulging those parents by making exceptions for them, districts should have stricter enforcement of cutoffs and clearly communicate them to parents.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:5 year olds (and 4.9 year olds) are mature enough to start kindergarten, it is only when 6 year olds join KG, water gets muddied! I support the hard cut-off rule.
I think the baseline for maturity is getting skewed big time by older children in kindergarten. Parents who want to cheat will find a way to cheat and it is getting out of hand.

Only poor ones though. Private schools do not think “4.9” year olds are mature enough for kindergarten. Amazing what poverty does to make children ready to learn right?!?

4.9 year olds are absolutely in private schools. But they have extended PK and transitional K classrooms for younger kids. The idea the 4 and 5 year olds aren't old enough for classrooms is just incorrect, and private schools agree. At the most elite privates, children have generally been in some kind of organized classroom for 2-4 years by the time they enter K.

The preference for redshirting in private schools is driven by a desire to have kids all at a minimum academic level prior to starting K, to make it easier for teachers at each level and to enable more accelerated curriculum. If all children have basic reading skills at the beginning of K, it enables you to do all kinds of additional academic enrichment not only in K but at every level,because stronger reading skills enable kids to accelerated in math, science, and social studies as well. To get kids to this level, they generally have to go to school. It's called pre-K or transitional K, but often the curriculum is no different from a K classroom in a public school.

Meanwhile, redshirting in publics does not have this benefit, because it's disjointed and you will still have kids starting K without basic reading and other academic skills. When redshirting is done by parent choice instead of school initiative, it's totally divorced from the school's goals and curriculum. Plus publics have to take all comers, so they will be accommodating kids at all academic levels no matter what. Redshirting serves no real purpose in public and redshirted kids may receive no additional support during their redshirted year to get them up to a certain academic level. And even if they do, they will have peers who aren't at that level so it won't matter. Teachers will still have to differentiate and classrooms will focus on the on-grade coursework and bringing kids who are before grade level up to grade level.

So no, redshirting in private schools is not about a superior understanding of how 6 year olds are better suited to K. It has to do with establishing an academic minimum to facilitate more homogenous classes and ease of teaching.

- private school teacher

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you redshirt your kids, the other kids will figure out what age your child is (most likely your child will simply tell them) and therefore their parents will too. It's less that people are cataloguing the ages and birthdays of every child and more that when you encounter an 8 year old in 1st or a 10 yr old in 3rd, it is notable, and kids and adults alike will share that info.

The fact that people discover this does not make them creepy stalkers. Again, usually this information is learned from the child themselves when they tell other kids what their age is, which is a very normal thing for kids to share with one another.

You can't control other people finding out and you can't control how they will feel about it when they do. Proceed accordingly.

+1, most talk about it and are proud to be old

Exactly. It's often a point of pride for kids in younger grades to be the oldest, so the redshirted kids get revealed very quickly. This can also be where the resentment starts, if you've got a redshirted kid in the classroom boasting about being the oldest. It's meaningless but it draws attention to it in a negative way.

If you redshirt, talk to your kids about how being a year older or younger isn't important. Make sure they understand that being older doesn't make them better, and find a way to explain why you redshirted that doesn't put other kids down. You don't want your redshirted kid lording it over other children.

TBH it's more likely that they will be uncomfortable and self conscious about being older than everyone else, like they're too old to be in the grade they're in.

Let us know how it goes when the other children make fun of your kid for being too old to be in his or her grade.

Because it will never happen.

said the person who has literally never met a child

How would the kids know what “too old” was unless psycho mom had a sit down and talked about it? Real kids only care about who’s birthday is next and if they are going to the party.

This is a strange world you live in where the moms know the ages of literally hundreds of children at their kids' schools, but the kids have no idea how old anyone is or what grade you're supposed to be in each grade.

There is no correct age per grade since school year isn’t the calendar year. Kids have birthdays all year round.

Have fun explaining that to all the kids at school.

Do you have any kids in school? It’s a non issue.

Pfft. If you have a kid who is older than some children in the grade ahead of them, the other kids will sniff that out in about three seconds and the entire grade will know within days. Some will think it's cool. Some won't care. Some will ask what is wrong with you.

The redshirted kid with be a year older than their peers forever. Elementary school. Middle school. High school. College. It will always be an issue, to varying degrees.

You do realize that college students vary wildly in age, right? Kids take a gap year between HS and college. Kids transfer colleges and their credits might not always transfer exactly. They take a year off for health reasons, or they join the military and have to take time off for training or because they actually get deployed. Or they have a kid! Allll kinds of stuff happens. Even throughout K-12 school, different areas have different cutoffs. The places that start school early in early-mid August in the Midwest and the South often have 7/30 cutoffs. The August and September birthday kids (and there are a lot, these are some of the most common birthdays of the year) didn’t meet the cutoff where they started school.

Ok, Spock, but were you never a child? It's easy to say "'don't sweat it" when you're a middle aged parent with the benefit of experience and hindsight and you don't actually have to do it. Not sweating it though is an altogether different matter when you're young and in the thick of it. If you can't see why a child would be self conscious about being older than all of their peers, then I don't know what to tell you other than you're just being willfully blind.

Hey Ashley, this is a you problem and nothing else.

I know it's probably hard, if you're a parent redshirting a child, to acknowledge that you're causing a lot more problems for your kid than you're solving (and so unnecessarily!), but don't say no one warned you.

Redshirting has been a thing in affluent areas at least since I was in elementary school in the 90s. Show any data about its “problems” please.

DP but the biggest problem with redshirting is reflected in the continuing debate and controversy over it.

If redshirting were really just about helping a few kids who are on the bubble gain a bit more maturity, I don't think it would be a big issue. It becomes debated because of what people are talking about on the thread now -- this idea that being the youngest, in itself, is a major disadvantage. If this is the reason for redshirting, it's just a snake eating its own tail. For every kid that is redshirted, it creates another kid who needs to be redshirted to avoid being the youngest. We can't redshirt all the kids.

Someone HAS to be the youngest. If that's your reason for redshirting, then it should be banned because there's no way to implement it fairly and it just creates controversy and resentment.

However, if redshirting exists because some kids have social delays or need extra time in PK, then redshirting is fine, since that's not really about age so much as it's about maturity, which can vary by age. But to implement this kind of redshirting, we should probably have some kind of assessment done by the school. Because there are enough people who are just genuinely afraid of their kids being the youngest that they will simply claim their child has maturity issues to avoid it.

This is a tautology. Redshirting has benefits, other parents resent those benefits, therefore redshirting is the problem because other parents resent it?

By all means if something that’s been happening for decades causes problems *for kids* feel free to share. Otherwise it’s just loud sour grapes because it’s something that was equally available to all of the students and only some parents availed themselves of.

If you redshirt a child to keep him from being the youngest, you will solve that problem for one child and create that problem for another child.

So then that child's parents will redshirt, to keep him from being the youngest. Thus creating that problem for another child.

So the third child's parents will redshirt him, to keep him from being the youngest. Thus creating that problem for another child.

When you have February and March birthdays being redshirted, you have to ask yourself if this makes sense, and where does it end? And is there another way to solve this problem if being the youngest.

Does your state not have laws about compulsory school attendance? That’s where it ends. It’s not the wild west where anything goes.

So you support limitations on redshirting, just like OP. What are you even arguing about then?

I support the existing laws that say something like “by 6” kids should be in school, which says nothing about redshirting. What’s the problem? Nobody but OP is advocating for change. I guess she wants it to be “by 5” or maybe 4?

A "by 6" cut off is insufficiently vague because some parents will interpret that as requiring that you enroll your child in K by their 6th birthday, and others that you must only enroll them in K at some point when they are 6. Which yes, opens the door to people with kids who have birthdays in the winter or even fall to redshirt, which is ridiculous. This opens the door to their being nearly a 24 month age spread within grade cohorts. I know I'm not alone in being opposed to that -- it is already hard enough for elementary teachers to adequately differentiate between skill and maturity levels with a 12-14 month spread.

Truly this could not be less complicated:

Virginia law states that parents must ensure a child attends school if he or she will be five years old on or before September 30. However, if — in your opinion as a parent — your child is not mentally, physically, or emotionally prepared to attend school, he or she may be exempted for that year. You will need to notify your local school if you do not want your child to attend kindergarten until the following year.

Once a student turns six, school attendance is mandatory.

Not to be pedantic but obviously it could be less complicated. A firm cut off would be the least complicated possible rule. The rule you describe has several layers of complication.

You’re right. A firm cut off at six would be less complicated and developmentally appropriate. But for socioeconomic reasons people want to be able to send four and five year olds to free public school.