Redshirting Your 5 Year Old

Christa - ITA with both of your posts!! too bad I'm out of points What a journey you all have had in making this decision - thanks for sharing it. I'm glad to hear your son is off to a great start - I hope he has a fabulous year!!

 

The interesting thing is (interesting, not good nor bad) that if you read the first year or second year boards, the vast majority of people seem to think you have to stop using bottles on their child's first birthday, give or take a month.

 

I SAID unless there is a compelling reason!!! If your son wasn't ready, that's a compelling reason. Sheesh, I'm ON the redshirting side!

 

Whoa....after reading through all of this, I am now officially paranoid that other parents in my kids' future Kindergarten class are going to be thoroughly po'd about my decision not to send my kids this year!

Here's the thing - the cut off in CT is December 31st - my kids were born on December 17th. They would have been the youngest in Kindergarten BY FAR. And Kindergarten here is full day - 9am to 3pm. There is talk in CT of changing the cut off to September 30th, so obviously someone thinks that the December cut off is a bit late. Honestly, I wish it was September 30th - that's what the cut off is in their pre-K class right now (private preschool). With the exception of 2 or 3 kids who will also be turning 5 in the next few months, my kids are in school with mostly 4 year olds with summer birthdays. Socially, you would never know it. They blend well with all the other kids, have no problems making new friends and play well. Academically, I am just now beginning to notice that my kids are slightly ahead - in terms of letter recognition and writing skills and they are showing the beginning signs of learning to read. But in terms of maturity, I just don't think they're ready for full day Kindergarten yet. Especially Alex. I almost think Sarah *might* have been ok...but how do you start one and not the other?? There were ALOT of reasons for me to hold them back a year and not nearly enough for me to send them. We opted to pay $5000 for another year of preschool b/c we felt that it was the right thing to do for our kids. Can we afford it? Hardly. My DH had to sell his vacation time at work in order to help pay for it. Free Kindergarten this year would have been FANTASTIC for us, financially speaking. But I firmly believe that our kids just aren't ready and are way too close to that cut off date. So, they will be 5 years 8 mos old when they start K.

 

Corey, It sounds like you made the right decision for your family. I do think a national cut-off of Sept. 1 would be a good idea. I don't consider it "red shirting" in your situation, because if you moved one state over, they wouldn't be near the cut off date. Children in MA, who were born 1-2 months before your kids aren't even eligible for K in their states. Believe me, this is coming from someone with a Dec. 31 birthday who did start K at 4 1/2. Like I said, holding a child to level the playing field is one thing. Holding them to give them some advantage over the other kids is a whole different thing!

This is the reason that kids are allowed to "play up" in sports, but not down. To explain, my boys are born on June 27. The cut off for coach pitch is April 30. All of their 1st grade friends played coach pitch. By the rules, my guys were supposed to play t-ball with the preschoolers who had turned 5, and the Kindergartners. Keep in mind that Jon is 4'4", and has been hitting a pitched ball for a year, and spent all spring practicing throwing and catching. Developmentally, the boys belonged in coach pitch--so they were allowed to play up. But, if I had a child who was born in April that I redshirted, he would be in K. He would have turned 6 by the cut off, and would have had to play with the 1st and 2nd graders in coach pitch, not the Kindergarteners that he went to school with in t-ball.

 

The thread that would not die!! :rofl:

 

Imagine my surprise when I hit View New Posts and found this one at the top!! :laughing: Just when I thought the matter had died down a bit.....it's baaaackkkkk!

 

Wow. I'm (very) late coming into this discussion, and have just sat and read through all 11 pages.

I find this whole thing very interesting. Living in England we don't have this issue because the vast majority of parents do not get a say in when their child starts school. The cut off is August 31st (school year starts in September-usually between the 3rd and 7th) and reception, the first official school year group, is for children aged 4 and 5. Children go to school the September after they turn 4. So if you have an end of Aug bithday you will start school a few days after turning 4 and if you have a early Sept bithday you will start school a few days before/after turning 5. Only in an extreme case would a child be started late (and actually then it's more likely that they would get a place at a special school). Of course parents have the choice to not send their children to school and home educate instead, but when you did send them the child would most likely go into the correct year group by age. So if you decided to keep your 4 year old with an Aug birthday home instead of sending them to reception, and instead started them in school the next Sept (after turning 5) they would be put in year 1, with the 5 and 6 year olds. [I think this is similar to what Renée was proposing as a 'fix' for your system some pages back.]

I know there have been studies here that show that children with July/August birthdays tend to be behind those with September/October birthdays for the first couple of years of school, but after that they 'catch up' and there is no discernible difference (if it wasn't gone 1am here I'd try to find them). I and both my sisters have summer birthdays and we all did well academically.

Honestly I can see both sides. On one hand I think it's great that for children who could benefit from a little extra time emotionally/socially/physically/intelectually to be ready for school their parents have the option to give them that time. On the other hand I can see how it could easily spiral out of control with older and older children being held back, making the starting age defunct and giving teachers a problem in having to cater to large age ranges.

 

I have some opinions about the topic, but I'm only posting to find out if I get some kind of medal for reading this entire thread?!

 

I think the medal is for being the last poster so...

 

Our school actually recommends it, it's very 'common' here.
The counselor told me that if my boys aren't five by Feb {=6 mos before school starts} then not to send them. She said the youngest in class have Feb or later b-days and that there were only 7 out of 100 kids w/ b-days after Feb!
We're in an all exemplary ISD and in fairness it's pretty intensive for public school.

That said, my boys are in a pre-K program called transitional Kindergarten.
Have you guys heard of the giselle {sp?} test? It tests Kindergarten readiness and only half my set 'passed'. no way I would send one and not the other, not for K.

 

I am sorry, but that is crazy. What about girls? Do they really think girls are that much "better" than boys that they are ready for school 6 months earlier than girls? I think this is a case of the reason why more boys are Identified as having special needs than girls (not so much anymore, but 20 years ago). Boys are more active, and when they have a problem in school, they tend to act out, so they would get referred for special ed evals. Girls tend to withdraw when struggling, so they would not be identified and slip through the crack. It sounds like your school is trying to create a group of kids that can sit still nicely rather than bothering to teach the younger boys how to behave in class. So what will happen in 5 years, then they will push it back another few months, so that soon no one will enter K until they are 6 turning 7? I feel bad for kids who are held back simply because someone says they are a boy and in your case have a birthday after Feb. To me, that is the problem with redshirting--continually stretching that barrier farther and farther back!

 

This is just the most fascinating stuff for me because its out of my realm of knowledge. Here it goes by calendar year. If you were born in 2004, you are in Junior Kindergarten right now. If you were born in 2003, you are in Senior Kindergarten. If you were born in 2002, you are in grade 1. And on and on.

Yes it means there are 3 year olds in JK right now but that is the case all over the Province. If a parent doesn't want to send their child to JK or even SK then they don't but when they do join the school system (all children must be in school by 7) then they are to join the class with all the other children born in their year.


A while ago I posted a link about how most elite hockey players have Jan, Feb, March birthdays because the cut off for hockey registration. Its an interesting read. Early birds get the goal.

 

It was this way in Florida, when I went to school, too. Everyone in my class was born in 1973. We had someone with a January 3 birthday, and someone else with a birthday near the end of December. It was all good. I have a June birthday, and obviously fell smack in the middle.

Later, in high school, the only person in my class with a late fall 1972 birthday had transferred from a school in the northeast. (Luckily, she was a friend of mine, and I got the benefit of rides when she started driving before everyone else, LOL.)

 

THanks for the input, Kendra. I wasn't planning to revisit this thread, but thank heavens Kendra posted and (though not knowingly) has backed up what I was trying to explain about cultural differences in our approaches to this red-shirting question. Where I come from (and where Kendra currently teaches) red-shirting is simply unheard of except in cases of severe delays and disabilities. Truly, if a student were to turn up in a class more than 12 months older than any of the other children, it would be because of significant cognitive or psychological issues. If a "normal" child were to turn up in this way, people would naturally be perplexed, because in our culture, this would never be done with a child of normal abilities. The philosophy is that all children face maturity issues of a greater or lesser degree when they first start school. Teachers are trained to handle these differences and by the end of the K year, virtually all children of normal abilities (which is a wide range) are quite ready for first grade. For me, the very idea of red-shirting was totally foreign and my cultural background is such that it seems like trying to put a 7 year old on a 5 year old t-ball team (a pp made this excellent analogy earlier in the thread and it is exactly right)--it isn't allowed in sports and in the same way, it doesn't happen in schools in Canada (at least nowhere that I ever lived).

I am sorry if my perspective made anyone feel that I was personally attacking them. As I said many times, I have caught up a little with the reality in the USA, and today I would red-shirt my son because not to do so would be unfair to him, given the red-shirting situation here. I also would not blame anyone else who felt they had to red-shirt their children. Because it is such a wide-spread practice, there just is no "norm" anymore and furthermore, any date guidelines have been rendered utterly meaningless. As I said repeatedly in this thread and elsewhere, I think parents absolutely have to decide for themselves and do what is best for their own children.

 

I'm coming late to the discussion and haven't read all the pages, but I can say I haven't seen evidence of redshirting in my sons' school. They have April and May birthdays, and they are often some of the younger children in class, but there are always kids younger than them with birthdays in summer in their classes as well.

I started K at age 4 myself and turned 5 in October, so I never had concerns about my boys starting K at 5 and not turning 6 until near the end of the school year. They have fit in very well socially, academically, and physically (tall boys!). I'm glad we seem to have missed the reshirting phenomenon.

 

Ack! What did I just do to myself?! I haven't been on TS in months and I just stumbled onto this topic and read through this entire post the night before my 6 year old boys finally start K (they have a gradual start here)!

Our guys have a June bday and we decided they needed another year as they seemed socially immature and while bright in many ways, they were totally uninterested in small motor stuff (writing, drawing, etc.) or sitting still. For us it has seemed like a mixture of a boy thing and perhaps a twin thing.

I'm not sure what to expect this year in terms of the age range in the boys' class or how it will affect the group dynamic. I don't think many redshirt here. We moved from MI (Dec 15th cut-off) to OR (Sept 30) last fall. The principal (without meeting our boys) offered that he had redshirted his own son because he was small. The K teacher (very experienced and respected) didn't directly weigh in on the redshirting but stated that because of elementary school testing requirements, K is the new 1st grade which made us feel glad we had waited.

It's hard to figure out what to do. Mostly I feel pretty confident with our decision. The boys' have made some big strides this past year and like some others I think they may have been ready at 5.5 but I'm not sure and we feel we acted on the side of caution.

I do agonize a bit about negative impacts associated with the big picture of this trend and our part in it and I was fascinated to read all the anecdotal experiences and to see how heated the topic has become. Thanks to everyone for sharing their stories and opinions.

 

Hey, that's my birthday! Jan 3 1973. Always the oldest in the class, I thought it sucked.

 

I have not read through this entire thread, 12 pages is a bit much for me! I just want to say that our oldest DS has a July birthday and is by far the youngest in his class. He is also very very small. His birthmother was 5 feet tall if you give her an inch, so he is not going to be a big kid. He also has bi-polar, ADHD and who knows what else. All that to say, he has done fine with his situation. Yes, he is younger, smaller and more immature. (mostly though do to mental health issues, not age) Yet he has friends, he does the best he can with the cards he was dealt, and is for the most part happy at school. He doesn't care that he is the smallest, he just reminds everyone that he might be small, but he is awfully fast!

 

It's not "required" or anything, we just happened to be discussing it when she mentioned it.
My boys were just 5 in June and KNOWING my sons as well as I do I knew they were not ready. The giselle test given to them by a completely different school in a different ISD confirmed my assumptions, so it was a no-brainer for me.
Our ISD's curriculum is very intensive, our graduation rate is higher than 98% w/ around 94% going on to college.
When I did "reading buddies" w/ Berkley's Kindergarten class 3 yrs ago only 2 out of the 18 couldn't read, and that was the 1st month of school! I was shocked!

My boys weren't ready, plain and simple - no matter what statistics the counselor gave to me

 

I held my twins back. Their birthday is August 8th (here the cutoff is September 1st). They just started 'regular' kindergarten and I am pleased. That extra year is going to help them a lot. The work they are doing is easy for them, but I believe being ahead will give them confidence and assurance that they are smart and they like school. They did go to a 1/2 day private kindergarten last year. I wanted to keep options open, just in case they really blossomed last year and were reading chapter books or something. That way, this year I could opt to put them in K or 1st grade. K was the right choice for us, although the first day they came home surprised that no one else in their class was six, yet!

All of my boys have late summer birthday''s. My oldest son just excelled in school and was completely ready. I've never regretted having him start when he was 5. My 2nd son really struggled in Kindergarten, though. I wanted to hold him back, but got talked out of it. I SO WISH I would have gone with my gut and waited a year. We've had a real struggle the first few years of school, and I know everyone would have been happier if he just had that extra year of maturity. Now, in 3rd grade, he is really coming into his own and becoming a good student, but I can't get the idea out of his head that he 'hates school'. He just doesn't feel smart and he IS! If he had FELT smart for the first 4 years of his education, he would now KNOW he was smart!

 

THANKS! I tell ya one thing...Grant has improved LEAP and BOUNDS since starting school a month ago!! He is actually TALKING, he knows most of his letters now, can recognize most numbers (1-10) by sight, and knows most of his shapes!! :banana: He is almost a completely different kid than the one I had start Kinder just 5 weeks ago! Up until a couple weeks ago, I was still questioning my decision to go ahead and start him...now I know this was the right decision for him!!

Now Megan may be another story...her bday is in Oct...and who knows where we will be living when she starts Kinder (probably here in UT or Houston). I wonder if she will be somewhere with a later start date, or end up being one of the oldest in her class. :unknw: Well I don't have to worry about that for at least 4 more years!

Sorry...I have forgotten to come back and check this one and wanted to respond to Sheryl!! ardon: It has been an interesting read though opcorn:

You could just say this:
ost: :laughing: