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I do have this option and I'm torn on what to do! I don't know of it would be better for her to be the oldest or youngest.

Couldn't you redshirt him by homeschooling for kindergarten at 5, then not pass him and put him in public kindergarten next year? He wouldn't know the difference, and it's pretty easy to file as a homeschooler. I mean, if that is something you're interested in, which it sounds like you might not be anyway.

They don't do any kind of testing to see if they've mastered K skills? Strange.

I would, after doing some research on it & long term effects. But at the moment we are planning to homeschool.

I hate the term redshirting, it implies that we'd be keeping our son back to help him excel in sports when he's older.

My son has a speech issue, so that will be the determining factor if he starts kindergarten according to the public school schedule. He'll likely be the youngest, but that's not what I am worried about, I am worried that he will be excluded from friendships because kids won't be able to understand him.

So, i will make the determination the middle of this school year.

No, i really dislike the concept. Unless LO had major issues (social/emotional/academic), i wouldn't want to.

A lot of people (where i live) seem to redshirt for the purpose of getting their kids ahead in sports, and that really annoys me.

I'm thinking of reverse redshirting for DD1. She was born a week after the cut off and is very advanced verbally and is 99% in height. At this point I cannot imagine her being in the same grade as babies that aren't crawling yet, especially because all of her friends are just a few months older and will be a school year ahead. I feel like she'll be totally bored for the year they're in school and she's not.

We have a few years to think on it though.

This doesn't really apply for us since we don't have a choice, but I want to respond! Since Wagon Jr. is a December baby and our cutoff is the first day of school, he will always be among the oldest in his class, which I'm glad for. I've heard, especially for boys, that it's beneficial especially in the early years to be older because they are emotionally and mentally more mature. It was really a struggle when he was youngest in his class one year because he couldn't do simple things like stay seated for the entire group time... he'd slowly slink down and end up lying on the floor. His teachers always told us this but assured us it was age appropriate since he was younger than everyone else.

Unfortunately it means another year of double daycare. At our daycare this year (he was 4 when school started) he's in the Kindergarten class, and next fall he will be in public Kindergarten. A little difficult to explain to him since he'll basically be repeating Kindergarten, but moving to public school. He's been switched around a lot every year, sometimes being oldest in his class and sometimes being youngest. He's back to the classmates he had 2 years ago this year. Lots of kids who were in his pre-K class last year have moved on to public Kindergarten (or private school). He hasn't mentioned losing friends or shifting back and forth, but I think the daycare focuses a lot on the changes and prepares the kids for them well, so it's not a big deal to them. Plus, classes mix together all the time so they still see each other. When I ask him if he misses his closest friends from last year, he's like "um, yeah, but he's not in my school this year" and goes running off.

I'm not sure if our town allows or forbids redshirting!

I wouldn't, but I'm kind of being forced to because of DD's birthday (October 7) and the kindergarten cutoff date (October 1).

DD is coming in Dec, but I never thought about "red shirting" (I had to google this, I had no idea what it meant!). My sister & I both have Nov birthdays but where we grew up it was never a thing to be held back on purpose.

I guess we will have to see how she is...? We also can't really afford an extra year of preschool/daycare~

I would reshirt DS if I could but the cut off in my town is Dec 31st and he has a June birthday so it would never work. I have heard of towns with a July 1st cutoff. If that was the case I would definitely hold him back Maturity wise I feel he is lacking a great deal still even if academically I think he is on track. The difference of being one month older is fine with me but not 6 months unfortunately.

I don't have this option anyway, nor do I need it as my kids fall toward the older end of the calendar. But, regardless, I think there are reasons that schools and districts have the cutoffs they do, and I think it's a shame that so many people redshirt because ultimately that makes it tough on the people who play "by the book." I would rather have a small age differential overall, which is what the "rules" create.

we don't really have the option - at least in the town we're in. we will likely buy before she's in kindergarten, so who knows about the cutoff there.

but currently, cut off is September 1, and she is Sept 27. So she will be almost 6 for Kindergarten. I'm honestly a little nervous that she'll be really bored

@Little Misters Mom: that's an interesting study and what it's saying (kids in a challenging academic environment learn more) is a basic tenant of modern education. That's why we do "inclusion" now for most Special Ed. kids rather than separate classes, and why classes are mixed-level groupings with differentiation rather than having classes where kids are separated by ability level--the thinking being that the lower kids will learn more just by being around the higher kids.

Anecdotally, looking at my own real life experiences in the classroom, I mostly agree. When I taught gifted kids, one year there was a major school zoning change that meant several of our gifted students were suddenly going to a new middle school. My 7th grade class in particular dwindled to half the size and my administration "solved" the staffing issue by putting my 7th graders in my 8th grade class and told me to teach them simultaneously. I was furious and asked him how he thought I was going to do that--weren't the younger kids going to be picked on? Wouldn't they get discouraged because the 8th graders would be out performing them every day? Was I expected to somehow teach them separate lessons each day in a 50 minute time period?

But he told me to just teach the whole class the 8th grade material. So that's what I did, expecting it to fail spectacularly. But it didn't fail--it totally worked. 7th graders who were a mess (organizationally) before suddenly started copying the habits of the 8th graders and suddenly the work they were turning in was so much more advanced. It was dramatic.

After that year, I begged for all my 7th-8th grade classes to be mixed and when I left that school, they were still doing it.

@oliviaoblivia: this is exactly how I feel about my LO! I actually would love for her to be able to start kindergarten at almost 5 years instead of almost 6 years. The cut off for our town i *think* is Aug 31, and LO is born in Nov, so we don't even have a chance at it

I would not. I was "red-shirted" being an immigrant from Korea and I always hated being one of the bigger, older, etc. kids socially. Academically I was bored, school didn't challenge me until late in HS.

I def think that it's a case-by-case situation, DS is a Nov baby. Physically he's a lot bigger than most kids his age and even older kids. The cut off here is Sept 1 for the year he is Prek and Kindergarten. We can request that he be put in since his bday is before Dec 31. We'll most likely do that unless DS doesn't seem ready.

I feel like red shirting is trendy since everyone read Outliers, but I think it just depends on the kid. I had an August birthday and wasn't held back, so I was one of the youngest in my class. I was already bored for most of school and wished I could skip a grade. Being behind a year would've been hell.

DH thought maybe we should hold LO2 back since he didn't want the boys one year apart in school. Since he was born a month early, I think his birthday would be to far from the cutoff. But I think we will just see. If he is advanced or on par, I wouldn't want to hold him back.

@oliviaoblivia: We're in the same boat. We're 2 weeks past the cutoff, so she'll be almost 6 when she starts kindergarten. She's still a toddler right now but with the start of the school year this has been on my mind a little. We either keep her where she is and she's one of the oldest or we apply to have her start early and she's the youngest.

I think we'll probably leave her where she is under the theory that the cutoff has to be somewhere, and some kid is always going to be the oldest, but we have a few years before we actually have to decide.