We chose not to redshirt DS without considering the long-term consequences:

Parents Forum
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There are a lot of important considerations when deciding whether to skip a grade or not, but this is the first time I’ve heard a “big reason” is wanting their child to be 21 or older for a larger portion of time during college.

If that’s a reference to drinking alcohol, being under 21 generally doesn’t stop students from drinking in college. At the college I attended, if anything it was the opposite. A much larger portion of students drank during freshman year when the overwhelming majority were under 21 than any other time during college. However, for a large portion of students, including myself, a quality college experience had little to do with drinking or being 21.

When deciding on a child skipping a grade, I also wouldn’t assume that he/she is going to attend college for exactly 4 years, then leave. Many students take 5-6 years to complete a bachelor’s which can relate to doing a co-op, studying overseas, pursuing outside projects/situations, taking time off to work, athletic redshirt, gap year(s)…, . Many students attend grad/professional school or have complex degree plans than a traditional bachelor’s. Many students also do not attend/complete 4-year colleges and/or do not attend college at all. The majority of students do not follow a traditional path of exactly 4 years of college, then leave.

If it were me, I’d focus more on things like the academic reasons for skipping or not skipping. For example, I was bored out of my mind in many classes during grade school, which contributed to subpar performance, including weak grades. With increasingly little challenge, there was increasingly little effort and interest, which could have led down an increasingly poor path. Fortunately, some teachers recognized this and gave me the opportunity to do things like independently study at my own pace or be a half-time student at a nearby university while in high school. I believe skipping a grade would have benefited me overall, had I been given the opportunity.

I completed my first master’s at age 21 as part of a double co-term program (simultaneously pursue BS+ MS + MS), which put me ahead of the traditional age schedule. I don’t recall ever feeling disadvantaged because of being younger than most students within my academic year during college. Instead my classes generally had students from a good variety of ages, and I don’t recall any students asking my age. In general, nobody within the college cared if I was 20 vs 21, vs 22. Similarly my friends were not limited to being a specific age or academic year. Yes, there is a theoretical scenario where your close friends are all within the same academic year and you have to tell them that you can’t go off campus to a bar or other place that checks ID with them because you are not over 21 (and want to follow the age rule). That doesn’t sound like a disaster to me or a good reason to not want your child to skip a grade.

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I was a January baby who was “pushed ahead” by my parents for academic reasons. I doubt many educators would permit that today. I excelled academically and have a perfectly nice, successful life. Might I have been socially happier with an additional year under my belt? Maybe, but part of the problem was that I led a very sheltered life at home. What I really needed was a gap year before grad school at 21 - not an extra year of nursery school or kindergarten at age 4 or 5.

My son is a rising senior and an “old” November baby who will turn 18 in high school. He’s fine with this - and knows plenty of kids who take five years to graduate college or high school (particularly the athletes).

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My DD’19 just graduated at 20, last year. Not a problem at all, for her.

A while back there was a young man posting here who blamed all of his problems in life on not being redshirted, or being redshirted, I forget. Wish I could come up with who that was.

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Many of the bars/clubs where my D was at were 18 to enter and 21 to drink so the lines for under 21 were always longer to get in. Also once her and her friends were 21 they could go to the nicer establishments.

Sure there were house/frat parties to go to, but those can be gross for sure.

It wasn’t like she was drinking every night or anything, but it was just more convenient to be 21 while in college.

And I know not all kids like to party/drink while in college. My D23 that will be going off to college in August is not a party kid at all.

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Maybe it’s different in different parts of the country - but going out, incl. a bar, doesn’t require everyone to be drinking alcohol? Throughout college, various friends will turn 21 in different years and months - so during all this time, some may choose to have alcohol while some others just have a good time anyway.

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“A while back there was a young man posting here who blamed all of his problems in life on not being redshirted, or being redshirted, I forget.”

Well the bold would make no sense at all. People who were redshirted often end up being more successful, not just in school, but in life as well.

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I don’t think there is any research out there to support this.

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People who are redshirted sometimes feel dumb and behind their peer group and too old for high school. They may act out and rebel more.

The National Association of Early Childhood Specialists and the National Association for the Education of Young Children fiercely oppose it, saying that redshirting “labels children as failures at the outset of their school experience.” Studies that have evaluated how well redshirted kids fare compared to their schooled-on-time peers conclude that redshirting provides no long-term academic or social advantages and can even put kids at a disadvantage.

In 2006, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Southern California analyzed national data collected over many years from 15,000 26-year-olds. They compared what became of kids who had been redshirted to what became of kids who had been young for their class but not redshirted. They found that the redshirted kids performed worse on 10th-grade tests, were twice as likely to drop out of school, and were less likely to graduate from college; the only advantage to redshirting was that redshirted kids were marginally more likely to play varsity sports in high school.

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The Stanford article actually says that the situation with redshirting is not clear cut because the study is based on old data (from the 70’s and 80’s). It also appears that the researchers were trying to make a causal link between redshirting and kids requiring special Ed, or achieving poorly. However, it seems just as likely that many kids are redshirted specifically because it is clear that they will require special care or extra time.

The NPR article suggesting that redshirted kids are likely to earn less, simply because they will work for a year less, is way over simplified.

I think people really need to closely examine their motivations before deciding either way. I doubt anyone will ever come up with a formula that optimizes the outcome.

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I sent my daughter to K at 4.5 years old (she’s adopted and I thought she was older). I figured she could just repeat K but the teachers didn’t think she needed to. Academically she was fine, but she would have been a superstar if she’d waited a year. She was 18 months younger than several in her class in k-12, and quite a bit smaller. It wasn’t driving when all her friends could at 16 that was the problem as much as going to R rated movies when all her friends could (she actually liked it because she doesn’t like scary things so could just say "Oh, sorry I can’t go). She couldn’t go to girl scout camp when her friends could because she wasn’t 7 by the summer. She played a sport that divided the kids by school grade, so if she’d been in the class below, she’d have been playing with kids more her size.

In college there were some things she couldn’t do because she wasn’t 21. She won concert tickets to a VIP section sponsored by some liquor company. Nope, she couldn’t go. I had to sign her medical forms when she started at 17.

If I could do it over, I’d have held her back a year, but I can’t change it now so I don’t worry about what could have been.

But now at 26 she’s fine. She was happy going to college when she did, she’s fine that most of her friends are 1-2 years older, her boyfriend is 3 years older.

Her sister is 27, had a Jan birthday so was in the middle of the age group for school. She was always one of the least mature because she was a premature baby. She was just always a step behind and every year in the summer I’d see that she’d ‘caught up’ with her peers. “Ah, now she seems like a 7 year old” “Now she acts like an 11 year old” Her sport, hockey, divided by birth year so with a Jan birthday she was always one of the oldest (but smallest) on her teams.

Nothing is perfect.

To OP, it’s hard right now but in 2-3 years your son won’t care and neither will you. He needs to take some responsibility for not working hard his freshman year and falling behind. It sounds like he attends an LAC where everyone is out in 4 years. His staying a 5th year might not be common at his school but is not at all unusual at other schools, even T-20s. If it did happen freshman year, he’s had 3 years to know this was coming or to do something about it (summer school, overloading a semester or two?).

Two of my daughter’s teammates didn’t have enough credits to graduate in 4 years so took another semester, but they knew it was happening and didn’t plan their courses right (and too much partying). The father of one was really mad they wouldn’t let her walk with the graduating class but the fact was she wasn’t graduating! It worked out fine, and the extra semester is forgotten.

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If I could do it over, I’d have held her back a year

Why? It sounds like she graduated from college in 4 years, which means it all turned out fine in the end. I think staying behind while your friends graduate is much more lonesome than staying behind while your friends go to bars. After all, it’s the end that counts. Clearly, she was made of sterner stuff than my son, and is thus an exception to my recommendation to parents not to start their kids at 4.

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Reading this breaks my heart. I’d urge you and your son to find therapists with whom you connect to help you in dealing with your feelings and perceptions.

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Really? You are evaluating your son’s worth on the basis of how long it takes to graduate from college? Agree with AustenNut- you would benefit from some professional help to figure out a healthier way to process your feelings about your child.

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Sewanee guarantees that students will graduate in 4 years, or the 5th is paid for by the school.

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These ideas are not equated in any way.

I am so sad for your son, not because of when he started kindergarten or how long it might take him to graduate from college, but because of the unreasonable and unrealistic expectations his parents have placed on him.

Kids at every school and in every socioeconomic bracket take different amounts of time to graduate. Stop perpetuating some rigid concept of what you think he should be doing, especially based on what you think other people have done. If you don’t, you will not only put his mental health at risk, but you may permanently jeopardize your relationship with him.

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This kid probably doesn’t go to Sewanee, and I bet there are kids who do who still take more than 5 years, or take gap years, and don’t complete college exactly 4 years after high school graduation.

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Excellent point. It’s not until you have a kid develop real, life-altering issues that you appreciate what you had. I would have been thrilled if my Eagle Scout son who started out in biomedical engineering had graduated from college in six years. As it turned out, he never graduated and can’t hold a job due to his mental illness. Shower your kid with love and appreciation. THAT’S your role.

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I was just replying directly to Neela’s post providing an example

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Wow. Didn’t read every response, but here’s mine.

This has ZERO to do with his birthday and his age at K start. Stop blaming yourself.

The most astounding lesson I learned from watching two cohorts of children (my kids’ friends and classmates) go through K-12 and then college is that who they were in elementary, middle school, and high school were often wildly different from how they turned out.

You cannot pin an outcome on one thing.

By the way, I myself never took calculus or precalculus. Ever. I went to an Ivy League school and graduated in four years.

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She did graduate in 4 years but that was because her scholarships were for 8 consecutive semesters and I didn’t have an extra $30k for her to take an extra semester or $60k for an extra year. Every college student has their own pressures.

I would have started her with the kids who were her same age (I thought I was!). She did fine in elementary school but there were some very smart kids in her class and she was always in a different group so felt dumb. She is the slowest reader in the world. Understands it all, but is just a slow reader. Many kids in her class were 18 months older because they had been redshirted or had just missed the deadline. Really, more than half her class turned 6 before she even turned 5. She would not have been the oldest if she was in the class behind hers - lots of fall birthdays. But I don’t spend time worrying about it now.

Really, don’t worry. He’s lucky to get to do the extra year now and not have to worry about how to pay for it. Truly a first world problem that his friends graduated and now he’ll have to make new friends but he’ll graduate and, as you said, it will all be fine in the end.