“In my case, I was 16 for a little while my freshman year of college and just didn’t tell anyone. I received an academic scholarship and graduated in three years.”
I’m confused. You say you were 16 at the beginning of your “freshman year of college”, but wouldn’t you have had to have started as a sophomore in order to graduate in 3 years? Then again, maybe it the case that you had graduated high school with just under a full year’s worth of credits(Maybe 59 units) and you were easily able to make up that extra unit.
Back in the Stone Age when our now 30+!year old kids were in preschool, we were encouraged to let them enjoy a year of jr K. (Both kids were born in Nov, in 5% for height and weight.)
The pediatrician and the preschool teachers encouraged us to allow our older child (S), an extra year for socialization as he was very shy although he was extremely bright.
Once we had S have his year of JrK, 2 years later it seemed like a good idea to keep D years behind S in school. Socially she seemed fine but she wasn’t as interested in sitting and learning as S. He was reading on his own before he started preschool. She didn’t read on her own until she was nearly done with 1st grade.
The JrK was all kids who were born in last quarter of the year. Our kids ended up with those same kids when they transferred from public school to private HS in 9th grade. I have no regrets and I honestly think our kids were grateful for the gift of time. D’s friend group is lots of late born kids who were also “redshirted” but a few kids about a year younger who weren’t.
Both my kids were 5 and turned 6 in Nov when in K. They never were bigger than their classmates.
My sister had sons born in the fall and didn’t want them held back. She’s a special ed and elementary ed teacher. It was a fine choice for them.
Most parents are busy with two income model and social media related activity so they need kids out of the house as soon as possible and for longer hours.
Majority doesn’t want to pay for an extra year of preschool or daycare, that money can go to lifestyle upgrade.
Also many mistakenly think of their kids as geniuses due to skills gained by using digital learning so consider them ready for accelerated gifted track.
This is only my observation, not a verdict against working parents. I’m one too. I’m against the pressures imposed on parents by society, long work hours, lengthy commutes, lack of parental leave, increasing materialism, weakened extended family support, high cost of childcare and effects of digital gadgets and social media on family lives.
I still don’t see that it makes much difference in the redshirting. I live in an affluent area and saw many kids (almost always boys) redshirted for one of 2 reasons - social immaturity or sports. The school district is pretty strict about kids starting kindergarten. I know a lot of families with different work situations (both work, single parent, SAHP, etc), didn’t see much difference.
No problem with the snippet. We did partial homeschooling for my son starting in sophomore year of HS. In principle, it would have been great to do that earlier, but the private middle school we sent him to would not have countenanced it and ShawWife was dead set against homeschooling for two reasons: 1) she thought he needed social interaction; and 2) she works at home and was worried that her day would be totally interrupted by homeschooling even though the only subject that she could teach was art. In fact, we did very little of the teaching and it was either self-driven, taught one-on-one by grad students at one of the local universities, or summer school course at a local university.
We did and I’m glad we did. No regrets. We didn’t for kindergarten though. We did it in third grade when we moved. So not technically redshirting. But we had her repeat a grade. The entrance exam revealed some concerns and she was tested for dyslexia. The principal suggested she would be more successful in the 3rd grade class than the 4th grade class and should begin dyslexia remediation services. She received twice weekly dyslexia remediation provided on campus for the next 4 years. It was a private school with rigorous advanced curriculum. She graduated 8th grade from that school as class valedictorian. Then went on to our local large competitive public high school.
Everyone pauses for a minute when her age doesn’t match her grade. But that’s about the only drawback. She is now starting her senior year at 18 and will turn 19 a couple weeks before her high school graduation in May. She doesn’t receive accomodations or modifications anymore. She has AP and dual credit classes. She is in the top 10% of her class.
I’ve talked about my son in this thread, but his older sister was “red shirted” also. We moved after her kindergarten year, and in first grade at her new school, it rapidly became clear that something was wrong. She still remembers how lost she felt, and how shocked the other kids were when she couldn’t match letters to their sounds, or separate words into syllables.
The school suggested that she repeat kindergarten. We agreed. In kindergarten, the pressure was off, and D no longer felt constantly reminded that she was different and “dumb”. We also wanted to get to the root of the problem, and that’s when she was diagnosed with dyslexia. It took more than 80 hours of one-on-one tutoring with Lindamood-Bell for her to learn to read, but by 4th grade, she qualified for the gifted program. She went on to become an excellent student who loves history, mythology and creative writing. Would this have happened if she had stayed in first grade that year? She would say no. She was already starting to hate school and feel inferior.
What @martinezcs wrote in the second paragraph of the post above is exactly what we would say about our D. She is headed to college this year, where her age will matter a lot less to everyone. It never mattered to us because we knew she was where she should be.
When we found out that our son’s dyslexia was even more severe than D’s, and he had speech/motor issues as well, we were able to delay kindergarten entry, so he didn’t need to repeat.
Well and sometimes being too much older then your classmates and friends can be a problem. My husband was in that position in college and high school: guess who was the first one who could buy all his friends beer in college? Guess, who was first one who could drive? And today H says he was a very immature teen and 20-something. I’ve heard the same thing from friends who’ve had sons and husbands in this position.
It can also be hard to be among the youngest. The last one to drive, etc. Also, younger kids can be negatively influenced by older kids in a negative matter.
That said, it really does depend on the kid and situation.
@FallGirl Same here. I don’t know anyone who did it because they “wanted the kids out of the the house.” I know someone who didn’t redshirt their D because they couldn’t afford another year of preschool. It was too bad, because their D probably would’ve benefited from Pre-K and she struggled through Kindergarten. She had to repeat Kindergarten and that helped her a lot. In this case, her parents had no choice, they had to send their kid to kindergarten at 4 because they couldn’t afford more preschool or daycare. I think its not that poorer parents don’t want to redshirt, it’s just that their financial situation doesn’t always allow it to be possible, unlike affluent parents who can actually do it
@1Rubin In my area they were pretty strict about when kids could start kindergarten. Most parents didn’t do it because they thought their kids were amazing brilliant geniuses, they did it because they thought their kids weren’t ready socially or academically. They didn’t want their kids to be the best, they just wanted to make sure their kids could get through a day of kindergarten…
I’m glad to say that the school district in my area started free preschool and pre-k…that makes it so much more accessible. They did this right when they changed the age cutoff for Kindergarten…
I met a guy this weekend, who was a child prodigy sort of person. He was against pushing kids to go faster. He was pushed by parents to dual enrollment at community college and get an associate degree. He entered state university at 12 and post grad at 15 and had a doctorate title at 19.
He felt it deprived him of natural phase of young life and provided no real academic/professional benefit in long term. He is reasonably successful but so are his peers who also got to grow naturally and experience life with friends in same age group, having romantic partners, making own decisions, picking top colleges etc.
Usually yes but sometimes no. Some PG kids have a difficult time interacting with their peers, so there is little point in trying to provide experience with similar age kids, unless one can find a setting in which the rest of the kids are PG as well.
You only have to hold a child back once in order for them to be the oldest. Of course, a child who is held back twice might be the best student be a greater margin than if only held back once. However, in life, being first place, no matter how close you were to being second place, usually opens up plenty of doors for you.
In any non-STEM field, it’s pretty easy to graduate college in 3 years without having earned any college credits in high school. It’s only math-related degrees that are difficult to get in 3 years if you start college as a freshman. But most students don’t pursue those kinds of degrees, so most students would have no problem completing 4 years’ worth of college credits in 3 years.
I could have gotten my BA in sociology in 3 years but got enough merit aid that it was financially painless to remain an extra year to write an honors thesis and graduate with honors in 4 while applying to law schools.
My D took as long as she did due to chronic health issues and choosing a major and getting admitted to it as a JR.
S could have graduated in 3 years in EE if he pushed himself but I urged him to enjoy his time and “smell the roses.”
Unless there are huge financial ramifications, it’s better to do full 4 years and take some interesting courses to make you a more wholesome person, instead of rushing a 3 year degree with only required courses.
It was nice that S had merit awards to help with all 4 years of college, so it made our choice easier. S was able to present a Geology poster at a national geology conference in SF plus take sailing and have more fun when we convinced we wanted him to take the full 4 years. He also had 3 firm job offers in Feb of his SR year, after interning for NASA summer after JR year.