<p>Against Redshirting: Why it pays to be the youngest kid in class.</p>
<p>"Few researchers would dispute that, in the immediate term, being relatively bigger, quicker, smarter, and stronger is a good thing. Repeatedly, the studies have found exactly thatolder kindergarten students perform better on tests, receive better teacher evaluations, and do better socially. But then, something happens: after that early boost, their performance takes a nosedive. By the time they get to eighth grade, any disparity has largely evened outand, by college, younger students repeatedly outperform older ones in any given year."</p>
<p>Well, there is a selection effect here. Kids whose parents have concerns about their performance relative to their peers will be redshirted; kids whose parents do not, won’t be. There doesn’t seem to be any evidence that the children who were redshirted would have done better relative to their peers if they hadn’t been.</p>
<p>In my day smart children skipped grades, only a dolt was “held back”. My son was the youngest in his class and graduated at the top, NMS, etc… He is a college sophomore, while some of his redshirted classmates back in pre-k are still in high school. I was the youngest in my high school class and graduated valedictorian, most likely to succeed, etc… My experience is that it is difficult socially and physically being the youngest. I was the last to get my driver’s license and the last to go through puberty. This lead to an inferiority complex of sorts, remedied by being the best academically. I didn’t want to do sports, go to dances, date, and basically just stuck to my studies. I never considered myself much more intelligent than my peers, just more studious and less distracted by social events/relationships. In college, age really didn’t matter anymore, especially the drinking age as it was ignored by all. At this point in my life, I am glad to have gotten a head start in the rat race. Opportunities were better, I started earning money sooner, and I can retire at a younger age if I choose to. Overall, I am glad I was not held back, as is my son.</p>
<p>I don’t think there’s a selection effect. What the article seems to say (and my experience) is that parents aren’t holding their kids back because of concerns about their performance. They’re holding them back because they don’t want their kid to be the youngest. I’ve never known anyone to redshirt over performance or developmental issues. With a Sep 1 cutoff, it’s almost universal here for boys born May -Aug and for girls Jul-Aug. many April boys are redshirted also. Some even decide while their kid is a toddler.</p>
<p>Parents where I live redshirt because they believe that a younger male will not be good at sports. It has nothing to do with academics, and all to do with athletics. The truth is that some of the smallest kids are some of the oldest and vice versa by the time they leave high school and enter college.</p>
<p>Interestingly the very same parent can make a different decision depending on the child. :eek: Go figure. All of my boys are summer birthdays. They are all different. My middle son I was never concerned. He was tiny compared to his peers but socially and academically he was at or above level. So I obviously had no concerns about a child being the youngest. My youngest was different, academically on time but needed more direction. I knew in second grade everything became independent work and he wasn’t ready. I didn’t know anyone else who had ever made this decision, I’d never heard the term redshirting. I worked with his teacher and the school GC. As he got older some of the ‘maturity’ we realized was just part of his personality. He’s a gently soul even at 18, but that’s impossible to tease out at 5. We never regretted the decision. (Btw, I don’t compare my oldest as he is gifted/ld so it’s impossible to bring his developmental timeline into the equation.). As for the ‘doing it for athletics’ my tiny middle son was our athlete, not our youngest. No choices made for sports. We had no idea who was going to excel or be interested in what at that age.</p>
<p>I think holding a bright kid back for some potential future gain is ridiculous. I know a few families that have done it. Their kids were pretty miserable that last year when all their friends had gone off to kindergarten.</p>
<p>ETA: I agree that a lot of the unspoken reason is sports-related.</p>
<p>I know several families who chose to delay kindergarten enrollment a year. In most cases, the parents felt the child was not ready for all-day kindergarten. (2boys and a girl.). As the families enrolled other children “on time,” they weren’t doing it for sports.</p>
<p>I think the “younger children achieving more than older children through greater effort” theory is bunk. Selection effects suffice to explain it all–you don’t redshirt a kid who’s already reading and counting.</p>
<p>I have boy/girl twins with a July birthday. We had concerns about our son starting Kindergarten and considered holding him back, but his sister was clearly ready (she had been reading for more than a year already) and it would have been cruel to split them up.</p>
<p>They are now freshmen in college and both finished at the top of their high school class academically. My son’s athletic career did suffer being younger and more physically immature (he still doesn’t shave), but he would not be D1 scholarshihp material even if held back for five years.</p>
<p>We have a handful of friends who have children born about the same time as our twins (two are actually older) but all had decided to hold their kids back. Almost all of them now regret the decision as their kids have gotten bored with school.</p>
<p>Actually, Periwinkle, I’ve seen kids redshirted who were reading and counting, including one who did Kindergarten once at private and once at public school.</p>
<p>I skipped a grade and it sucked.
I might have been academically ready, but physically I was not & playground skills were ( more IMO) important.
My kids didnt technically skip, but they were the youngest in their classes & would have done better a little later. Taking a gap year helped.</p>
<p>I think if there was ever a “YMMV” topic, this is it. Even the article seemed to confirm that there is no right or wrong decision here, it depends on the individual (who at that stage of life is relatively an unknown). Maybe the New Yorker was looking for something to stress their readers about.</p>
<p>I had my kid skip 3rd grade the year we moved. I just felt (and still do) that the other boys his age were further along behavior wise (my kid has an LD and is an Oct baby), so at move time, it seemed like a good point to make the move. But boy was it ever horrific! I had to campaign hard because the school said he didn’t qualify for retention. Also, he was devastated and felt like he was being punished. </p>
<p>Honestly, after it happened no one would’ve been the wiser but for the fact that he introduced himself by saying, Hi I’m Salvekid, I’m in 3rd grade. I would’ve been in Fourth grade but I was held back Given the choice, I’d hold back at pre-k instead, but I don’t regret it.</p>
<p>I think it depends on the kid. My kids are July (girl) and August (boy) birthdays. S2 is actually August 31 with a Sept 1 deadline for K. Both were tested as gifted in pre-K (if there is such a thing) so we did not hold them back. Both excelled academically and socially. Funny thing is - most of their best friends in HS and college were younger kids too. I think they just gravitated towards their peers. Now, S2 was small until HS but was a runner so size never mattered for sports. The only thing that ever bothered them was driving, but we let D1 get a “hardship” license at 15, so she was right with her peers. S2 didn’t get his until his 16th birthday (junior year) but he survived. (We lived in Texas where a drivers license is a big deal)</p>
<p>I skipped third grade. It served its purpose (solving the problem of me being bored in school) for less than a year, after which I caught up academically and went back to daydreaming in class. But at the same time, being a year younger than my classmates created a social barrier between them and me that lasted until I started college (where there were many other 17-year-olds, most of whom had been in a special accelerated middle school program in New York City). </p>
<p>Given my own experience, I’m not inclined to approve of putting kids in classes where they are the “wrong” age. It’s important to remember that such decisions don’t just affect one academic year – they affect the rest of the child’s school life. And a kid who is out of sync, age-wise, with his or her classmates may suffer in ways that could not have been predicted at the time that a decision to skip or redshirt was made.</p>
<p>On the other hand, redshirting, particularly of boys with summer/fall birthdays, has been common for more than two decades now (my son is 27, and it was happening back then, too). And school districts are implicitly recognizing that there is an issue with age and kindergarten readiness when they push their kindergarten cutoff dates further and further back.</p>
<p>I think a case could be made for having a kindergarten cutoff date for boys that is about six months older than the date for girls. Typically, girls are ready to cope with the sit-down-shut-up-and-pay-attention aspects of school at an earlier age than boys are. </p>
<p>But the real solution would be to redesign school so that it’s better suited for actual children, rather than trying to tinker with children to try to make them fit into an environment that obviously does not come naturally to many of them.</p>
<p>I agree Marian on compulsory retention. Gosh I would have never dreamt of holding him back for sports as someone upthread implied happens! Wow, CC never fails to enlighten me. My kid tested above average IQ, too, but not in maturity haha. That’s common though as most kids with his disability are about five yrs behind in that respect. On the other hand, we decided not to hold back my DD, who’s also an Oct baby, and to this day, I regret it still. She’s was always less mature than her classmates and was teased a lot :(. Oh well, live and learn.</p>
<p>Both of my sons have been the youngest in their classes, as they were skipped a grade. The older son never seemed to have an issue with it. Most of his close friends in high school were girls, and they had no trouble giving him a ride because he did not have a license. Academically, he excelled. He was 14 and taking a college class in calculus. He loved the interaction with the older kids. The only time age was a problem, he said, was in college when everyone else was 21 and could go to the bars.</p>
<p>My younger son skipped fifth grade, because he was so far ahead in math. He knew that he would be playing catch up when it came to English, as there is more writing in the fifth grade. So his grades in English were not outstanding for a few years. But, he has made a huge leap, thanks to his AP English teacher (he will have her first final two years in HS). She is a very positive person who has him working hard with each assignment. She also has chosen novels that he really enjoyed. The kid who once hated English really enjoys it now. I will mention that not everyone thought it was great that my son skipped a grade. He did get picked on by one girl all through sixth grade. She would openly tell him in class that he was not welcomed. She even pushed him around, because she was so much bigger than he was. Thank goodness he had friends who enjoyed him being in their classes.</p>
<p>Interesting conversation. I never worried too much about my son skipping a grade until I read Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers,” which outlined all the ways the oldest in the cohort has the advantages, so the New Yorker article is an interesting counterpoint.</p>
<p>I have mixed feelings about having skipped my S a grade. He thrived academically and firmly believe that if he hadn’t have skipped, he would have turned off to school at a very young age (he skipped kindergarten). However, he did suffer socially, mostly in middle school. He has been fine in high school and the driving thing never really became an issue because most of his friends delayed in getting their licenses and as a matter of fact my S has his before some of his other friends. The sports thing was hard, but I believe he wouldn’t have been an athlete even if he did stay on grade. He found music instead :). With the red-shirting prevalence, he is actually almost two years younger than some of his classmates. What I do regret is having one less year with him at home now that he is getting ready to head off to college next year!</p>
<p>I really appreciate the link to the New Yorker article. My youngest son has a July birthday and I sent him to K when he was 5, not skipping a grade, just starting when he could. He is one of the youngest in his grade, now in HS. Through the years I have received so much criticism from other moms, usually ones with the older kids in the grade, as they tell me all the reasons why its better to be older. I just listened and sat silently. This article has at least given me a little support for my decision.</p>
Given the choice, I’d hold back at pre-k instead, but I don’t regret it.</p>