<p>I had one that turned 19 the month before graduation. He’s doing fine in college in an engineering program. So many kids do not start college right out of high school being a 19 year old college freshman is no big deal. I think the concern is more in early high school when they are driving…usually their friends all over the place who are too young to have a license. That takes a parental leap of faith - far more than having a 19 year old high school graduate on their way to college. Having raised three boys I would be more squeamish about sending a 17 year old boy off to college than a 19 year old. Big difference between 17 year old boys and 19 year old boys.</p>
<p>My kids were both born in Nov. Academically, the pediatrician and preschool director both felt both my kids would do fine, but physically they were petite and socially S was reserved. The pediatrician recommended we hold back both kids, as most of the late born kids at the preschool were and have them enroll in JR K, where they could perform in plays and have more time to be kids. We have no regrets (nor do they) tho initially D would point out she COULD be a grade further if we hadn’t made them do JR K. ;)</p>
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<p>This is really a YMMV. I was more than ready to move on to college when I left for college at 17. Also, had a college classmate who was a couple of years ahead of me who GRADUATED with honors from my LAC at 17. </p>
<p>Not all boys need to be held back till they’re 18 or 19+ before heading off to college.</p>
<p>I was 17 when I left for university, as was my son. No regrets. Some of my classmates were 18 months my senior. They were not at all “different”.</p>
<p>Where we live there was an eighth grader with her driver’s license. Enough is enough!
My husband and I would like them to get through as much of high school as they can before their hormones kick in and they get distracted. Seven year old kindergarteners often become interested in dating and the opposite before they have even left elementary school. That’s a recipe for disaster.</p>
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<p>One thing which was reinforced during my early college years was that being more senior in chronological years didn’t always correspond with the equivalent amount of maturity.</p>
<p>I did a year of jr. kindergarten for my now age 10 4th grader with an August birthday. I felt the down side of pushing ahead was greater than the downside of taking the extra year. I have many friends of summer birthday babies (our cut off is Sept 30) that I see struggle with academics and spend hours trying to get caught up including spending time in summer school. I figured that if he was the oldest in his class (and he is NOT the oldest - there are several who are older), yes, maybe he would be a little bored at times, but we could give him enriching activities to fill those times. He has joined the band, plays two fall sports, and has been able to participate in many school clubs and activities. His friend, with the same exact birthday a year later who was not held back, struggles to get his homework done, mom has to sit and help him with just about every aspect of his homework and I know personally has forgone weekend activities because it takes him so long to get all of his homework done. I like the fact that it is easy for my son to pick up the work, he is socially mature in his class, great at sports, and doesn’t struggle. As time goes on I can see him getting placed in more gifted and advanced programs as these come available. Also, as his big sister travels abroad next fall, I won’t hesitate to pull him from school for a week to go and visit her as I know he academically could handle that. I would never consider doing that if he was the struggling youngest one in the class.</p>
<p>For us it was the right choice so far. After all, what is the big rush. Hurry up and get through school a year early so you can work the rest of your life a year ahead of time? </p>
<p>I have known personally more parents who regret sending their kid early than those who regret NOT sending their kid early.</p>
<p>For our family it had nothing to do with physical or emotional ‘advancement’. Waiting the extra year - both kids had January BD’s so we could have pushed an early entry - had to do with extending childhood. It was an extra year of sleeping in until their bodies said 'get up: it was an extra year of vacations unencumbered by school schedules and crowds, it was an extra year of playgrounds, and gardening and hanging with grandparents and just simply being free. </p>
<p>Does graduating college at 21 vs 22 really matter? I don’t think so. Then again, the sport issue was not part of the family concern or long term plan. "They’ will most likely live to be 95. Most of those years as adults, we chose to let them be kids for that extra year. </p>
<p>Today, they are both succeeding and exceeding many of their peers. Wouldn’t change a thing.</p>
<p>What we aren’t discussing is what making the choice to red-shirt a child with no real delays does to the rest of the class. Is it fair for a child who follows the rules and starts on schedule expecting to do kindergarten curriculum to be placed in a class filled with 1st grade aged kids. We complain about the work load and the pushing down of curriculum onto tiny children but we don’t talk about how much older those “tiny” children are for grade. Is it fair to make 5-year-olds look immature in kindergarten simply because they are sitting next to kids who are almost 7? How do we make peace with the fact that by increasing the ability level in the average classroom we are splitting the focus of overworked teachers even further? We complain about how fast kids are growing up… doesn’t help when you’ve got 12-year-olds and 15-year-olds in the same grade. The exposure to the younger set that did nothing wrong is ridiculous. We haven’t talked about bully issues either that often arise when you’ve got one kid who belongs in their grade against 10 who don’t.</p>
<p>I know, I know… everyone has the exception… but MY kid didn’t have problems. MY kid didn’t cause problems. Still this isn’t the first study that has come out against red-shirting and it won’t be the last.</p>
<p>It’s not good for an already taxed system and it’s not right the complications it causes. If your child is developing normally and you don’t want them in school… homeschool until you think they are ready and put them in their appropriate grade.</p>
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<p>I have to admit, this bugged me a lot when my kids were little. It was always the older kids who won the coloring contests, got chosen as class leaders, had the most stars on their reading charts. In middle school, most of the “7th grade” athletes were kids who could have been in 8th grade. And in high school, half the kids on the freshman football team could drive themselves to practice. My late birthday-ed, small-statured son didn’t stand a chance of making the team. But in the classroom, by middle school & high school it did seem to even out. I thought it was interesting that of the Top 10 kids in my D’s graduating class, almost all were on the younger side (spring or summer birthdays), and the Sal was more than a full year younger. (I know this because I had to type up their bios for an article, not because I’m a crazy stalker 
).</p>
<p>As long as its an option, it seems like a good thing to allow the parents and family decide what they believe would be best for their child–start as early as possible or enjoy one more year of less-structured time. No one size fits all situations–nice to have options.</p>
<p>I can’t even believe redshirting is a thing.</p>
<p>Funny story: I’m a late summer baby and my mom wasn’t sure if I was socially prepared to start K (immigrant family, barely spoke English, only child). She put me in K anyway and I literally did not want to leave on my first day of school (my mom told me I started crying when she tried to take me home lol). I was academically ahead in school, top of my class, teachers loved me, until I hit 8th grade where I began slacking a lot (probably my ego got in the way somewhere here).</p>
<p>I’m always the youngest or one of the youngest in my class and I never found it a problem. If anything, I was always hanging out with upperclassmen and people older than me. But, I was also not into sports and more into computers and nerdy things like video games and cult movies, so my physical/mental ‘age’ never really negatively affected me. In elementary school it did a bit because I was physically incapable to do certain things that other boys/girls older could. </p>
<p>The only problem I have ran into is my actual age has prevented me from some really good opportunities that required me to be 18 or 21 by a certain date.</p>
<p>Cutoff here is December 1. I had one with an early summer birthday. There was no way I was redshirting this kid but he was the youngest in his class most years. Some were more than a year older than he was. So parents held kids back who were more than six months before the cutoff. I agree that it wasn’t a problem for this specific child, but I can certainly see how it encourages parents whose child doesn’t need to be held back to do so because otherwise they will be seriously younger than everybody else. My neighbor had a child born in October who didn’t need the extra year but had she sent him, he would have been, by far, the youngest with some more than 18 months older and that makes a big difference in those early grades.</p>
<p>On the other hand, another neighbor whose oldest son had a birthday of November 27 sent hers. He went on to an Ivy league school and has now graduated med school so it didn’t hurt him much.</p>
<p>I used to wish they just enforced the dates which is what they tend to do in other countries. But I do think there should be exceptions. The problem is who decides. Some here say it should be the parents, but some parents do it for pretty bad reasons. One I know kept his twins back even though they had an April birthday because he was determined that these two would become professional athletes. I think all that caused was behavioral problems. And no, they did not become professional athletes. They didn’t even make the high school basketball team.</p>
<p>Interesting that almost all the anecdotes here are about boys. (Not surprising, though.)</p>
<p>My son was academically ready for K and his birthday was well within the range, so we sent him. He was, however, quite small compared to the other children. The teacher had to keep talking to a couple of the girls in the class about not mothering him or treating him like a baby brother. I have no idea if this impacted his psyche, but it wasn’t good. He now is of normal height or even a little above, but he didn’t “catch up” until late in 8th grade. His smaller size definitely impacted his school sports career–not because it should have due to ability, but because your average male middle school coach is influenced by size considerations when choosing his varsity. Funny, but his freshman gym teacher asked him why on earth he didn’t go out for the high school basketball team because he was very good. Well, because in middle school he was too short to think he’d have a chance in the sport and so moved on to other activities. </p>
<p>D had a late summer birthday, but was also ready to go to K so we sent her too. Everything worked pretty well until middle school sports. On her high-ranked travel soccer team (on which she was the youngest), she started on defense and did it very well. But the middle school coach thought she was too short for defense, and tried her at forward. She was OK there and could have developed eventually, but at first the girls who played offense for their travel teams were better so they got the varsity spots. She is now of average or above average height too, but the die was cast. Also, at 17 she was a bit immature when it came time to go off to college. And extra year would have been helpful as far as decision-making and self-discipline, IMO. </p>
<p>So to sum it up, I can see valid reasons why people do this.</p>
<p>My oldest has an August birthday, and when he started school the cutoff was Dec 31, so he was right in the middle age-wise. But then we moved to TX, where the cutoff was Sep 1, and there was a lot of redshirting. This wasn’t a big deal so much in elementary grades, but once middle school hit the age differences became wildly apparent. My son is very smart, so there were no academic issues, but physically—he was one of the smallest boys in his grade all three years. There were kids 6 feet tall with full beards in his classes; a good number finished 8th grade at 15, where he finished at 13. It made him feel abnormal when in reality, he was on the “normal” schedule.</p>
<p>My other son started school in TX with a Sept birthday and the Sept 1 cutoff. He was academically and physically ready to start K but there was no budging. He is now (in another state) one of the oldest in his class. It seems weird to me that he will turn 16 at the beginning of sophomore year, but maybe that’s because I was a Dec baby in a state with a Dec 31 cutoff and I was always the youngest in my classes. All told, I think it worked out okay for him as he has had some maturity issues that he is just now growing out of—though part of me wonders if some of them were due to always being around younger kids, rather than older?</p>
<p>Cutoff dates seem so arbitrary to me. Seriously, a kid born Sept 2 just can’t handle the work like a kid born Sept 1?</p>
<p>I’ve noticed that the “biggest jerk” fathers seem inevitably to be also engrossed with their elementary school-aged boys “football careers”, and often are the fathers of the oversized “red-shirted” boys looming over their middle-school classmates. Apparently those fathers haven’t read enough about the seriousness of concussion-related brain damage in young football players.</p>
<p>I think it’s detrimental to double-promote or “red-shirt” a student for perceived school-related advantages. The super-smart students who are double-promoted often don’t have the social maturity of their older classmates; and the “red-shirted” kids are sometimes same kids spouting mustaches in eighth grade. A “red-shirted” “soccer star” in our community was also “validictorian” of his eighth grade class, but he was also a full year plus (Sept bday) older than most his classmates - seemed gamed to me.</p>
<p>I had a June birthday in a place with a September 30th cutoff and was one of the tallest people in my class by the time I was in third grade. I also had a lot of classmates that were redshirted, but were way shorter than me. This is in addition to having to having shorter than average parents and the genetics that come with that. I’m only of average, or slightly below average height now.</p>
<p>The fancy private school where my kids started was very big on this, especially for boys. It nominally had a September 1 cutoff, but my end-of-October kid was practically dead middle or the class for birthdays. Not only did the school “encourage” kids with summer birthdays to wait a year, it had a special two-year second grade into which it diverted a certain number of first graders each year. Sports had nothing to do with it, at least at this school, although I have heard a lot about people holding boys back for sports. Anyway, the school certainly believed that at any given intellectual ability level older students did better in college admissions. Of course, it was the comparatively less able students whose prospects were increased most if they were held back.</p>
<p>I had a late August birthday in a September 1 world. My parents didn’t hold me back, and I was more or less always at the top of my class, at least once I learned to read. I could easily have skipped a grade or two, but as far as I know we never even discussed it. I just took extra courses, or took things out of sequence, and did extra things. 12th grade was my only year in high school when I wasn’t taking any courses above my grade level. But I never thought of myself as in any grade other than my “own” one, and socially that was fine. I don’t remember being bored in school, and I think that was a function both of my teachers doing a great job and of my lifelong ability to get interested in just about anything.</p>
<p>My sister, who was relatively old for her grade, skipped from second to third grade mid-year, and in some ways never recovered. She felt like a social outsider well into adulthood.</p>
<p>My wife, who knows a lot about this, is very much in favor of inflexible age lines. Her view is that no matter what you do there is always going to be a range of abilities in any classroom. Teachers have to teach to the range, and parents have to expect and tolerate it. Regular, arbitrary cut-offs, in general, make the range as narrow as it can be.</p>
<p>In my experience, the redshirted kinds actually had a harder time socially when middle school and high school came because everyone seemed to assume they were the oldest because they were not very smart, even teachers. Granted, they also didn’t tend to have good grades or behavior. The youngest ones actually tended to be the smartest and better adjusted.</p>