Roo: Redshirting

[woodwardiocom]

Not that many years from now, Roo will be entering kindergarten. Where we live, the cutoff date for determining age eligibility is September 1st. Roo's birthday is August 24th, so if we send her off to k.g. as soon as she's eligible, she's likely to be the youngest in her class.

I've been reading up on redshirting (choosing to postpone entrance to kindergarten), and the data seems to be mixed. Certainly, we don't know how mature Roo will be in four years. (Currently she seems to be very smart, reasonably socially ept, and a skoosh below the average in height-n-weight.) Do any of my many friends with backgrounds in education have opinions?

Comments

[spinrabbit.livejournal.com]

Not an expert here, but I think bored-in-school is a problem that has long-reaching consequences for smart kids, which makes intentionally holding them back a risky move. If she seems not to be ready when she gets there, that's another story, but being one of the younger kids in the class is not really a bad thing.

My daughter, who's been with kids a year older since 3rd grade and is now finishing 7th, has been doing *so* much better socially, and so much better with regard to motivation, than I did at her age, having been with my agemates (toward the middle of the pack) all along. (She went to first and second grade in England, where they start school earlier, so her being ahead in school is an accident of circumstances, but I think it's been a boon.)

[archangelbeth]

Mine skipped kindergarten (on the strong advice of her preschool's owner's mom, who was on the school board & knew the curriculum such-as-it-was). I don't think that was a bad idea, though it masked/red-herringed the Asperger's emotional-control delays. If you have any suspicion of Asperger's or the like, get evaluated sooner rather than later, I say. Don't just pass it off as "well, she's young," like nearly everyone did. O:/

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

I've looked at various lists of infant/toddler signs of autism/Asperger's, and Roo has basically none of them.

[archangelbeth]

That is good! Mostly just a warning - our kid was pretty atypical & her overall smarts also masked some symptoms, so... That's a risk of being young-for-one's grade, that signs won't be properly attributed.

[tamidon.livejournal.com]

I am against kids being younger then their peers in school. Some parents see it as some badge of accomplishment that their kid gets jumped a grade or tested in early, and that's fine when they are in first grade, but it's not good to be a year younger than your classmates in highschool, there can be big differences in maturity. I've seen kids on the young side fall behind later on too, and parents not quite dealing when they had this perspective of their kid being advanced.
Now, that's jumping ahead, you're talking about just being on the young side. We chose for both the girls to have them be on the older side of their class. We were in the same situation of being able to decide one way or the other.
Being bored or lacking challenge can happen to any age range, and I believe it is better to supplement then try to jump ahead.

[be-well-lowell.livejournal.com]

Having parents supplement doesn't solve the problem of being bored in school. If a kid is going to be bored for 6 hours a day, 180 days a year, you've got a pretty good chance of turning her or him off of education completely. That's an unusual extreme, of course, and most of the parents we know have a lot of alternative options, but pushing the kid ahead is sometimes the best option available. The same holds (for the reverse reasons, obviously) for holding a kid back.

[badseed1980.livejournal.com]

Speaking only from my own experience: I skipped kindergarten, and I never found that being a year younger than my classmates was all that big a deal. People treated me the same as anyone else until I moved in fifth grade and started getting teased and picked on a lot. Then again, I was fat and I was the new kid. Being the same age as everyone else in my class wouldn't have helped me there.

Of course, I was fortunate enough to be physically and emotionally at the same general stage of development as the kids around me, regardless of my age. I was pretty social too, until that move brought the teasing that turned me shy for several years. I had plenty of friends.

[ricevermicelli.livejournal.com]

I really think this is a decision to make on the basis of the individual kid. We contemplated redshirting DL! over some kindy seat availability issues, and we ultimately decided against it. Hotspur just misses the eligibility cutoff, and will be one of the oldest kids in kindergarten when she's finally eligible, but I think she'd be fine starting kindergarten early (by which I don't mean "when she's almost five," I mean "tomorrow").

[be-well-lowell.livejournal.com]

My mother the early-childhood expert says don't worry about it until it gets closer. You need more specific reasons to make any particular decisions.

Someone has to be the oldest in the class, and someone has to be the youngest in the class, and neither one is a problem per se.

[pisicutsa.livejournal.com]

I was 5 when I entered first grade and the first time my "being the youngest" was every an issue was is graduate school when I was 21 and the next youngest was 28 so they didn't want to be my friends because they were lame-os (imho). :)

[asciikitty.livejournal.com]

I strongly believe that I was too young for my grade until I spend 6 years getting my BA, where I ended up a skoosh old for my grade, but certainly not a whole 2 years. I would have very much benefited from repeating kindergarten, which my teachers refused to do.

That said, different kids are different, and I suspect you'll have a much better handle on when to have Roo enter kindergarten when she's a little older. And there's seriously nothing that says she can't repeat kindergarten - at that age, she'd just be the girl that went through twice.

[fanw.livejournal.com]

Similar to that last one, I was born mid-August and ended up being on the young end of the group. I'd say this is a pretty different experience from skipping a grade. I never really felt the difference at all. Later I did a year abroad between high school and college, and ended up on the older end of my class in college.

The only time I DIDN't see it work out was someone who was 14 when they went to college, and he truly was not ready to live mostly independently.

I bet that one year plus or minus doesn't make to much of a difference, so you can feel confident that whatever you decide is a good choice!

[tactical-grace.livejournal.com]

There is really no point in worrying about it yet.

Both of our kids were summer babies, and so are on the young end of what would be their academic peers if they went in at the normal time.

The elder one jumped in and is both academically and emotionally in step with the other kids in his grade, and so we saw no reason not to keep him going.

The younger (who would have had a September birthday had he not been six weeks and, um, fifteen minutes early) went to Kindergarten and was judged to be not ready to continue (on an emotional maturity level). Fortunately, our town offers Pre-First, where he spent a year and is now doing just fine.

But I have no idea how I would have made that choice too far in advance -- you'll just have to wait and see how she develops. In general, girls seem to be able to adapt to a classroom setting earlier than boys, at least according to the reading that I've done.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

And here I assumed you were going to have her trained for Starfleet Security. . . .

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

I think she'd do better in the diplomatic corps, presuming "adorable" crosses species.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

The tribble version doesn't seem to work on Klingons.

[muffyjo]

That was my neice's problem as well. So when she got to middle school, she decided to do a year abroad and study in Germany (where the rest of her family is from) and come back and do high school where she would then be the older end, instead. She got to make the decision herself. As it turned out, her brother, right after her in age (as opposed to the youngest who hasn't had the opportunity yet) thought it was a great idea and even though he's the correct age for school, he did it too.

I liked the idea that she could be youngest until she decided otherwise.