Atlantic Article Re- Redshirting Boys (@@)

[scm1011]

Sept 19, 2022 15:20:38 GMT -5 seeyalater52 said:

Sept 19, 2022 15:02:57 GMT -5 scm1011 said:

Same. Both my kids were IVF baby so we could plan (to a point). First kid I didn't think about it and ended up with a November baby ($$$). Second kid I planned my FET so that I wouldn't have to pay for almost another full year like I did with DS (thankfully round 1 took and I ended up with a late May baby that time). 

By transfer #6 I’d completely given up on planning anything or even thinking that a transfer would ever become a baby so yeah, I’m a cautionary tale about daycare costs with my kid born 2 weeks after the cutoff. Whoops.

Baby J is worth every cent!

[msmerymac]

Sept 17, 2022 9:54:02 GMT -5 seeyalater52 said:

Sept 17, 2022 9:40:55 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

As the youngest in my class by several weeks, it didn't bother me a bit.

My kid has a late June birthday, and so far has been moved up with the rest of his peers because he becomes a holy terror when with the younger kids.

Everyone is different. We can't compare our own experiences and extrapolate them to our children. Sometimes redshirting is right, sometimes it's wrong.

To be fair I’d have never proactively redshirted him. But I’m happy not to have to grapple with any sort of proactive decision-making on this topic.

I grew up in NY, where the cutoff is DECEMBER 1ST no joke. As someone expecting a baby in mid-November, I'm also glad to live in a state now with a 9/1 cutoff so I don't have to deal with that. Frankly, my mother was also relieved to hear we have a 9/1 cutoff here. 

[pinkdutchtulips]

Sept 19, 2022 14:04:25 GMT -5 suburbanzookeeper said:

I had a late July birthday so not only was I the youngest, I condensed grades in high school so I graduated at 16. I took two "gap" years so I would age into the peer group I was going to college with.

My daughter is a mid-September birthday and did Transitional Kindergarten here in CA, we were told no when we asked to bump her up to Kinder since she already had hit the academic milestones necessary. My son is a mid-March birthday and started school on time. His kinder teacher threw around having him repeat so he'd have a year with a smaller average class size (he's since been DX'd with dyslexia and ADHD). I have been in 504 meetings in the last two years for him where I've had to defend where he lands in terms of academic success that isn't developmentally appropriate when he has peers who are 12+ months older than him in the same grade. Add in COVID and being out of a regular classroom for 18 months... it's been real interesting.

this is exactly what I’m dealing with right now w my mid July baby who is testing 2 full grade levels behind. I had to fight to get her out of 8th grade math and have her put into math intervention bc she failed both 6th and 7th grade math 🤦🏼‍♀️ You can’t possibly expect her to be remotely successful in 8th math when she didn’t pass 6-7th math. She was in kinder w kids 14 months older than her … it’s been an uphill battle since.

[al dente]

Sept 18, 2022 17:07:37 GMT -5 lilac05 said:

These conversations always make me realize just how different things are across the country.

I am surprised this isn't more standardized. Im in a state with a July 31 cut off, and people always complain that when they move their kid will be a year behind. But then recently there was a big Facebook discussion because if you do try and redshirt they just automatically put your kid into 1st grade whether theyve done K or not.
We also have absolutely no free prek, which I feel is a whole other issue esp with having such an early cut off.

[shauni27]

seeyalater52, same. Doing IVF for so many years, planning WHEN S would be born was not even a factor. Also, I cannot believe J is now TWO!

[pugz]

I will say that over the last decade plus that we've discussed this topic here and I've wrestled with it my views have become more nuanced, especially in regard to individual families making a choice about their child because many of the people I see making the choice aren't flippant about it.

What bothers me is when parents who have never even step foot inside a school in our district just assume that kindergarten is "the new first grade" and that it's not developmentally appropriate for 5 year olds (you must be 5 by Aug 31 to start here). It's just not true. They get lots of play and center time and our school doesn't do homework unless kids don't finish something in class and have to finish it at home. But I know neighboring districts there is no play time and lots of homework. So I *try* not to see it as black and white as I used to and always encourage people to find out what kindergarten at their school is REALLY like. 

So much about our education system is broken and unequal and I absolutely do think that redshirting as a macro issue is problematic. I've also seen that people dealing with it on the personal level don't care about the macro level but ain't that the truth about so much? I mean I can't even get local friends that care very much about our public schools remaining good to actually fucking vote for pro-public education candidates. They don't vote and don't see the correlation. 

am rambling now. 

[msmerymac]

Sept 18, 2022 21:24:26 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

Y'all didn't have seniors dating freshman? We had that all the time and I always thought it was weird.

All girls' Catholic high school in the 90s, so same-sex relationships weren't public and opposite-sex relationships were conducted outside of school hours.

[ny96]

Sept 20, 2022 9:09:13 GMT -5 pugz said:

I will say that over the last decade plus that we've discussed this topic here and I've wrestled with it my views have become more nuanced, especially in regard to individual families making a choice about their child because many of the people I see making the choice aren't flippant about it.

What bothers me is when parents who have never even step foot inside a school in our district just assume that kindergarten is "the new first grade" and that it's not developmentally appropriate for 5 year olds (you must be 5 by Aug 31 to start here). It's just not true. They get lots of play and center time and our school doesn't do homework unless kids don't finish something in class and have to finish it at home. But I know neighboring districts there is no play time and lots of homework. So I *try* not to see it as black and white as I used to and always encourage people to find out what kindergarten at their school is REALLY like. 

So much about our education system is broken and unequal and I absolutely do think that redshirting as a macro issue is problematic. I've also seen that people dealing with it on the personal level don't care about the macro level but ain't that the truth about so much? I mean I can't even get local friends that care very much about our public schools remaining good to actually fucking vote for pro-public education candidates. They don't vote and don't see the correlation. 

am rambling now. 

DS2 was at a play based preschool for 3 years which was a wonderful place and I had mixed feelings about putting my younger 5 in kindergarten when he could possibly have one more year where he just played all day and got messy. Now 4 weeks into kindergarten I’m so glad we took this next step. He seems so much happier and he’s no longer having tantrums which had become a regular thing for him. We’ve realized that he was probably bored of doing the same thing every day and needed to be challenged.

[kitty]

Sept 20, 2022 9:09:13 GMT -5 pugz said:

I will say that over the last decade plus that we've discussed this topic here and I've wrestled with it my views have become more nuanced, especially in regard to individual families making a choice about their child because many of the people I see making the choice aren't flippant about it.

What bothers me is when parents who have never even step foot inside a school in our district just assume that kindergarten is "the new first grade" and that it's not developmentally appropriate for 5 year olds (you must be 5 by Aug 31 to start here). It's just not true. They get lots of play and center time and our school doesn't do homework unless kids don't finish something in class and have to finish it at home. But I know neighboring districts there is no play time and lots of homework. So I *try* not to see it as black and white as I used to and always encourage people to find out what kindergarten at their school is REALLY like. 

So much about our education system is broken and unequal and I absolutely do think that redshirting as a macro issue is problematic. I've also seen that people dealing with it on the personal level don't care about the macro level but ain't that the truth about so much? I mean I can't even get local friends that care very much about our public schools remaining good to actually fucking vote for pro-public education candidates. They don't vote and don't see the correlation. 

am rambling now. 

Honestly if I had never set foot inside our elementary school, I probably would have sent DS2 at age 4 naively expecting it to be something like the K I remember but with smartboards. Having had my two older ones go through the program actually solidified my decision to redshirt DS2.

The even crazier part is that when I was touring potential PK5 programs, one of them prided itself on using the same curriculum as the K program in our town, story writing and all. So some people are intentionally putting their kids in a PK5 program that functions like a K program and then having them do the same thing in public school the following year. I guess to make them have it easy in K since they’ve already done it all? Or are these the people that are redshirting for sports? I ran out of that place so fast because we were looking for something that was clearly still preschool with maybe some letter sounds mixed in.

I don’t know how to fix “K is the new first grade” on a macro level. One of my friends is a 1st grade teacher in a neighboring town and I don’t think she knows how to fix it on macro level either.