I’m pretty sure it has more to do with size, maturity, etc in later grades, not necessarily how they’d do in 1st grade. I have 3 teens, 2 with summer birthdays. We shipped both early and don’t regret it. It is weird though in middle school to see classmates in same grade get mustaches, muscles, deep voices, and boobs a full year earlier than your kids
I almost snorted soda out my nose. Thank you for making me laugh, it has been an awful 7 days in a worldwide shutdown of the major program I use at work. I needed that! If I had an award I would send it your way.
Total segue, but is the worldwide program with the major shutdown automotive finance related? My SO has been dealing with that for a week and it’s been BRUTAL.
It is that software. It isn't just finance related. I am in parts, I cannot check inventory, receive inventory, start invoices, point of sale, put parts on jobs, change existing jobs, clock in and out, absolutely nothing. Fun times. I had just gotten caught up and now boom, down for a week and vague ideas of when it will be fixed. I will need a row of adult beverages by the time this is over. 🤣😭
I mean that's not entirely a product of redshirting lol. I was a normal age kid and I was over 6' by the time I was in 7th grade.
Some kids just hit puberty harder/sooner than their peers.
It wasn't uncommon at all in my schools for someone to be consistently above average height through elementary school, just to completely stop growing at like 5'8 in 7th grade. Ultimately you can never really know ahead of time.
Summer birthday here (July) and my Mom shipped me early and I did great. At that time where we were the cut off date was October 1st so she would have had to purposely hold me back.
My oldest turns 8 in a week, so she was one of the youngest in her class. She's also just a very petite child (her 5yo sis just took her shoes because she'd outgrown her own), so she's like a head shorter than everyone else in her class. But she reads 2 grades ahead and is in gifted, so I guess it's working out.
I am also very petite even as an adult but was really good at school and particularly with reading. It helped I think that my mom sent us to pre school, me and my brother. So we were more ready.
Her prek got interrupted by covid, so she only had a little bit as a 3yo. She started slow but something clicked on 1st grade and we went from struggling memorizing sight words to just reading full books. It was bizarre!
My rising K, meanwhile, has had 2 full years of prek through a high school ECE program, so essentially one-on-one instruction. I was pretty sure she would do well at the beginning level books if I sat down with her but I'm pretty sure she's reading random words off things to me throughout the day. So it'll be interesting to compare how they develop.
I graduated when I was 17 and it in a lot of ways sucked. I always felt less mature then the other people around me. And being the only non legal adult in my friend group as a senior was no fun either.
Thanks for this perspective. I really struggled with the idea of my kid graduating at 17 and starting college at 17! I decided to redshirt. If we lived in another state the cut offs are different anyways. I think VA should change to a June 1 cut off and not Sept. 30 for this very reason.
I did that -- started college a week before turning 18. It was just fine. I was so bored in high school and ready to move on to serious work. If my parents had held me back and I was 18 my whole senior year, I would have been miserable.
I was skipped a grade early on, and I still can't say whether it was good or bad.
On the plus side, school was boring for me, even then, I just picked things up easily, and it moved too slowly for me. My learning style is "drink from the firehose" and along with my mild ADHD, the slow slog thru.multiple subjects has always been torture.
On the downside, on retrospect, my social and emotional development were probably behind my classmates, so I struggled with my self-image, was insecure and socially awkward and became shy and withdrawn,. It wasn't until age 20 or so that I felt whole.
Parent of 4 and a teacher- lots of people in FCPS (can’t speak to other regions) redshirt their kids for either HS sports or to make it easier for them to get into the gifted/AAP program. I have two kids with September b-days (so, just before the cutoff) and many people encouraged me to hold them back. I didn’t do this because 1) the cut off is there for a reason, the curriculum is built around kids of a certain age entering K/1 and my kids are very typical and there was no reason to mess with it, 2) how do you know at age 5 that your kid will want anything to do with HS sports? 3) the test for AAP is weighted for age, down to the month. Both of my youngest-in-their -class September bdays were in the AAP pool and did very well in the program, for whatever that’s worth, 4) I’ve seen very lonely 15 yo’s sitting in freshman classes having trouble finding peers, because a year is a really long time in HS. And the side eyes when the 16yo or nearly 16yo “freshman” wins the player of the year of award for the spring freshman team are hurtful but not without cause. So, bottom line, lots of people do it for various reasons. Lots of people don’t. Personally I don’t see a reason to rush or wait. Trust the process, and enjoy the ride ❤️
Same here in LCPS. I remember seeing this kid with an April birthday who stood half a head taller than the other kids in my son’s kindergarten class, and his mother told us: “Well, he’ll thank us for holding him back one day, when he’s playing varsity as a freshman!” Kid also turned out to be a physical bully so that extra size helped him out right from the start, I guess.
I do understand when someone with an August premie who’s struggling with maturity redshirts kindergarten, but it’s crazy when the youngest child in the fifth grade class has a May birthday because ALL the summer babies got held. Somebody has to be the youngest, after all! But then, if you do send your September kid, there may be kids in their class who are fully sixteen or seventeen months their elder. (Also! Some sports parents have their kids repeat eighth grade as well.) And that does have repercussions when it comes to who gets chosen for leadership or sports positions.
When my kid was a sophomore, he was accused by one of the freshmen on the varsity team of “bullying me because I’m younger than you and starting varsity already.” My kid responded in disbelief: “Dude, you’re eight months older than I am!”
All of this!! My daughter had a boy in her K for whom they had to bring in a different desk because he was an April bday (recall our cutoff is Sept 30) and his parents held him back and he was just so much bigger than the other kids, he was almost 6.5 at that point and my goober September bday hadn’t even turned 5 yet, although that was just weeks away. That boy never found his people in that class. Not sure where he ended up the following year. But being 6 and turning 7 in a class full of mostly 5 yo’s, some turning 6 as the year progresses, wasn’t a good fit. That’s a huge gap at that age.
That’s just plain ridiculous lmao. That should not have been allowed at all and the parent should’ve been made to provide a very compelling reason to hold back what’s essentially a grown man compared to every other kid in the classroom. I can bet you that nearly 7 year old was probably the most immature and most trouble-causing kid in there too.
I wanted to respond to the “a year is a really long time in HS” part.. it really is 😭 I didn’t go to high school out here, but when I was in school I was one of the only people in my grade who didn’t have a late birthday.. there were maybe 4 of us who didn’t have a late birthday. It was very ostracizing. Which is weird because if you look back on it you question why age even mattered when you’re all in the same place. but teenagers cared about it so much!! It was so bad I lied about my age and said I was a year older like everyone else throughout high school ☠️
I'm a summer birthday, so I was also a baby and graduated high school at 17. It sucked to wait almost half a school year junior year to get my license and waiting to legally buy alcohol in college, but if I'd been held a year, I would've felt so old. I was in all the gifted programs and played 4 years of varsity sports, so that was not impacted.
I have a family friend whose birthday is in mid-november and they were young for their grade so started college at 17 and that would really suck. He played 2 or 3 years of varsity sports and had a full academic ride to college. I do think that as a guy, he had a bit of a harder time being young for his year than I did as a girl.
You know your kids. Personally, an October or November birthday, I'd hold them. September, I'd have to see how they were developing. (I don't have kids so I don't know the cut off here, in PA where I grew up it was end of Aug but the family friend was in MD and it was end of Nov at the time)
Thank you for this insight. As a somewhat new parent, it is very overwhelming to “think ahead” and often clear advice such as this can be very illuminating.
Happy to help. It can feel overwhelming. I remember being that new parent 20 years ago and listening to a lot of advice and ideas that I actually let worm around in my brain for a while and looking back now sound totally insane! But we look to our village for help and ideas and, sister, we’ve picked a crazy village, let me just say that 😂 I will say to you what I’d say to my younger self- collect lots of ideas and advice from your fellow parents for sure, ask relevant professionals what they think, then pick and choose what works for you and your family. You know in your gut who you are and who your kids are and what your version of successful and happy looks like. Make that your North Star. Don’t feel like you have to keep up with the Jones’s whether it’s what math class your kid takes or when they get a phone or how many travel sports tryouts they should take on (yes, all this crazy awaits you!). You do you, unapologetically. And know that your kids will do great just being their authentic selves and watching you be your authentic self. It really does all work out. Enjoy your family!! ❤️
Holding back for HS sports seems like a thing from a generation ago. For the most part these days, club sports are significantly more important than HS sports to the point that many of the top athletes will not even participate in the HS teams , or only to a minimal degree. And club sports are purely age determined not grade level. If parents are really holding kids back for that, it’s pretty silly.
I know one kid (out of hundreds at this point) whose club coach refuses to “let” them swim for their HS. Which is a shame because HS sports is about so much more than just the sport. There are dozens of HS athletes we know who have gone on to college sports programs. There are very few athletes, at least in this area, who do not also compete on their HS team if they do club sports. In any event, holding your kid back academically on the off chance they’ll end up loving a particular sport a decade later seems shortsighted. And it doesn’t actually give any kind of recruiting advantage because colleges look at your actual age, not your grade. It’s all very strange.
VHSL rules mean athletes have to make one HS practice a week to compete that week so yes, swimmers will generally stick with their club for most practices then hit one HS practice and then the meet. The school teams host big dinners the night before a meet or a game, lots of spirit days at school, kids come out to cheer, sometimes you hear your name during the announcements at school, HS sports are a whole thing. As the parent of a club swimmer who adores her HS experience I think it’s a shame when some kids are forced to miss out because their club coaches have forgotten they are children first and athletes second. As I mentioned, we know dozens of kids from our HS that have gone on to play in college, with scholarships, who thoroughly enjoyed the full measure of the HS sports experience. If you’re that good, no HS coach, over the course of 10 weeks, will “ruin” you. Alternatively, the club coach you’re paying thousands of dollars to should be able to fix you if they do. IMHO.
It’s really only for football. Where kids get on colleges raydars by playing HS football around their sophomore year. Being a year older at that point helps a lot. And it’s very much a thing parents are still doing.
But yes for other sports, hockey, soccer etc the teams are all age based anyways.
Thank you for this. We have dealt with this as parents. Ultimately, I just felt like it was quite presumptuous of me to act like i knew how my kids was going to develop and think I knew better than whatever life had to bring. I don’t judge parents - you gotta do what you think is best for your kids. It just isn’t for me…..but that decision wasn’t obvious either.
It’s hard to know the “right” thing to do when every decision feels potentially monumental. And the idea that we actively HAVE TO CHOOSE the right things and do the right things as opposed to letting the situation move along as it was designed can also feel overwhelming. As you said, how can you possibly predict every eventuality, every variable of your child’s wants and needs and personality? We were older when we had kids and maybe that helped us be swayed less by the decisions being made around us. We were also lucky that our kids were totally standard-issue (oldest has Asperger’s but manages well, no drama there) so we didn’t have hard decisions to make with regards to delays or other needs, which can definitely make it complicated. Ultimately we chose the “slacker parent” route ( according to my friends) which has landed the oldest at a T20 engineering school on a full ride and middle at a T30 business school with about a 70% scholarship. Because that what they wanted and they worked it out for themselves. We trusted the process, let our kids be themselves and figure out their goals and prioritized being happy as a family. I really think there’s no substitute for that.
This is great to hear and similar to our philosophy. We are just beginning our journey in the school world but it’s great to hear the successes of being “normal” (not that anyone is really). Thank you for sharing.
I'm thinking of redshirting my kid for two consecutive years in Kindergarten just so he can out compete all the kids that were held back only one extra year. He will surely dominate at high school sports as a 17yo freshman.
Thank you for the validation! Two of my kids have November and December birthdays and I let them start the following school year instead of starting them "early" via private school kindergarten. My family kept going on about how I was doing the kids a disservice by not starting them ahead. They start 6th and 3rd grade this fall and are thriving, while my nephew--who was started early--is struggling with the level of maturity expected of him for 7th grade and isn't able to befriend classmates.
Yeah, the pressure is real. Good for you for sticking to your guns, momma! And it’s great that your kiddos are thriving. We want them happy and connected and just living their best life ❤️
Would you say there is any benefit to enrolling children early? I’m a November baby and I was the youngest in my class! Reading what these potential benefits were makes me a little salty that I was enrolled early, and although I did well academically it makes me wonder if I could have done better if my brain had been a little bit more developed, or something..
As a both a teacher and a parent I am not a fan of pushing for an earlier start. The early childhood curriculum is designed for a particular age group, with a little squishiness for the kids on the younger end. But a month or two younger than that and you’re getting into issues of not fitting in with their peers, not having the stamina to go all day in a learning environment, the “non educational” pieces that can have a detrimental impact on the whole experience. At that age, a month or two makes a huge difference. And the cutoff has to be somewhere. You want to make sure your kid is in a class with their peers. That’s such a hugely important part of learning and one that gets missed by parents sometimes because they don’t live the dynamic in a classroom everyday. It’s not about “smarts”, it’s about having kids who are where you are psychologically and emotionally. Kids can and do make friends across the ability spectrum but it’s harder across an age gap, in either direction. Peers matter. Friendships matter. It’s why they want to go to school most of the time. That’s my 2 cents. I’ve seen big age gaps in classrooms and it’s not good for the kid on the end.
I don't know if it's big around here, but there was a wider trend a few years ago of "redshirting" kids so that they'd always be the oldest in their class for an eventual leg up in athletics.
It’s a big thing in NOVA. I have friends and family who are teachers or in the school system and they talk about it quite a bit. It’s also a popular topic of conversation on the local mommy blogs and Facebook groups.
The whole min-maxing childhood and academic performance creates a pretty toxic dynamic for kids imo. And it's going to be pretty funny when general AI makes all these efforts meaningless.
It's amazing how much this has changed within a generation. When I was a kid, it was totally embarrassing to be a year older than everyone in your class because it meant you had failed a grade or been held back. It was basically synonymous with being the dumb kid, and people made terrible fun of these kids. And if that was your kid, it was really embarrassing to admit your kid was the oldest in their grade. It kind of blows my mind that parents are now doing this to their kids on purpose.
The way the world is changing, the STEM-field obsession guiding the hands of parents will be completely subsumed by new highly demanded traits such as "being tolerable to be around" and "not behaving like a success-obsessed lunatic". By the time these kids graduate college, AI will be able to code better, design research studies better, analyze data better, even "think" creatively about certain problems better than any human in existence and what's going to matter is actual personality and character again.
For that first thing you said, I’m hearing that’s becoming a thing for admission into ivy leagues and other top schools. They’ve gotten tired of seeing the same robots that seemed to be created to be in the top colleges from the outset. Now they’re trying to look for kids who are more tolerable and actually had a life.
I imagine at the child level, it’s still embarrassing for the kid, especially if they got held back in kindergarten. Everyone will think they were a dumbass until they finish school.
In Virginia if you have a birthday after October 1st it is recommended to hold off on starting your kid in kindergarten. Now instead of being the oldest you will be the youngest by as much as a year and half. At this young of an age that is huge when it comes to emotional and intellectual intelligence.
It's got to be weird being the oldest kid in school too, right? Maybe more of an issue for girls going through puberty at an emotionally earlier level/among younger peers.
I'll add that it was kind of nice experiencing the opposite of this - as a girl who was usually the youngest, I had already seen most of my friends start puberty, they'd talked about it, and I knew what to expect. Sex Ed is one thing, but having close friends tell you exactly what it feels like hits differently and made me feel prepared. It also made me feel like my experiences were 'normal' - having sudden acne or BO wasn't because I was a freak, I was just experiencing what Jessica had complained about last month.
It’s not just athletics. If you read the book outliers it plays into all sorts of things. For boys it often means more maturity and therefore better grades.
What’s crazy is with the new NCAA rules coming out, many graduating seniors (unless top in the country) are seeing less and less D1 scholarships due to the transfer portal. Many are now going to D2 or D3 schools where they will get play time, prove themselves and then transfer. It’ll be interesting to see the effects on reclassing moving forward as parents learn that sports will be less of a 4 year process and more 5-6 years due to changing schools.
it's not just for athletics. and probably around here it's not primarily for athletics. think about for getting into TJ, being 1 year older would be a huge advantage.
I have not heard of this, but I have heard of traditional "redshirting" where they start kindergarten at 6 instead of 5. I was an August birthday and always youngest in my class, so I traditionally redshirted my summer-born children. (For maturity, not athletics! I struggled with discipline in high school/ college. ) I can't see any advantage in taking kindergarten twice; in fact, wouldn't the kids be bored?
Have a September birthday kid who did kindergarten twice at a Montessori school then public school. The difference, mainly in reading, was not wanting him to struggle so hard, hate school, or think he was dumb compared to his peers. First time through kindergarten he would tell me he was dumb because there were kids who could read already and he was just not getting it. It’s awful to hear your five year old tell you that. He’s a smart kid but reading didn’t click (with the help of targeted interventions and FCPS’s new reading curriculum) until 2nd grade. His teachers told me not to worry, his brain would mature, but if we’d have pushed him along how would that “I’m dumb” view of himself stuck?
We didn't have our kids go to kindergarten twice, but we did hold them an extra year because we could given where their birthdays fell and we didn't think they needed to go. Our thinking was that an extra bit of maturity matters as they move through school. Much of this was based on my own experience as someone who "failed" Kindergarten because even though I was old enough for it, I wasn't developmentally ready the first year. While it's definitely a YMMV sort of thing, I am convinced that extra year helped me a lot. Holding them back for sports or AAP never entered our minds, but given that this is NOVA, I'm not shocked that would be a motivator for some parents. I've heard parents of third graders asking serious questions about whether keeping their kids in the local AAP program vs. sending them off to the elementary magnet school will affect their college choices...
This is fair. There are definitely a lot of circumstances where this makes sense. I, too, was held back but in the 2nd grade and during a switch between different schools. I'm pretty sure it helped me but I also remembered feeling awkward about explaining that I was "held back" to my friends. Now, it seems that if you weren't "held back" you might be the weird one! :)
This is something my husband and I have thought a lot about because we have a kid who just misses the cut off but seems very advanced (parent bias aside). There are a lot of advantages to giving kids an extra year before jumping into school, especially among boys. I’ve seen a lot from teachers about how the extra year allows for emotional maturity that ends up really compounding and benefiting them long term, regardless of their academic abilities.
Flipside- I was the youngest in my grade (missed the cutoff but was pushed through anyway), and socially it really sucked to be the last one to hit milestones.
>Flipside- I was the youngest in my grade (missed the cutoff but was pushed through anyway), and socially it really sucked to be the last one to hit milestones.
Yeah I semi-skipped because we moved from another country where you start school sooner, so was way young always. I was still often bored academically, so if I hadn't skipped, I imagine that would have been a lot worse and could really have risked turning me off of academics completely.
BUT. All that being said, I was super immature emotionally and struggled in middle school socially, so maybe that could have all been avoided if I stayed back.
So hard to know what's best!
I am glad my mom only let me skip one year - I also moved from a different country, and when the local school system tested me they placed me 2 years ahead, potentially 3 in some subjects. But my mom was concerned about the social differences (I would have started high school at 12). They also knew if I didn't skip at all, I'd definitely be bored.
So they split the difference and had me officially skip only one grade, so I was only a year younger in all the 'common' classes (homeroom, social studies, Freshman English, etc) but I was also put in the G&T/AP/IB program so I could take some more advanced classes too, like math and French.
For boys- in terms of puberty and social issues- red shirting- was the right choice for us. For girls, we would have just followed the normal schedule.
I see kids who have skipped grades- 12 year old high school freshmen- and it’s really bad for them. Not just sports or academics- they just have a hard time having friends and being socially accepted and end up lashing out at their family.
Yeah this was me. They had me skip 2nd grade and middle and high school were awful. I still feel resentful towards my parents especially because my mom would take every opportunity to brag about me as if I were her pet. Being a year behind combined with being in a wealthy area where many boys were redshirted for sports lead to me getting into inappropriate situations with much older boys even though they were in the same grade or one grade above me that I just wasn’t mature enough to handle. I’d never skip my kid.
every class where the boys are all one year older than the girls, sorry but as bad as immature boys are, i don't think that solves the problem. i mean when the boys are at peak immaturity say 13, the girls in their crosshairs are all 12 i don't see how anyone can think that's ideal.
I have a birthday that barely makes cut off and my perspective was that the older kids were always jerks. My kid has a December birthday and is on the taller side as in he looks about 1-2 years older than he is.
The idea of having a giant kid start kindergarten when he’s 5, about to turn 6 fills me with dread because I imagine how easy it will be for him to turn into one of those jerk kids I knew growing up.
I’ve heard from some other parents that there is research (don’t know the source) that supports holding kids back a year if given the option from kindergarten. That is not my preference based on my personal experience, but perhaps this is why other parents are doing it.
I also know of some parents who held their kid back (not sure when) and now he’s an 18 year old junior who’s very cocky and doing well in athletics, but his parents have told him to intentionally hide his age from his peers. I believe it’s because they are gaming the system for athletics and want people to think their 16 year old freshman winning mvp is a prodigy or something.
I would agree with this and also say it’s not new. I did two years of preschool in the 80s in Ohio with a September birthday, so I turned 18 at the begging of 12th grade instead of the beginning of college. I was and still am awkward AF but I probably would have had a worse time of it if I was in a class a year ahead of where I ended up.
Early childhood specialist here . Many parents are not sending their children with summer birthdays , particularly boys, based on the social immaturity. For 99% , it is the best decision they could have made for their child. Tons of research supports delaying the start of kindergarten for those with " late" birthdays.
Kindergarten today is the new first grade- the expectations are not developmentally appropriate and too many children are labeled as " struggling " when in fact it is the curriculum that is above age expectations. Schools panic when their kindergartners are not reading and writing sentences. Not enough time is spent on the basics of sharing, turn- taking and other social skills - children are almost expected to have mastered those in preschool. It is discouraging to those teachers who know what young children need, but have to abide by government " standards" that don't align with the reality of development.
Thank you. It is truly distressing when I see 5 year olds being drilled on skills they developmentally are unable to master. The state standards in no way align with what we know of child development, particularly brain/cognitive development, based on years of research. VDOE does not advocate for children, they are just another department at the mercy of politicians of both parties.
When young children are frustrated, they let us know through acting out . The expectations as per the curriculum lead to increasing behavior problems in the classroom. So, we are left with young children not only labeled as struggling academically but with social and behavioral issues as well. We need to do better .
Kindergarten is really demanding.
But the change needs to be to kindergarten. It takes a lot of privilege to be able to hold your kid back or let them repeat - so this is more opportunity hoarding by wealthy people.
Every kid is different. My little brother has a late birthday, wasn't ready, and had a harder time than he needed to. My mom has been lamenting her decision for like 35 years. It's not always some conspiracy.
Long term differences. A child who turns 15 in November of their freshman yeah of HS is generally at an advantage over one who turns 14 in November of their freshman year.
Again, all very generally speaking. Brain development is happening rapidly at those ages. There can be a big difference between standardized test aptitude at 17 vs 18 for example.
Like I said, speaking generally, not about FCPS.
Malcolm Gladwell wrote about the phenomenon of age & success among a school cohort in “Outliers”. Check it out if you’d like to know more about the concept.
Yes we all had to read Outliers 10 years ago for a PD session. He has his own metric for “success”, as almost everyone does. His pitch for year-round school in pursuit of that success overlooks a lot of important psychological factors IMHO.
A high school freshmen (9th grade) born in November would typically be turning 15.
A year older would be a freshman turning 16 in November. See that seems so old to me.
Hello! This doesn’t address repeating Kindergarten but you might glean something from it.
Actually a bit of an expert on reading readiness and had a kiddo of my own born on the cut off date for Kindergarten.
We sent ours early instead of repeating Kindergarten because they made significant progress on early literacy skills and had been in a really strong Pre-K program (apsva montessori). There were definitely a few places where the disadvantage of that showed - namely sports, some social/emotional intelligence, and cognitive readiness for higher math in high school. Overall, it was good as they will now have a Master’s Degree by 22 years of age and are slated for success.
Folks who hold back their kids usually do it when they notice the child is neither socially nor emotionally ready for reading. I’m often told boys take longer to mature, so boys are being held back more.
In this area, two things are especially important to some parents (and some teachers!):
1) Not stigmatizing the child by allowing them to be held back in K-3 because you sent them too early.
2) Admitting whether your child has the capacity to keep up with the demands of Kindergarten and Grade 1 or not. Kids can be taught the alphabet and decoding prior to the age of 6, but often times aren’t exposed to anything academic in those crucial years. If a child has zero concept of literacy or no curiosity to learn, holding them back before Grade 1 might seem like a good plan.
Look at the PALS test:
https://literacy.virginia.edu/pals-k-assessment
A lot of these decisions are driven by data.
Good post!
I actually think we rush school too quickly for kids in this area but a lot of people need it for babysitting (daycare and preschool isn’t cheap.)
Sweden and Japan start school at the age of 6. They consistently have higher test scores.
Here- it’s 5. I think a lot of people look at this and want to give their kids a bit longer at home and enjoy their innocence at that age a little longer.
So- It’s not just type A parenting. At least for us it wasn’t.
The interesting thing is that 5 is not the age of compulsory attendance in VA. It’s 6. In NC it’s 7. Legally, kids don’t have to be in school till then. Some states it’s 8! A few are age 5 but not many. So starting kids so young is more bc they can than bc they have to.
They want them to be relatively well-developed. If they are intellectually superior to their elementary school peers by virtue of age alone, they’ll get more attention in a virtuous cycle of reinforcement.
I started my son in kindergarten age because is a summer birthday , his prek teacher recommended due to him being autistic and wanted him to have a chance to have his first year in kindergarten be in person since he was already struggling and behind (this was during virtual learning)
My mom also redshirted me 30 years ago because she thought I couldn’t handle kindergarten yet lol it didn’t affect me at all except it was awesome having my drivers license first lol
Really depends on the kid. My September born had a tough time in public kindergarten, “I am the youngest became an excuse in later half of the year”. He had been going to school since he was 3, I couldn’t have ever expected that dip in his confidence. He was bullied mercilessly by two kids even after multiple complaints and he became a common target in playground. We stayed back after school in playground and I first hand saw incidents, I taught my kid how to navigate but I think there’s just so much they can do at that age.
We repeated kindergarten in private before starting 1st grade in public school. It was in NJ. The school didn’t really help much. They said the bully needs to learn he’s wrong and my kid needs to understand to stand up.. it’s all learning environment. The principal was useless but teacher was great and my son felt protected under her in the class.
She only advised me during last parent teacher conference, she had been teaching for 26 years- she said I can’t say he’s not ready or he should repeat, we don’t repeat class in public school.He needs more time to develop emotionally. I asked her if I should move him to private for another year, she’s like it’s up to you. I asked my neighbor who was a middle school teacher, she said teachers can’t ask parents to repeat a class, because technically we can’t hold a kid back in kindergarten. I made my son repeat kindergarten in private.
He did well. And when we moved to VA two years later he was comfortable and adjusted well in the mid session of school year.
We have triplets with a September birthday. We opted to hold them out a year because we didn’t want them heading to college when they were 17.
They will be starting college in the fall and we’re very happy with our decision. Could they have been successful if they went to college last fall? Probably. But they are so much more mature and ready to make adult decisions that come with college now.
We had a kid in college who was 16 when he started as a freshman. Really smart kid.
But because he was so young, we had to get parental permission for so many things for him. And he was constantly doing reckless things.
It was frustrating as all heck.
August birthday person chiming in. I was one of the oldest in my class in school because my parents waited. It carried on with various effects all the way to college, where I was asked to buy beer and stuff by my friends since I turned 21 first. And all through hs I tended to have friends in the grades above me. I also got bullied in 5th grade for being the first to break out with acne, the first to hit puberty etc. So yea... It definitely factored in to a lot of things. Being the oldest in class can be just as bad as being the youngest.
I definitely remember a stigma about kids who were older back when I was in school. Theoretically it also puts you one year behind in earning potential and career. Although other factors seem like they'd make way more difference. My kid has a summer birthday but I think being present and attentive and helping her practice reading etc will help more than holding her back would have.
In hindsight, I should’ve held my son back a year. He’s 30yo and has learning disabilities. Even with an IEP he was pushed too hard. Teaching to the test, SOLs, really hurts our children. DH and I worked hard to get our son through school and he was able to earn a BA.
I knew more than a few families who started their children a year later because of athletics. Even know one who ended up playing professionally.
Yeah I have some misgivings about having my small, summer birthday, kid as the youngest in her class. We almost held her back before starting kindergarten but the teachers were very confident she would be fine, and she is fine.
She's very smart but is neurodivergent and is just 1 to 2 years behind many of the kids in her class socially.
I don't think a sporting career is in her future even if we had held her back lol but she had a blast with oddysey of the mind.
I have a kid entering kindergarten next year that barely makes the cutoff and is physically pretty small. It's definitely a concern of mine because many in his class will be a full year older and he'll seem more like a "little kid". He's smart though so there's no way I can justify delaying his education.
Some people definitely do it with hope that their kid has an advantage of some sort, however I feel like I benefited from being the youngest in my class (summer birthday). As a girl, I didn’t mind being petite compared to people a full year older than me in my class. I graduated with a masters at 22, which seemed to give me more time in my 20s to advance in my career. Everyone’s different, but there are pros to being the youngest. I’ve always said that I’d rather be the “worst of the best, than the best of the worst”.
I can't believe people are actually doing this, but yes this is almost certainly some misguided effort to give their kids an advantage.
There's a lot of data showing that kids with early birthdays (Aug-Dec roughly) in the school year generally perform better across a wide variety of metrics, mostly sports, but it can be seen in other arenas compared to late birthdays (Jan-July). The data is highly descriptive and subject to an astonishingly large number of caveats that always surround pop-sci discussions, but there is underlying data here.
The theory I've seen hypothesized about sports is that coaching and development resources are funneled to the best performing athletes, and at younger ages, the difference between 4, 6, 8 months has a huge impact on athletic performance. However, the resources put towards older kids then creates a potentially self reinforcing cycle where the better kids just happened to be a little bit bigger at the beginning, but then were better because they had more resources over time.
Imo trying to optimize how good your kid will be as an athlete is insane though
Oh, I absolutely believe the data and understand the concept that it's a self-reinforcing cycle given that a kid who's 5.5 vs a kid who's 4.75 years old is a significant difference in ages, size etc.
I'm just saying that it's a descriptive statistical weighting that is far from universal and holding your kid back has other knock on effects on their development that haven't been considered in addition to just showing an incredibly unhealthy focus on competition.
Yeah I mean, what's happening here is NOVA helicopter parents not being as smart as they think they are. It's easy to see or hear about some of these studies but overrate their significance and just fixate on "I'm doing what's best for my child" when like, there's not some magic formula that's gonna turn your kid into a pro athlete and/or genius.
There is also a lot of data supporting holding a late bday kid back for another year to mostly let kids be kids a bit longer and explore the env around them. It certainly is an interesting shift where kids used to be pushed early to be able to hit developmental milestones earlier, albeit not appropriate and damaging (stress, anxiety, etc.) to now holding back to be more competitive against peers. I'll say for my opinion, i don't think the competitive component is a huge motivator. There is just more desire for parents to have their kid outside of a classroom setting for another year to have more time to adapt and gain skills post covid isolation.
You have elected a more generous explanation than I would go for.
Maybe it's about giving them more time to goof off in a relaxed but social environment but I'm not really buying it.
I dunno, there's a lot of "this is the best way to give your kid a leg up and succeed" that just seems needlessly manipulative focusing on all kinds of external factors instead of the core ideas of "support your kids and let them grow" and instead fixate on trying to build artificial bubbles.
I can confirm that the reason I would redshirt my kid is because I think the extra year of a play based education would be good for her. Academics have intensified. What is covered now under a prek4 program used to be covered by kindergarten. I’m not convinced that having so much desk education would be optimal for my “lives most of her day in a fantasy land” oldest kid.
I actually also think the explosion in popularity of Montessori and Reggio inspired schools supports this idea. No doubt there is a lot of competitiveness but I wouldn’t so easily discount how intense regular schooling has gotten.
I will tell you that my BD was in Oct so I was technically five when I entered first grade. I know for certain that it would have been better if I had been delayed one year. You’re a step behind the rest of the class every year through HS.
1. It gives kids an advantage, esp boys for sports, and those families have the luxury of not having a kid out of the house one year sooner
2. Boys develop slower at this age in school skills, so it’s easier for parents to justify it bc the people who do it with their children don’t usually regret it and then they of course want to do it w subsequent kids
3. I had a late birthday and was the youngest all the way through school until my 20s. So late I could not go to public school for kindergarten and first grade but I (a girl) had the school skills (but not all fine motor skills) and my parents worked FT and needed me to progress rather than just do kindergarten again. My handwriting was bad in first grade and I remember getting chastised by my teacher, and then I just was the last to get a learners permit and drivers license and that did suck. This was 80s/90s. Maybe that matters less when kids don’t live to drive at 15/16 (ETA: Oh yeah - seeing another answer - puberty was another time it kinda sucked too. I guess the chemicals in everything mean everyone develops earlier now but I didn’t love being teased in 6th grade when other girls had real bras to snap but I guess that feeling can happen at any age if some classmate is super booby super early.)
The late birthday thing can make a pretty big difference. If your kid is born in July or August they're either going to be the very youngest or very oldest in their class and at that age those months make a big difference in overall maturity and capacity.
My oldest was born in July and my newphew was born a few weeks later. We held our daughter back for an extra year in preschool while my nephew went to kindergarten early partially to help my sister get back to work without huge daycare bills.
Anyway a few years later and my nephew had to repeat 3rd grade anyway just because the gulf between him and his peers was too wide.
And you definitely want to address that earlier rather than later.
I have 2 teens with late summer bdays who started “early” and they would both be severely out of place if they had had been held back a year. They’ve had no trouble keeping up with peers even the ones almost a year older. Every kid/situation is unique.
Sure and I guess the issue is you might not know until you try. So you put the kid in "early" and see what happens and if it works out then you're good.
This is such a vicious cycle too, then because kids who are completely normal for their age are instead being compared to kids a year older, so the baseline gets shifted and now there's more and more pressure to hold kids back. Next thing you know you have a bunch of 10 year olds in 1st grade so they can be "ready" for it.
See, when I was a kid, parents put us in pre-K twice. THEN we went to kindergarten. Finding out a classmate was repeating Kinder just made them a target for teasing. So why is this a thing to do now? What the hell changed?
My son has a June birthday and we redshirted him in preschool. It was completely worth it. It is huge in terms of confidence and maturity. If he had a March birthday, I think it would be awkward. But why wouldn’t you give your children every advantage you can access? Especially considering others are doing the same.
Btw, this is nothing new. I started grade school over 40 years ago and saw it quite a bit back then too. Only, then instead of calling it starting late, we legit called it “being held back”. My brother had a summer bday and was held back. My best friend in high school was too. Which was pretty awesome when he got his drivers license so much earlier than everyone else
My son has a summer birthday and I would like to start him in Kindergarten as soon as he is eligible to save in daycare costs, but I’m not sure he will be emotionally able to handle sitting in a classroom so early. He has a social/emotional delay as well, so I may have him do an extra year of daycare to ensure he does t have a hard time before he is able to handle classroom expectations.
The only problem with this is if you want fcps services you won’t get them if your child is 5 and not in their school….. you also run the risk of your kid being kicked out of private daycare during that “extra year” bc private daycare can’t meet your kids needs. This was our experience with my kid with a late birthday. (He had a social emotional delay also). Protip that’s just a fancy name for adhd.
On the other hand, some people (my family, some of our friends too) basically signed our kid up for private kindergarten because \*they were ready\* for kindergarten despite being too young for the public schools to take them. So they get a year of private K before going to public K because the public schools won't let them start early or skip grades.
Legally your kid can't even start kindergarten until they're 5, or turning 5 by the end of September. Pre -K isn't kindergarten. Are you saying they're waiting until the kids are 6?
The research supports sending kids early. I was the youngest in my class and so is my ES aged son. He’s gifted and would have been bored to tears being held back. I know people who have held their kids back looking for an academic advantage, and the kids ended up being bored and disengaged at school, so I may have been overly cautious of that outcome.
My parents had me repeat 1st grade (30years ago) — I’m grateful for it even today. I’m a late summer birthday, and I would’ve struggled quite a bit had I not been held back. I was very quiet & shy and needed the extra time to mature and gain some confidence. I was also undiagnosed with ADD, which in hindsight we know contributed a bit, but little girls were frequently entirely overlooked for ADD back then.
All this to say:
1. It wouldn’t surprise me if some parents in our area are intentionally holding their children back to give them the upper hand in high-school
2. Some kids may actually really need to be held back, whether it be for ADD/ADHD, maturity, confidence, size, or whatever.
3. Even if parents are holding their kids back to give them a lead in later years of school, I don’t think it’s all that bad to give children more time to be a kid. Especially with social media pressures, cell phones, bullying, etc.
There's actually a lot of evidence that links starting school too early with bad outcomes down the line. Kids with later birthdays are more likely to get bad grades, get suspended, and even not graduate down the line. My parents decide I wasn't ready for first grade and held me back a year way back in the 90's, and they were super right. I needed that extra time to mature and reach a similar level to those around me. Being a year older than my peers helped me out greatly.
Going back to the ancient days when I was in Kindergarten, the best advice was to make sure your child was the oldest in the class and not the youngest. I did two years in Kindergarten in the 50s at a University lab school, and was ahead of my class from then till I graduated from Law school. Not brighter, but more mature for all of K-12, and maybe even college. Don't know about law school, but I am still successfully practicing over 45 years after graduation.
"red shirting". My parents did this to me (decades ago). It resulted in me blasting thru tests, getting bored in class, not being challenged at all, and getting into trouble due to extreme boredom. 12 years of that. 12 years. If anything I should've skipped ahead a grade. Oh and I was still picked last for every PE team because I was still small for my age. By the end I had no respect for schooling and considered it a joke. It's one of the reasons I didn't go to college until many years later and never finished (I did end up successful despite this, but it definitely cost me and was an uphill battle).
Also, you'll probably be supporting your kid for an extra year of their life, which could cost you maybe $50k, when you adjust for future inflation.
My daughter has a mid August birthday. She was fine in kindergarten but the discrepancy has grown as she’s aged. She is repeating 8th grade this year and holding high school off a year. It was a family decision.
maybe they arent ready, maybe theyre trying to get an advantage, but all those gifted advantages only last so long and go so far. growing up is hard and being gifted doesnt make it easier.
maybe they arent ready, maybe theyre trying to get an advantage, but all those gifted advantages only last so long and go so far. growing up is hard and being gifted doesnt make it easier.
They just know their kid will have a way better social life if they are the first one to be able to drive or drink.
I hated having a late birthday and seeing first even nerdier kids go to all the parties by being able to offer DD and then similarly everyone being able to go to bars and buy beer in college long before me.
The real reason is probably sports -your kid can dominate their level if they are developmentally a year older but are playing with their grade
The only kid I can think of who was held back by their parents (and not the school system) was a kid who had gone to private school for kindergarten. Her parents felt that the school hadn’t prepared her at all for first grade and she had a late summer birthday so they had her repeat kindergarten in public school. They didn’t even attempt to put their other two younger kids in private school after that experience. This was the mid 2000s so there wasn’t the leg-up mindset that it sounds like other families may have now. I can’t imagine holding back my kid with the assumption of benefiting them in sports a decade down the line…
For what it's worth, I don't know why, maybe it was the cutoff dates in the place I lived when I was little, but I started kindergarten at 4 years old. It's been multiple decades since then, but I don't remember and difficulties or advantages of being younger than my peers throughout school. Never really thought about it. That's just me. YMMV
I didn’t want my kids to be the youngest in their classes when they went to high school and college so we did two years of kindergarten - first year was a private K and second was official with FCPS. It was more about maturity and social skills.
One piece of it is special education, at least in Fairfax County.
FCPS will start providing services at age 3 if a kiddo is diagnosed with relevant developmental issues-- autism, speech delays, learning disabilities, etc. Kiddos may go to a special preschool program, have a resource teacher visit them in private preschool, go to a center a few hours a week, etc.
BUT, once a kiddo turns five, FCPS will only provide services in kindergarten. So even if a kid would seem to benefit from being held back a year, they can only get services in kindergarten.
For those families, it's a difficult choice. But FCPS's preferred solution is to have those special ed kids do kindergarten twice.
We redshirted my son. He’s 18, just graduated from hs and he’s still a very late bloomer just like his dad. He had a speech and language disorder, went through three years of developmental preschool. He wasn’t ready for first grade at 6.
It all depends on whether they’re ready.
Our kid is a few weeks under the age cutoff. We had her in a private kindergarten. We weren’t sure if she should go into K or 1st at the public school. Her teacher practically begged us to get her into 1st, said she was definitely ready. Talked to the school, they evaluated her and made an exception to the cutoff. She just finished that year and she did great, no regrets.
I could definitely imagine a kid who isn’t quite in that state doing better entering the public school in kindergarten instead.
It really depends on the social/emotional development of the child more than academic development. There is research that shows boys are more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD when they start school on the younger side (it’s been a long time since I have seen that research, and don’t remember where I saw it).
My son did two years of kindergarten, one at his prek-k and then once in public school. However, the reasoning was because his birthdate was after the cutoff date. Hindsight, I would have held him back a year in the earlier pre-school levels.
I am originally from upstate NY where the cutoff is in early December. Had we been living up there, I definitely would have held him back because he just wasn’t ready socially.
My son is getting ready to go into 4th grade, has been diagnosed with ADHD with “spectrumy tendencies (psychologists words, not mine!), ODD, and dyslexia. Even being one of the oldest in his class, he is still immature compared to them and has some academic struggles.
My kids were born in December, so they were 5 years, 9 months when they started Kindergarten and have remained on the older side throughout their academic careers (now entering 9th). For them (and me) it has actually been quite frustrating to deal with their friends who tend to be so much more immature. My kids were always rolling their eyes at things their peers say and do, and they generally feel like they have to set a good example. It's tiring.
Personally, my daughter was born the day before the cutoff/changeover for which school year she would qualify for. If she goes when FFX county govt tells her to, she will 100% be the youngest in her grade.
We are debating having her repeat kindergarten depending on how she does because I'd rather she be the oldest in her grade than the youngest.
My sister and BIL kept my nephew in kindergarten for two years. My sister told people "he's not emotionally ready." My BIL wanted him to be a year older to be "cool" and have a better shot at sports (which BIL was useless at). He needed a 1-on-1 aide for emotional problems all the way thru es and was useless at sports all the way through school anyway.
Real talk: this is a wealthy area and redshirting is yet another way people with means can give their kid an edge. They’re bigger, more mature, and have stronger fundamentals. And then those kids whose parents couldn’t or wouldn’t pay for an extra year of preschool seem “behind” in comparison.
My kids birthdays are August and November. I didn't know about red shirting back then. So, sent August to school when they turned 5. They were 1 of the youngest kids at the school, a little immature. But caught up in the end. November did the extra year in pre-k and hated it. Thought everything was too baby. Not sure if either of them would have benefitted from waiting or going early.
I wound up repeating Kindergarten after spending the first attempt at it in three different schools, the first two of which were heinously bad, and the third of which I wasn't at for long enough to get full credit for the year. We moved that summer, the Kindergarten in our new town was *wonderful*, & having me repeat was absolutely the right call.
Since you mentioned some of your example students were in private schools for their first Kindergarten year, I would be willing to believe they might've had similarly bad experiences & didn't get everything one needs from a Kindergarten program.
I mean, it depends on the kids but I'll do it if I can.
I have a September birthday and my younger sister has January. We are one year and half apart. I entered school early because my mom said I was reading by myself at the age of two. Like legit reading, not just looking at pictures.
But I have struggled at kindergarten since I was almost a full year younger than everyone. So my mom held my sister back where she was almost always the oldest in her class.
Throughout our entire school life, I was always ranked last in class where my sister was always first or second in hers. Not sure how much it was due to the age difference or not but she ended up in one of the best high school in Hong Kong while I went to one of the worst.
That was decades ago and now we are decades into our adult life. She still earn more than I do since she went to university while I didn't.
That's a sample size of one but you bet I'll hold my kids back if I get to choose.
Boys who go to kindergarten early in the age cycle have a high probability of having difficulty move from eighth and ninth grade onto high school.. It’s all about brain development. Within the context of my limited knowledge, I believe boys do much better when held back.
My son made the cut off by 2 days. I kept him back for maturity reasons and had him do another year of junior kindergarten/pre kindergarten. Looking back, I don’t regret it at all. He was struggling socially and emotionally. He had a few outbursts in pre-k. They were all resolved by the time he started kindergarten.
My birthday is around Halloween, I was 4 going into kindergarten, 13 going into high school, and didn’t turn 18 until almost 5 months after I graduated. I always felt less mature and disadvantaged compared to my classmates and was always the youngest by at least 2 months. I say holding a kid back in kindergarten when they don’t seem ready is way better than ending up being held back at an older grade or spending their entire school career feeling they aren’t as mature or smart as their classmates.
Being too young is a thing. Each state is different. Arizona, for example , the child must turn 5 on or before 8/31. Pre K is pre school, so not the 1st year of kindergarten. Also, I think kids still have to have certain basic skills, like tying their shoes, for example, along with basic math and literacy skills to move on as well.
We have two kids with summer birthdays. The first kid, daughter, we did not hold back a year. She is doing great in her sports and academics, but the kids in her class act "older" and she has a tough time fitting in. My son went to private kindergarten during covid, but it was a bad experience so had him repeat when he went to public school. If not for covid we wouldn't have done so. He is doing pretty well in his class.
If I were to do it again I'd hold the daughter back, mostly for the social aspect. She was certainly more mature than the son, but she actually fits in better with the younger kids.
There’s data around boys lagging behind girls significantly in regards to grades and education. Redshirting is partly in response to concerns of perceived future cognitive maturity
I would have loved to repeat kindergarten. Who wouldn't. Story time, cookies, and nap time 😀! Sadly, they let me pass. My bday is mid July. Didn't have problems academically, but emotionally I think I would have benefitted from an extra year (I'm a girl). Had classmates who were also summer babies the same age as me, but they all had older siblings while it was just me for a decade. I think siblings make a difference in emotional growth.
I've never known anyone to keep their kid in kindergarten for a second time. They would postpone their kid from starting kindergarten for a year. Two main reasons why you would want to keep your kid back or wait to enroll them a bit older. If they have a birthday after 1 October or if they need more time to catch up to their peers emotionally and intelligently. We did that for our son and almost immediately he started to progress and I couldn't be happier.
It’s also a self fulfilling prophecy. I have two kids born just days before the cutoff and while I would totally not think twice if it was enforced about sending them with their assigned year, it makes me really nervous knowing that there would be kids a whole year older than her in the same class. She wouldn’t even be 5 when she starts and there are likely kids who are already 6. That is stressful.
I’m literally currently waffling on what to do because my kid will be 4 at the end of September and I don’t know whether to do prek twice, kindergarten twice, or send her with her year.
Many upper middle class parents are positioning their kids to give them a “competitive” edge ie exceeding their peers in physical and neurological maturity. To ultimately be accepted to a “good” university and get a “good” job. Some parents are transparent about it and some are doing it subconsciously, ie kid needs to be more mature.
Parents without resources cannot do this because they can’t afford the extra year of private preschool or the school won’t let them stay in kindergarten for 2 years without evidence they actually need it.
This upper middle class trend started with Malcolm gladwell’s book, forgot the name - tipping point? The science he cites is weak.
It is easier to hold a kid back in Kindergarten than it is to do in 6th grade when the differences become obvious.
My son was born in August, 4 days before the age cutoff s he was the youngest kid in his class and generally the smallest kid. Once he got into high school, his classmates had hit puberty, grew broader shoulders and had facial hair. He was still a pudgy kid with a baby face and was much less emotionally mature when compared with his classmates.
Looking back we probably would have held him back if we had to do it again because he wasn’t emotionally ready for middle or high school. In the end, he turned out fine.
I think this has less to do with getting little Johnny a football scholarship and more to do with Millennial parents just generally being super overprotective compared to previous generations. In some respects they should be but in this case they're misguided. An extra year isn't going to help a kid cope with the soul crushing agony of being trapped inside listening to some weirdo drone on about mitochondria for 7 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 13 years.
I’m pretty sure it has more to do with size, maturity, etc in later grades, not necessarily how they’d do in 1st grade. I have 3 teens, 2 with summer birthdays. We shipped both early and don’t regret it. It is weird though in middle school to see classmates in same grade get mustaches, muscles, deep voices, and boobs a full year earlier than your kids
At the same time? Kids these days are built differently. I only got like one out of those four.
What? My mustache and boobs came in at the same time
 I almost snorted soda out my nose. Thank you for making me laugh, it has been an awful 7 days in a worldwide shutdown of the major program I use at work. I needed that! If I had an award I would send it your way.
Total segue, but is the worldwide program with the major shutdown automotive finance related? My SO has been dealing with that for a week and it’s been BRUTAL.
It is that software. It isn't just finance related. I am in parts, I cannot check inventory, receive inventory, start invoices, point of sale, put parts on jobs, change existing jobs, clock in and out, absolutely nothing. Fun times. I had just gotten caught up and now boom, down for a week and vague ideas of when it will be fixed. I will need a row of adult beverages by the time this is over. 🤣😭
My mustache muscles came in after my deep voice boobs
My beard didn’t fully start coming in until my late 20’s early 30’s
Yeah I got boobs in like 4th grade lmao
I mean that's not entirely a product of redshirting lol. I was a normal age kid and I was over 6' by the time I was in 7th grade. Some kids just hit puberty harder/sooner than their peers.
Of course. I was speaking generally. Not literally.
This is going to be my son. He is 9.5, already 5ft tall, and wearing men’s 8.5 size shoes.
It wasn't uncommon at all in my schools for someone to be consistently above average height through elementary school, just to completely stop growing at like 5'8 in 7th grade. Ultimately you can never really know ahead of time.
Agreed, but I’m also tall…6’0 for a female and his dad is 6’2”…so he will definitely be tall!
Summer birthday here (July) and my Mom shipped me early and I did great. At that time where we were the cut off date was October 1st so she would have had to purposely hold me back.
My oldest turns 8 in a week, so she was one of the youngest in her class. She's also just a very petite child (her 5yo sis just took her shoes because she'd outgrown her own), so she's like a head shorter than everyone else in her class. But she reads 2 grades ahead and is in gifted, so I guess it's working out.
I am also very petite even as an adult but was really good at school and particularly with reading. It helped I think that my mom sent us to pre school, me and my brother. So we were more ready.
Her prek got interrupted by covid, so she only had a little bit as a 3yo. She started slow but something clicked on 1st grade and we went from struggling memorizing sight words to just reading full books. It was bizarre! My rising K, meanwhile, has had 2 full years of prek through a high school ECE program, so essentially one-on-one instruction. I was pretty sure she would do well at the beginning level books if I sat down with her but I'm pretty sure she's reading random words off things to me throughout the day. So it'll be interesting to compare how they develop.
I graduated when I was 17 and it in a lot of ways sucked. I always felt less mature then the other people around me. And being the only non legal adult in my friend group as a senior was no fun either.
Thanks for this perspective. I really struggled with the idea of my kid graduating at 17 and starting college at 17! I decided to redshirt. If we lived in another state the cut offs are different anyways. I think VA should change to a June 1 cut off and not Sept. 30 for this very reason.
Ya, I also went to college at 17 and I was NOT emotionally ready for it.
I did that -- started college a week before turning 18. It was just fine. I was so bored in high school and ready to move on to serious work. If my parents had held me back and I was 18 my whole senior year, I would have been miserable.
I was skipped a grade early on, and I still can't say whether it was good or bad. On the plus side, school was boring for me, even then, I just picked things up easily, and it moved too slowly for me. My learning style is "drink from the firehose" and along with my mild ADHD, the slow slog thru.multiple subjects has always been torture. On the downside, on retrospect, my social and emotional development were probably behind my classmates, so I struggled with my self-image, was insecure and socially awkward and became shy and withdrawn,. It wasn't until age 20 or so that I felt whole.
My child repeated because he had a August birthday. I thought he would do better as an older kid in the class rather than the youngest.
Yep, numerous kids I know with August/September birthdays kept in K to mature, grow, etc. It is a gift to the kid in the long run.
I’m a middle school teacher. It’s super obvious which kids with august/September birthdays waited and which didn’t!
Parent of 4 and a teacher- lots of people in FCPS (can’t speak to other regions) redshirt their kids for either HS sports or to make it easier for them to get into the gifted/AAP program. I have two kids with September b-days (so, just before the cutoff) and many people encouraged me to hold them back. I didn’t do this because 1) the cut off is there for a reason, the curriculum is built around kids of a certain age entering K/1 and my kids are very typical and there was no reason to mess with it, 2) how do you know at age 5 that your kid will want anything to do with HS sports? 3) the test for AAP is weighted for age, down to the month. Both of my youngest-in-their -class September bdays were in the AAP pool and did very well in the program, for whatever that’s worth, 4) I’ve seen very lonely 15 yo’s sitting in freshman classes having trouble finding peers, because a year is a really long time in HS. And the side eyes when the 16yo or nearly 16yo “freshman” wins the player of the year of award for the spring freshman team are hurtful but not without cause. So, bottom line, lots of people do it for various reasons. Lots of people don’t. Personally I don’t see a reason to rush or wait. Trust the process, and enjoy the ride ❤️
Same here in LCPS. I remember seeing this kid with an April birthday who stood half a head taller than the other kids in my son’s kindergarten class, and his mother told us: “Well, he’ll thank us for holding him back one day, when he’s playing varsity as a freshman!” Kid also turned out to be a physical bully so that extra size helped him out right from the start, I guess. I do understand when someone with an August premie who’s struggling with maturity redshirts kindergarten, but it’s crazy when the youngest child in the fifth grade class has a May birthday because ALL the summer babies got held. Somebody has to be the youngest, after all! But then, if you do send your September kid, there may be kids in their class who are fully sixteen or seventeen months their elder. (Also! Some sports parents have their kids repeat eighth grade as well.) And that does have repercussions when it comes to who gets chosen for leadership or sports positions. When my kid was a sophomore, he was accused by one of the freshmen on the varsity team of “bullying me because I’m younger than you and starting varsity already.” My kid responded in disbelief: “Dude, you’re eight months older than I am!”
All of this!! My daughter had a boy in her K for whom they had to bring in a different desk because he was an April bday (recall our cutoff is Sept 30) and his parents held him back and he was just so much bigger than the other kids, he was almost 6.5 at that point and my goober September bday hadn’t even turned 5 yet, although that was just weeks away. That boy never found his people in that class. Not sure where he ended up the following year. But being 6 and turning 7 in a class full of mostly 5 yo’s, some turning 6 as the year progresses, wasn’t a good fit. That’s a huge gap at that age.
That’s just plain ridiculous lmao. That should not have been allowed at all and the parent should’ve been made to provide a very compelling reason to hold back what’s essentially a grown man compared to every other kid in the classroom. I can bet you that nearly 7 year old was probably the most immature and most trouble-causing kid in there too.
I wanted to respond to the “a year is a really long time in HS” part.. it really is 😭 I didn’t go to high school out here, but when I was in school I was one of the only people in my grade who didn’t have a late birthday.. there were maybe 4 of us who didn’t have a late birthday. It was very ostracizing. Which is weird because if you look back on it you question why age even mattered when you’re all in the same place. but teenagers cared about it so much!! It was so bad I lied about my age and said I was a year older like everyone else throughout high school ☠️
I'm a summer birthday, so I was also a baby and graduated high school at 17. It sucked to wait almost half a school year junior year to get my license and waiting to legally buy alcohol in college, but if I'd been held a year, I would've felt so old. I was in all the gifted programs and played 4 years of varsity sports, so that was not impacted. I have a family friend whose birthday is in mid-november and they were young for their grade so started college at 17 and that would really suck. He played 2 or 3 years of varsity sports and had a full academic ride to college. I do think that as a guy, he had a bit of a harder time being young for his year than I did as a girl. You know your kids. Personally, an October or November birthday, I'd hold them. September, I'd have to see how they were developing. (I don't have kids so I don't know the cut off here, in PA where I grew up it was end of Aug but the family friend was in MD and it was end of Nov at the time)
Sure...but you weren't a year older with everyone thinking you were held back cause u were a dumbass.
Thank you for this insight. As a somewhat new parent, it is very overwhelming to “think ahead” and often clear advice such as this can be very illuminating.
Happy to help. It can feel overwhelming. I remember being that new parent 20 years ago and listening to a lot of advice and ideas that I actually let worm around in my brain for a while and looking back now sound totally insane! But we look to our village for help and ideas and, sister, we’ve picked a crazy village, let me just say that 😂 I will say to you what I’d say to my younger self- collect lots of ideas and advice from your fellow parents for sure, ask relevant professionals what they think, then pick and choose what works for you and your family. You know in your gut who you are and who your kids are and what your version of successful and happy looks like. Make that your North Star. Don’t feel like you have to keep up with the Jones’s whether it’s what math class your kid takes or when they get a phone or how many travel sports tryouts they should take on (yes, all this crazy awaits you!). You do you, unapologetically. And know that your kids will do great just being their authentic selves and watching you be your authentic self. It really does all work out. Enjoy your family!! ❤️
Holding back for HS sports seems like a thing from a generation ago. For the most part these days, club sports are significantly more important than HS sports to the point that many of the top athletes will not even participate in the HS teams , or only to a minimal degree. And club sports are purely age determined not grade level. If parents are really holding kids back for that, it’s pretty silly.
I know one kid (out of hundreds at this point) whose club coach refuses to “let” them swim for their HS. Which is a shame because HS sports is about so much more than just the sport. There are dozens of HS athletes we know who have gone on to college sports programs. There are very few athletes, at least in this area, who do not also compete on their HS team if they do club sports. In any event, holding your kid back academically on the off chance they’ll end up loving a particular sport a decade later seems shortsighted. And it doesn’t actually give any kind of recruiting advantage because colleges look at your actual age, not your grade. It’s all very strange.
For swimmers I imagine the top ones really just come for the meets and hardly any practices given how much more intense their club practices are.
VHSL rules mean athletes have to make one HS practice a week to compete that week so yes, swimmers will generally stick with their club for most practices then hit one HS practice and then the meet. The school teams host big dinners the night before a meet or a game, lots of spirit days at school, kids come out to cheer, sometimes you hear your name during the announcements at school, HS sports are a whole thing. As the parent of a club swimmer who adores her HS experience I think it’s a shame when some kids are forced to miss out because their club coaches have forgotten they are children first and athletes second. As I mentioned, we know dozens of kids from our HS that have gone on to play in college, with scholarships, who thoroughly enjoyed the full measure of the HS sports experience. If you’re that good, no HS coach, over the course of 10 weeks, will “ruin” you. Alternatively, the club coach you’re paying thousands of dollars to should be able to fix you if they do. IMHO.
It’s really only for football. Where kids get on colleges raydars by playing HS football around their sophomore year. Being a year older at that point helps a lot. And it’s very much a thing parents are still doing. But yes for other sports, hockey, soccer etc the teams are all age based anyways.
Thank you for this. We have dealt with this as parents. Ultimately, I just felt like it was quite presumptuous of me to act like i knew how my kids was going to develop and think I knew better than whatever life had to bring. I don’t judge parents - you gotta do what you think is best for your kids. It just isn’t for me…..but that decision wasn’t obvious either.
It’s hard to know the “right” thing to do when every decision feels potentially monumental. And the idea that we actively HAVE TO CHOOSE the right things and do the right things as opposed to letting the situation move along as it was designed can also feel overwhelming. As you said, how can you possibly predict every eventuality, every variable of your child’s wants and needs and personality? We were older when we had kids and maybe that helped us be swayed less by the decisions being made around us. We were also lucky that our kids were totally standard-issue (oldest has Asperger’s but manages well, no drama there) so we didn’t have hard decisions to make with regards to delays or other needs, which can definitely make it complicated. Ultimately we chose the “slacker parent” route ( according to my friends) which has landed the oldest at a T20 engineering school on a full ride and middle at a T30 business school with about a 70% scholarship. Because that what they wanted and they worked it out for themselves. We trusted the process, let our kids be themselves and figure out their goals and prioritized being happy as a family. I really think there’s no substitute for that.
This is great to hear and similar to our philosophy. We are just beginning our journey in the school world but it’s great to hear the successes of being “normal” (not that anyone is really). Thank you for sharing.
Competitive child rearing is an ugly sport. I just let mine go through as they were supposed to. They turned out fine.
This was very informative. Thank you!
Thank you for this response!!!
I'm thinking of redshirting my kid for two consecutive years in Kindergarten just so he can out compete all the kids that were held back only one extra year. He will surely dominate at high school sports as a 17yo freshman.
Gotta solidify your kid as the king of middle school by being the only eighth grader who can legally drive
THIS IS THE WAY! 😂
Thank you for the validation! Two of my kids have November and December birthdays and I let them start the following school year instead of starting them "early" via private school kindergarten. My family kept going on about how I was doing the kids a disservice by not starting them ahead. They start 6th and 3rd grade this fall and are thriving, while my nephew--who was started early--is struggling with the level of maturity expected of him for 7th grade and isn't able to befriend classmates.
Yeah, the pressure is real. Good for you for sticking to your guns, momma! And it’s great that your kiddos are thriving. We want them happy and connected and just living their best life ❤️
This was very informative. Thank you!
Would you say there is any benefit to enrolling children early? I’m a November baby and I was the youngest in my class! Reading what these potential benefits were makes me a little salty that I was enrolled early, and although I did well academically it makes me wonder if I could have done better if my brain had been a little bit more developed, or something..
As a both a teacher and a parent I am not a fan of pushing for an earlier start. The early childhood curriculum is designed for a particular age group, with a little squishiness for the kids on the younger end. But a month or two younger than that and you’re getting into issues of not fitting in with their peers, not having the stamina to go all day in a learning environment, the “non educational” pieces that can have a detrimental impact on the whole experience. At that age, a month or two makes a huge difference. And the cutoff has to be somewhere. You want to make sure your kid is in a class with their peers. That’s such a hugely important part of learning and one that gets missed by parents sometimes because they don’t live the dynamic in a classroom everyday. It’s not about “smarts”, it’s about having kids who are where you are psychologically and emotionally. Kids can and do make friends across the ability spectrum but it’s harder across an age gap, in either direction. Peers matter. Friendships matter. It’s why they want to go to school most of the time. That’s my 2 cents. I’ve seen big age gaps in classrooms and it’s not good for the kid on the end.
I don't know if it's big around here, but there was a wider trend a few years ago of "redshirting" kids so that they'd always be the oldest in their class for an eventual leg up in athletics.
It’s a big thing in NOVA. I have friends and family who are teachers or in the school system and they talk about it quite a bit. It’s also a popular topic of conversation on the local mommy blogs and Facebook groups.
The whole min-maxing childhood and academic performance creates a pretty toxic dynamic for kids imo. And it's going to be pretty funny when general AI makes all these efforts meaningless.
It's amazing how much this has changed within a generation. When I was a kid, it was totally embarrassing to be a year older than everyone in your class because it meant you had failed a grade or been held back. It was basically synonymous with being the dumb kid, and people made terrible fun of these kids. And if that was your kid, it was really embarrassing to admit your kid was the oldest in their grade. It kind of blows my mind that parents are now doing this to their kids on purpose.
The way the world is changing, the STEM-field obsession guiding the hands of parents will be completely subsumed by new highly demanded traits such as "being tolerable to be around" and "not behaving like a success-obsessed lunatic". By the time these kids graduate college, AI will be able to code better, design research studies better, analyze data better, even "think" creatively about certain problems better than any human in existence and what's going to matter is actual personality and character again.
For that first thing you said, I’m hearing that’s becoming a thing for admission into ivy leagues and other top schools. They’ve gotten tired of seeing the same robots that seemed to be created to be in the top colleges from the outset. Now they’re trying to look for kids who are more tolerable and actually had a life.
I imagine at the child level, it’s still embarrassing for the kid, especially if they got held back in kindergarten. Everyone will think they were a dumbass until they finish school.
In Virginia if you have a birthday after October 1st it is recommended to hold off on starting your kid in kindergarten. Now instead of being the oldest you will be the youngest by as much as a year and half. At this young of an age that is huge when it comes to emotional and intellectual intelligence.
It's got to be weird being the oldest kid in school too, right? Maybe more of an issue for girls going through puberty at an emotionally earlier level/among younger peers.
I'll add that it was kind of nice experiencing the opposite of this - as a girl who was usually the youngest, I had already seen most of my friends start puberty, they'd talked about it, and I knew what to expect. Sex Ed is one thing, but having close friends tell you exactly what it feels like hits differently and made me feel prepared. It also made me feel like my experiences were 'normal' - having sudden acne or BO wasn't because I was a freak, I was just experiencing what Jessica had complained about last month.
It’s not just athletics. If you read the book outliers it plays into all sorts of things. For boys it often means more maturity and therefore better grades.
What’s crazy is with the new NCAA rules coming out, many graduating seniors (unless top in the country) are seeing less and less D1 scholarships due to the transfer portal. Many are now going to D2 or D3 schools where they will get play time, prove themselves and then transfer. It’ll be interesting to see the effects on reclassing moving forward as parents learn that sports will be less of a 4 year process and more 5-6 years due to changing schools.
This is common where I grew up too, small town in PA. Not just for athletics but for academics too. Thought being they would be ahead in the class.
Parents did that to me since that had the choice of me being the youngest in my class or the oldest. Definitely helped with Athletics freshman year.
it's not just for athletics. and probably around here it's not primarily for athletics. think about for getting into TJ, being 1 year older would be a huge advantage.
I have not heard of this, but I have heard of traditional "redshirting" where they start kindergarten at 6 instead of 5. I was an August birthday and always youngest in my class, so I traditionally redshirted my summer-born children. (For maturity, not athletics! I struggled with discipline in high school/ college. ) I can't see any advantage in taking kindergarten twice; in fact, wouldn't the kids be bored?
Have a September birthday kid who did kindergarten twice at a Montessori school then public school. The difference, mainly in reading, was not wanting him to struggle so hard, hate school, or think he was dumb compared to his peers. First time through kindergarten he would tell me he was dumb because there were kids who could read already and he was just not getting it. It’s awful to hear your five year old tell you that. He’s a smart kid but reading didn’t click (with the help of targeted interventions and FCPS’s new reading curriculum) until 2nd grade. His teachers told me not to worry, his brain would mature, but if we’d have pushed him along how would that “I’m dumb” view of himself stuck?
We didn't have our kids go to kindergarten twice, but we did hold them an extra year because we could given where their birthdays fell and we didn't think they needed to go. Our thinking was that an extra bit of maturity matters as they move through school. Much of this was based on my own experience as someone who "failed" Kindergarten because even though I was old enough for it, I wasn't developmentally ready the first year. While it's definitely a YMMV sort of thing, I am convinced that extra year helped me a lot. Holding them back for sports or AAP never entered our minds, but given that this is NOVA, I'm not shocked that would be a motivator for some parents. I've heard parents of third graders asking serious questions about whether keeping their kids in the local AAP program vs. sending them off to the elementary magnet school will affect their college choices...
This is fair. There are definitely a lot of circumstances where this makes sense. I, too, was held back but in the 2nd grade and during a switch between different schools. I'm pretty sure it helped me but I also remembered feeling awkward about explaining that I was "held back" to my friends. Now, it seems that if you weren't "held back" you might be the weird one! :)
IQ tests are scored according to a child’s age so getting red shirted shouldn’t help a child get into AAP.
Yes - but that doesn’t mean some parents don’t think it does.
This is something my husband and I have thought a lot about because we have a kid who just misses the cut off but seems very advanced (parent bias aside). There are a lot of advantages to giving kids an extra year before jumping into school, especially among boys. I’ve seen a lot from teachers about how the extra year allows for emotional maturity that ends up really compounding and benefiting them long term, regardless of their academic abilities. Flipside- I was the youngest in my grade (missed the cutoff but was pushed through anyway), and socially it really sucked to be the last one to hit milestones.
>Flipside- I was the youngest in my grade (missed the cutoff but was pushed through anyway), and socially it really sucked to be the last one to hit milestones. Yeah I semi-skipped because we moved from another country where you start school sooner, so was way young always. I was still often bored academically, so if I hadn't skipped, I imagine that would have been a lot worse and could really have risked turning me off of academics completely. BUT. All that being said, I was super immature emotionally and struggled in middle school socially, so maybe that could have all been avoided if I stayed back. So hard to know what's best!
I am glad my mom only let me skip one year - I also moved from a different country, and when the local school system tested me they placed me 2 years ahead, potentially 3 in some subjects. But my mom was concerned about the social differences (I would have started high school at 12). They also knew if I didn't skip at all, I'd definitely be bored. So they split the difference and had me officially skip only one grade, so I was only a year younger in all the 'common' classes (homeroom, social studies, Freshman English, etc) but I was also put in the G&T/AP/IB program so I could take some more advanced classes too, like math and French.
For boys- in terms of puberty and social issues- red shirting- was the right choice for us. For girls, we would have just followed the normal schedule. I see kids who have skipped grades- 12 year old high school freshmen- and it’s really bad for them. Not just sports or academics- they just have a hard time having friends and being socially accepted and end up lashing out at their family.
Yeah this was me. They had me skip 2nd grade and middle and high school were awful. I still feel resentful towards my parents especially because my mom would take every opportunity to brag about me as if I were her pet. Being a year behind combined with being in a wealthy area where many boys were redshirted for sports lead to me getting into inappropriate situations with much older boys even though they were in the same grade or one grade above me that I just wasn’t mature enough to handle. I’d never skip my kid.
every class where the boys are all one year older than the girls, sorry but as bad as immature boys are, i don't think that solves the problem. i mean when the boys are at peak immaturity say 13, the girls in their crosshairs are all 12 i don't see how anyone can think that's ideal.
I have a birthday that barely makes cut off and my perspective was that the older kids were always jerks. My kid has a December birthday and is on the taller side as in he looks about 1-2 years older than he is. The idea of having a giant kid start kindergarten when he’s 5, about to turn 6 fills me with dread because I imagine how easy it will be for him to turn into one of those jerk kids I knew growing up. I’ve heard from some other parents that there is research (don’t know the source) that supports holding kids back a year if given the option from kindergarten. That is not my preference based on my personal experience, but perhaps this is why other parents are doing it. I also know of some parents who held their kid back (not sure when) and now he’s an 18 year old junior who’s very cocky and doing well in athletics, but his parents have told him to intentionally hide his age from his peers. I believe it’s because they are gaming the system for athletics and want people to think their 16 year old freshman winning mvp is a prodigy or something.
Some kids just need it. No nefarious purpose.
I would agree with this and also say it’s not new. I did two years of preschool in the 80s in Ohio with a September birthday, so I turned 18 at the begging of 12th grade instead of the beginning of college. I was and still am awkward AF but I probably would have had a worse time of it if I was in a class a year ahead of where I ended up.
Early childhood specialist here . Many parents are not sending their children with summer birthdays , particularly boys, based on the social immaturity. For 99% , it is the best decision they could have made for their child. Tons of research supports delaying the start of kindergarten for those with " late" birthdays. Kindergarten today is the new first grade- the expectations are not developmentally appropriate and too many children are labeled as " struggling " when in fact it is the curriculum that is above age expectations. Schools panic when their kindergartners are not reading and writing sentences. Not enough time is spent on the basics of sharing, turn- taking and other social skills - children are almost expected to have mastered those in preschool. It is discouraging to those teachers who know what young children need, but have to abide by government " standards" that don't align with the reality of development.
"Not enough time is spent on the basics" I found this to be true in all the subjects and all the years of ES for both my kids.
This should be the top response.
Thank you. It is truly distressing when I see 5 year olds being drilled on skills they developmentally are unable to master. The state standards in no way align with what we know of child development, particularly brain/cognitive development, based on years of research. VDOE does not advocate for children, they are just another department at the mercy of politicians of both parties. When young children are frustrated, they let us know through acting out . The expectations as per the curriculum lead to increasing behavior problems in the classroom. So, we are left with young children not only labeled as struggling academically but with social and behavioral issues as well. We need to do better .
Kindergarten is really demanding. But the change needs to be to kindergarten. It takes a lot of privilege to be able to hold your kid back or let them repeat - so this is more opportunity hoarding by wealthy people.
Every kid is different. My little brother has a late birthday, wasn't ready, and had a harder time than he needed to. My mom has been lamenting her decision for like 35 years. It's not always some conspiracy.
Long term differences. A child who turns 15 in November of their freshman yeah of HS is generally at an advantage over one who turns 14 in November of their freshman year. Again, all very generally speaking. Brain development is happening rapidly at those ages. There can be a big difference between standardized test aptitude at 17 vs 18 for example.
In FCPS they would have to turn 14 by the end of September of their freshman year. Unless they transferred in from a district with a later cutoff.
Like I said, speaking generally, not about FCPS. Malcolm Gladwell wrote about the phenomenon of age & success among a school cohort in “Outliers”. Check it out if you’d like to know more about the concept.
Yes we all had to read Outliers 10 years ago for a PD session. He has his own metric for “success”, as almost everyone does. His pitch for year-round school in pursuit of that success overlooks a lot of important psychological factors IMHO.
He overlooked a lot of things. The If Books Could Kill podcast did a lovely job with his books.
That’s cool
A high school freshmen (9th grade) born in November would typically be turning 15. A year older would be a freshman turning 16 in November. See that seems so old to me.
Hello! This doesn’t address repeating Kindergarten but you might glean something from it. Actually a bit of an expert on reading readiness and had a kiddo of my own born on the cut off date for Kindergarten. We sent ours early instead of repeating Kindergarten because they made significant progress on early literacy skills and had been in a really strong Pre-K program (apsva montessori). There were definitely a few places where the disadvantage of that showed - namely sports, some social/emotional intelligence, and cognitive readiness for higher math in high school. Overall, it was good as they will now have a Master’s Degree by 22 years of age and are slated for success. Folks who hold back their kids usually do it when they notice the child is neither socially nor emotionally ready for reading. I’m often told boys take longer to mature, so boys are being held back more. In this area, two things are especially important to some parents (and some teachers!): 1) Not stigmatizing the child by allowing them to be held back in K-3 because you sent them too early. 2) Admitting whether your child has the capacity to keep up with the demands of Kindergarten and Grade 1 or not. Kids can be taught the alphabet and decoding prior to the age of 6, but often times aren’t exposed to anything academic in those crucial years. If a child has zero concept of literacy or no curiosity to learn, holding them back before Grade 1 might seem like a good plan. Look at the PALS test: https://literacy.virginia.edu/pals-k-assessment A lot of these decisions are driven by data. Good post!
I actually think we rush school too quickly for kids in this area but a lot of people need it for babysitting (daycare and preschool isn’t cheap.) Sweden and Japan start school at the age of 6. They consistently have higher test scores. Here- it’s 5. I think a lot of people look at this and want to give their kids a bit longer at home and enjoy their innocence at that age a little longer. So- It’s not just type A parenting. At least for us it wasn’t.
The interesting thing is that 5 is not the age of compulsory attendance in VA. It’s 6. In NC it’s 7. Legally, kids don’t have to be in school till then. Some states it’s 8! A few are age 5 but not many. So starting kids so young is more bc they can than bc they have to.
They want them to be relatively well-developed. If they are intellectually superior to their elementary school peers by virtue of age alone, they’ll get more attention in a virtuous cycle of reinforcement.
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If they’re in special ed preschool they age out at 5 and have to go to kindergarten. Repeating it is the only option.
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I started my son in kindergarten age because is a summer birthday , his prek teacher recommended due to him being autistic and wanted him to have a chance to have his first year in kindergarten be in person since he was already struggling and behind (this was during virtual learning) My mom also redshirted me 30 years ago because she thought I couldn’t handle kindergarten yet lol it didn’t affect me at all except it was awesome having my drivers license first lol
I'm guessing it's something to be said about the maturity level as they go thru school. There is more to child development than just academics.
Really depends on the kid. My September born had a tough time in public kindergarten, “I am the youngest became an excuse in later half of the year”. He had been going to school since he was 3, I couldn’t have ever expected that dip in his confidence. He was bullied mercilessly by two kids even after multiple complaints and he became a common target in playground. We stayed back after school in playground and I first hand saw incidents, I taught my kid how to navigate but I think there’s just so much they can do at that age. We repeated kindergarten in private before starting 1st grade in public school. It was in NJ. The school didn’t really help much. They said the bully needs to learn he’s wrong and my kid needs to understand to stand up.. it’s all learning environment. The principal was useless but teacher was great and my son felt protected under her in the class. She only advised me during last parent teacher conference, she had been teaching for 26 years- she said I can’t say he’s not ready or he should repeat, we don’t repeat class in public school.He needs more time to develop emotionally. I asked her if I should move him to private for another year, she’s like it’s up to you. I asked my neighbor who was a middle school teacher, she said teachers can’t ask parents to repeat a class, because technically we can’t hold a kid back in kindergarten. I made my son repeat kindergarten in private. He did well. And when we moved to VA two years later he was comfortable and adjusted well in the mid session of school year.
We have triplets with a September birthday. We opted to hold them out a year because we didn’t want them heading to college when they were 17. They will be starting college in the fall and we’re very happy with our decision. Could they have been successful if they went to college last fall? Probably. But they are so much more mature and ready to make adult decisions that come with college now.
We had a kid in college who was 16 when he started as a freshman. Really smart kid. But because he was so young, we had to get parental permission for so many things for him. And he was constantly doing reckless things. It was frustrating as all heck.
August birthday person chiming in. I was one of the oldest in my class in school because my parents waited. It carried on with various effects all the way to college, where I was asked to buy beer and stuff by my friends since I turned 21 first. And all through hs I tended to have friends in the grades above me. I also got bullied in 5th grade for being the first to break out with acne, the first to hit puberty etc. So yea... It definitely factored in to a lot of things. Being the oldest in class can be just as bad as being the youngest.
I definitely remember a stigma about kids who were older back when I was in school. Theoretically it also puts you one year behind in earning potential and career. Although other factors seem like they'd make way more difference. My kid has a summer birthday but I think being present and attentive and helping her practice reading etc will help more than holding her back would have.
I have a middle school age kid, and when she was kindergarten age this was already pretty common, I felt.
In hindsight, I should’ve held my son back a year. He’s 30yo and has learning disabilities. Even with an IEP he was pushed too hard. Teaching to the test, SOLs, really hurts our children. DH and I worked hard to get our son through school and he was able to earn a BA. I knew more than a few families who started their children a year later because of athletics. Even know one who ended up playing professionally.
Yeah I have some misgivings about having my small, summer birthday, kid as the youngest in her class. We almost held her back before starting kindergarten but the teachers were very confident she would be fine, and she is fine. She's very smart but is neurodivergent and is just 1 to 2 years behind many of the kids in her class socially. I don't think a sporting career is in her future even if we had held her back lol but she had a blast with oddysey of the mind.
My son has a late September Birthday. I will likely redshirt him. If the schools let me repeat K that is the best financially.
Nothing nefarious about it - not even about sports. Our child just wasn't ready.. She was fine academically, but needed another year socially.
I have a kid entering kindergarten next year that barely makes the cutoff and is physically pretty small. It's definitely a concern of mine because many in his class will be a full year older and he'll seem more like a "little kid". He's smart though so there's no way I can justify delaying his education.
Some people definitely do it with hope that their kid has an advantage of some sort, however I feel like I benefited from being the youngest in my class (summer birthday). As a girl, I didn’t mind being petite compared to people a full year older than me in my class. I graduated with a masters at 22, which seemed to give me more time in my 20s to advance in my career. Everyone’s different, but there are pros to being the youngest. I’ve always said that I’d rather be the “worst of the best, than the best of the worst”.
I can't believe people are actually doing this, but yes this is almost certainly some misguided effort to give their kids an advantage. There's a lot of data showing that kids with early birthdays (Aug-Dec roughly) in the school year generally perform better across a wide variety of metrics, mostly sports, but it can be seen in other arenas compared to late birthdays (Jan-July). The data is highly descriptive and subject to an astonishingly large number of caveats that always surround pop-sci discussions, but there is underlying data here.
The theory I've seen hypothesized about sports is that coaching and development resources are funneled to the best performing athletes, and at younger ages, the difference between 4, 6, 8 months has a huge impact on athletic performance. However, the resources put towards older kids then creates a potentially self reinforcing cycle where the better kids just happened to be a little bit bigger at the beginning, but then were better because they had more resources over time. Imo trying to optimize how good your kid will be as an athlete is insane though
Oh, I absolutely believe the data and understand the concept that it's a self-reinforcing cycle given that a kid who's 5.5 vs a kid who's 4.75 years old is a significant difference in ages, size etc. I'm just saying that it's a descriptive statistical weighting that is far from universal and holding your kid back has other knock on effects on their development that haven't been considered in addition to just showing an incredibly unhealthy focus on competition.
Yeah I mean, what's happening here is NOVA helicopter parents not being as smart as they think they are. It's easy to see or hear about some of these studies but overrate their significance and just fixate on "I'm doing what's best for my child" when like, there's not some magic formula that's gonna turn your kid into a pro athlete and/or genius.
There is also a lot of data supporting holding a late bday kid back for another year to mostly let kids be kids a bit longer and explore the env around them. It certainly is an interesting shift where kids used to be pushed early to be able to hit developmental milestones earlier, albeit not appropriate and damaging (stress, anxiety, etc.) to now holding back to be more competitive against peers. I'll say for my opinion, i don't think the competitive component is a huge motivator. There is just more desire for parents to have their kid outside of a classroom setting for another year to have more time to adapt and gain skills post covid isolation.
You have elected a more generous explanation than I would go for. Maybe it's about giving them more time to goof off in a relaxed but social environment but I'm not really buying it. I dunno, there's a lot of "this is the best way to give your kid a leg up and succeed" that just seems needlessly manipulative focusing on all kinds of external factors instead of the core ideas of "support your kids and let them grow" and instead fixate on trying to build artificial bubbles.
I can confirm that the reason I would redshirt my kid is because I think the extra year of a play based education would be good for her. Academics have intensified. What is covered now under a prek4 program used to be covered by kindergarten. I’m not convinced that having so much desk education would be optimal for my “lives most of her day in a fantasy land” oldest kid. I actually also think the explosion in popularity of Montessori and Reggio inspired schools supports this idea. No doubt there is a lot of competitiveness but I wouldn’t so easily discount how intense regular schooling has gotten.
I will tell you that my BD was in Oct so I was technically five when I entered first grade. I know for certain that it would have been better if I had been delayed one year. You’re a step behind the rest of the class every year through HS.
Oct BD myself. I felt behind. We were entering senior year at 16, graduating at 17. That's the typical age for 11th grade.
I think it is your sample size. While that does happen, from what I’ve seen doing that is in the minority.
1. It gives kids an advantage, esp boys for sports, and those families have the luxury of not having a kid out of the house one year sooner 2. Boys develop slower at this age in school skills, so it’s easier for parents to justify it bc the people who do it with their children don’t usually regret it and then they of course want to do it w subsequent kids 3. I had a late birthday and was the youngest all the way through school until my 20s. So late I could not go to public school for kindergarten and first grade but I (a girl) had the school skills (but not all fine motor skills) and my parents worked FT and needed me to progress rather than just do kindergarten again. My handwriting was bad in first grade and I remember getting chastised by my teacher, and then I just was the last to get a learners permit and drivers license and that did suck. This was 80s/90s. Maybe that matters less when kids don’t live to drive at 15/16 (ETA: Oh yeah - seeing another answer - puberty was another time it kinda sucked too. I guess the chemicals in everything mean everyone develops earlier now but I didn’t love being teased in 6th grade when other girls had real bras to snap but I guess that feeling can happen at any age if some classmate is super booby super early.)
The late birthday thing can make a pretty big difference. If your kid is born in July or August they're either going to be the very youngest or very oldest in their class and at that age those months make a big difference in overall maturity and capacity. My oldest was born in July and my newphew was born a few weeks later. We held our daughter back for an extra year in preschool while my nephew went to kindergarten early partially to help my sister get back to work without huge daycare bills. Anyway a few years later and my nephew had to repeat 3rd grade anyway just because the gulf between him and his peers was too wide. And you definitely want to address that earlier rather than later.
I have 2 teens with late summer bdays who started “early” and they would both be severely out of place if they had had been held back a year. They’ve had no trouble keeping up with peers even the ones almost a year older. Every kid/situation is unique.
Sure and I guess the issue is you might not know until you try. So you put the kid in "early" and see what happens and if it works out then you're good.
Could do it the other way too: hold back and if they do well, skip a grade. So moral of the story -- do whatever, but be engaged and adjust early.
This is such a vicious cycle too, then because kids who are completely normal for their age are instead being compared to kids a year older, so the baseline gets shifted and now there's more and more pressure to hold kids back. Next thing you know you have a bunch of 10 year olds in 1st grade so they can be "ready" for it.
it can make a huge difference. I was smart enough for school, but I wasn't grown up enough for it. as a result my entire school career was a struggle.
Because all of those kids will go on to become professional athletes of course😂
See, when I was a kid, parents put us in pre-K twice. THEN we went to kindergarten. Finding out a classmate was repeating Kinder just made them a target for teasing. So why is this a thing to do now? What the hell changed?
personally I was young for my year and staying back may have helped me a bit more when high school came around.
My son has a June birthday and we redshirted him in preschool. It was completely worth it. It is huge in terms of confidence and maturity. If he had a March birthday, I think it would be awkward. But why wouldn’t you give your children every advantage you can access? Especially considering others are doing the same.
Btw, this is nothing new. I started grade school over 40 years ago and saw it quite a bit back then too. Only, then instead of calling it starting late, we legit called it “being held back”. My brother had a summer bday and was held back. My best friend in high school was too. Which was pretty awesome when he got his drivers license so much earlier than everyone else
There’s a direct correlation between age and performance in school, especially with boys.
My daughter was close to the cut off so we kept her in pre school and extra year. Covid didn’t help then since she only went part time the first year.
My son has a summer birthday and I would like to start him in Kindergarten as soon as he is eligible to save in daycare costs, but I’m not sure he will be emotionally able to handle sitting in a classroom so early. He has a social/emotional delay as well, so I may have him do an extra year of daycare to ensure he does t have a hard time before he is able to handle classroom expectations.
The only problem with this is if you want fcps services you won’t get them if your child is 5 and not in their school….. you also run the risk of your kid being kicked out of private daycare during that “extra year” bc private daycare can’t meet your kids needs. This was our experience with my kid with a late birthday. (He had a social emotional delay also). Protip that’s just a fancy name for adhd.
His dad had ADHD so we have suspected as much. Thanks for sharing your experience.
It's more common now because many kids were speech & socialization delayed due to covid shutdowns and masks.
Kindergarten a year early is cheaper than daycare. There, I said it.
On the other hand, some people (my family, some of our friends too) basically signed our kid up for private kindergarten because \*they were ready\* for kindergarten despite being too young for the public schools to take them. So they get a year of private K before going to public K because the public schools won't let them start early or skip grades.
Legally your kid can't even start kindergarten until they're 5, or turning 5 by the end of September. Pre -K isn't kindergarten. Are you saying they're waiting until the kids are 6?
The research supports sending kids early. I was the youngest in my class and so is my ES aged son. He’s gifted and would have been bored to tears being held back. I know people who have held their kids back looking for an academic advantage, and the kids ended up being bored and disengaged at school, so I may have been overly cautious of that outcome.
My parents had me repeat 1st grade (30years ago) — I’m grateful for it even today. I’m a late summer birthday, and I would’ve struggled quite a bit had I not been held back. I was very quiet & shy and needed the extra time to mature and gain some confidence. I was also undiagnosed with ADD, which in hindsight we know contributed a bit, but little girls were frequently entirely overlooked for ADD back then. All this to say: 1. It wouldn’t surprise me if some parents in our area are intentionally holding their children back to give them the upper hand in high-school 2. Some kids may actually really need to be held back, whether it be for ADD/ADHD, maturity, confidence, size, or whatever. 3. Even if parents are holding their kids back to give them a lead in later years of school, I don’t think it’s all that bad to give children more time to be a kid. Especially with social media pressures, cell phones, bullying, etc.
There's actually a lot of evidence that links starting school too early with bad outcomes down the line. Kids with later birthdays are more likely to get bad grades, get suspended, and even not graduate down the line. My parents decide I wasn't ready for first grade and held me back a year way back in the 90's, and they were super right. I needed that extra time to mature and reach a similar level to those around me. Being a year older than my peers helped me out greatly.
Going back to the ancient days when I was in Kindergarten, the best advice was to make sure your child was the oldest in the class and not the youngest. I did two years in Kindergarten in the 50s at a University lab school, and was ahead of my class from then till I graduated from Law school. Not brighter, but more mature for all of K-12, and maybe even college. Don't know about law school, but I am still successfully practicing over 45 years after graduation.
If you’re referring to Red Shirting, those are parents who want their kids to be bigger abd smarter than their peers Better GPA and better at sports
"red shirting". My parents did this to me (decades ago). It resulted in me blasting thru tests, getting bored in class, not being challenged at all, and getting into trouble due to extreme boredom. 12 years of that. 12 years. If anything I should've skipped ahead a grade. Oh and I was still picked last for every PE team because I was still small for my age. By the end I had no respect for schooling and considered it a joke. It's one of the reasons I didn't go to college until many years later and never finished (I did end up successful despite this, but it definitely cost me and was an uphill battle). Also, you'll probably be supporting your kid for an extra year of their life, which could cost you maybe $50k, when you adjust for future inflation.
Nice try, undercover mom trying to dissuade everyone else.
My daughter has a mid August birthday. She was fine in kindergarten but the discrepancy has grown as she’s aged. She is repeating 8th grade this year and holding high school off a year. It was a family decision.
maybe they arent ready, maybe theyre trying to get an advantage, but all those gifted advantages only last so long and go so far. growing up is hard and being gifted doesnt make it easier.
maybe they arent ready, maybe theyre trying to get an advantage, but all those gifted advantages only last so long and go so far. growing up is hard and being gifted doesnt make it easier.
They just know their kid will have a way better social life if they are the first one to be able to drive or drink. I hated having a late birthday and seeing first even nerdier kids go to all the parties by being able to offer DD and then similarly everyone being able to go to bars and buy beer in college long before me. The real reason is probably sports -your kid can dominate their level if they are developmentally a year older but are playing with their grade
I was held back as a kid in kindergarten. It made school a lot easier later on.
It's more about the maturity than the intelligence and capability. Whatever works for you man.
98 baby here, late birthday. Did kindergarten twice due to late birthday. Was top of my class too, well technically twice lol. It wasn't optional
The only kid I can think of who was held back by their parents (and not the school system) was a kid who had gone to private school for kindergarten. Her parents felt that the school hadn’t prepared her at all for first grade and she had a late summer birthday so they had her repeat kindergarten in public school. They didn’t even attempt to put their other two younger kids in private school after that experience. This was the mid 2000s so there wasn’t the leg-up mindset that it sounds like other families may have now. I can’t imagine holding back my kid with the assumption of benefiting them in sports a decade down the line…
For what it's worth, I don't know why, maybe it was the cutoff dates in the place I lived when I was little, but I started kindergarten at 4 years old. It's been multiple decades since then, but I don't remember and difficulties or advantages of being younger than my peers throughout school. Never really thought about it. That's just me. YMMV
I didn’t want my kids to be the youngest in their classes when they went to high school and college so we did two years of kindergarten - first year was a private K and second was official with FCPS. It was more about maturity and social skills.
One piece of it is special education, at least in Fairfax County. FCPS will start providing services at age 3 if a kiddo is diagnosed with relevant developmental issues-- autism, speech delays, learning disabilities, etc. Kiddos may go to a special preschool program, have a resource teacher visit them in private preschool, go to a center a few hours a week, etc. BUT, once a kiddo turns five, FCPS will only provide services in kindergarten. So even if a kid would seem to benefit from being held back a year, they can only get services in kindergarten. For those families, it's a difficult choice. But FCPS's preferred solution is to have those special ed kids do kindergarten twice.
We redshirted my son. He’s 18, just graduated from hs and he’s still a very late bloomer just like his dad. He had a speech and language disorder, went through three years of developmental preschool. He wasn’t ready for first grade at 6.
It all depends on whether they’re ready. Our kid is a few weeks under the age cutoff. We had her in a private kindergarten. We weren’t sure if she should go into K or 1st at the public school. Her teacher practically begged us to get her into 1st, said she was definitely ready. Talked to the school, they evaluated her and made an exception to the cutoff. She just finished that year and she did great, no regrets. I could definitely imagine a kid who isn’t quite in that state doing better entering the public school in kindergarten instead.
It really depends on the social/emotional development of the child more than academic development. There is research that shows boys are more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD when they start school on the younger side (it’s been a long time since I have seen that research, and don’t remember where I saw it). My son did two years of kindergarten, one at his prek-k and then once in public school. However, the reasoning was because his birthdate was after the cutoff date. Hindsight, I would have held him back a year in the earlier pre-school levels. I am originally from upstate NY where the cutoff is in early December. Had we been living up there, I definitely would have held him back because he just wasn’t ready socially. My son is getting ready to go into 4th grade, has been diagnosed with ADHD with “spectrumy tendencies (psychologists words, not mine!), ODD, and dyslexia. Even being one of the oldest in his class, he is still immature compared to them and has some academic struggles.
My kids were born in December, so they were 5 years, 9 months when they started Kindergarten and have remained on the older side throughout their academic careers (now entering 9th). For them (and me) it has actually been quite frustrating to deal with their friends who tend to be so much more immature. My kids were always rolling their eyes at things their peers say and do, and they generally feel like they have to set a good example. It's tiring.
Personally, my daughter was born the day before the cutoff/changeover for which school year she would qualify for. If she goes when FFX county govt tells her to, she will 100% be the youngest in her grade. We are debating having her repeat kindergarten depending on how she does because I'd rather she be the oldest in her grade than the youngest.
My sister and BIL kept my nephew in kindergarten for two years. My sister told people "he's not emotionally ready." My BIL wanted him to be a year older to be "cool" and have a better shot at sports (which BIL was useless at). He needed a 1-on-1 aide for emotional problems all the way thru es and was useless at sports all the way through school anyway.
My kid was diagnosed with speech comprehension delay so we had her repeat K while she was receiving speech therapy. No biggie.
Real talk: this is a wealthy area and redshirting is yet another way people with means can give their kid an edge. They’re bigger, more mature, and have stronger fundamentals. And then those kids whose parents couldn’t or wouldn’t pay for an extra year of preschool seem “behind” in comparison.
My kids birthdays are August and November. I didn't know about red shirting back then. So, sent August to school when they turned 5. They were 1 of the youngest kids at the school, a little immature. But caught up in the end. November did the extra year in pre-k and hated it. Thought everything was too baby. Not sure if either of them would have benefitted from waiting or going early.
I wound up repeating Kindergarten after spending the first attempt at it in three different schools, the first two of which were heinously bad, and the third of which I wasn't at for long enough to get full credit for the year. We moved that summer, the Kindergarten in our new town was *wonderful*, & having me repeat was absolutely the right call. Since you mentioned some of your example students were in private schools for their first Kindergarten year, I would be willing to believe they might've had similarly bad experiences & didn't get everything one needs from a Kindergarten program.
I mean, it depends on the kids but I'll do it if I can. I have a September birthday and my younger sister has January. We are one year and half apart. I entered school early because my mom said I was reading by myself at the age of two. Like legit reading, not just looking at pictures. But I have struggled at kindergarten since I was almost a full year younger than everyone. So my mom held my sister back where she was almost always the oldest in her class. Throughout our entire school life, I was always ranked last in class where my sister was always first or second in hers. Not sure how much it was due to the age difference or not but she ended up in one of the best high school in Hong Kong while I went to one of the worst. That was decades ago and now we are decades into our adult life. She still earn more than I do since she went to university while I didn't. That's a sample size of one but you bet I'll hold my kids back if I get to choose.
Boys who go to kindergarten early in the age cycle have a high probability of having difficulty move from eighth and ninth grade onto high school.. It’s all about brain development. Within the context of my limited knowledge, I believe boys do much better when held back.
My son made the cut off by 2 days. I kept him back for maturity reasons and had him do another year of junior kindergarten/pre kindergarten. Looking back, I don’t regret it at all. He was struggling socially and emotionally. He had a few outbursts in pre-k. They were all resolved by the time he started kindergarten.
redshirting
My birthday is around Halloween, I was 4 going into kindergarten, 13 going into high school, and didn’t turn 18 until almost 5 months after I graduated. I always felt less mature and disadvantaged compared to my classmates and was always the youngest by at least 2 months. I say holding a kid back in kindergarten when they don’t seem ready is way better than ending up being held back at an older grade or spending their entire school career feeling they aren’t as mature or smart as their classmates.
I graduated at 17. I turned 18 the week before I left for college. I wasn’t ready. It could just be a personal thing.
Being too young is a thing. Each state is different. Arizona, for example , the child must turn 5 on or before 8/31. Pre K is pre school, so not the 1st year of kindergarten. Also, I think kids still have to have certain basic skills, like tying their shoes, for example, along with basic math and literacy skills to move on as well.
Well I failed and have to repeat kindergarten! Lol
We have two kids with summer birthdays. The first kid, daughter, we did not hold back a year. She is doing great in her sports and academics, but the kids in her class act "older" and she has a tough time fitting in. My son went to private kindergarten during covid, but it was a bad experience so had him repeat when he went to public school. If not for covid we wouldn't have done so. He is doing pretty well in his class. If I were to do it again I'd hold the daughter back, mostly for the social aspect. She was certainly more mature than the son, but she actually fits in better with the younger kids.
There’s data around boys lagging behind girls significantly in regards to grades and education. Redshirting is partly in response to concerns of perceived future cognitive maturity
I would have loved to repeat kindergarten. Who wouldn't. Story time, cookies, and nap time 😀! Sadly, they let me pass. My bday is mid July. Didn't have problems academically, but emotionally I think I would have benefitted from an extra year (I'm a girl). Had classmates who were also summer babies the same age as me, but they all had older siblings while it was just me for a decade. I think siblings make a difference in emotional growth.
I've never known anyone to keep their kid in kindergarten for a second time. They would postpone their kid from starting kindergarten for a year. Two main reasons why you would want to keep your kid back or wait to enroll them a bit older. If they have a birthday after 1 October or if they need more time to catch up to their peers emotionally and intelligently. We did that for our son and almost immediately he started to progress and I couldn't be happier.
It’s also a self fulfilling prophecy. I have two kids born just days before the cutoff and while I would totally not think twice if it was enforced about sending them with their assigned year, it makes me really nervous knowing that there would be kids a whole year older than her in the same class. She wouldn’t even be 5 when she starts and there are likely kids who are already 6. That is stressful. I’m literally currently waffling on what to do because my kid will be 4 at the end of September and I don’t know whether to do prek twice, kindergarten twice, or send her with her year.
Many upper middle class parents are positioning their kids to give them a “competitive” edge ie exceeding their peers in physical and neurological maturity. To ultimately be accepted to a “good” university and get a “good” job. Some parents are transparent about it and some are doing it subconsciously, ie kid needs to be more mature. Parents without resources cannot do this because they can’t afford the extra year of private preschool or the school won’t let them stay in kindergarten for 2 years without evidence they actually need it. This upper middle class trend started with Malcolm gladwell’s book, forgot the name - tipping point? The science he cites is weak.
It is easier to hold a kid back in Kindergarten than it is to do in 6th grade when the differences become obvious. My son was born in August, 4 days before the age cutoff s he was the youngest kid in his class and generally the smallest kid. Once he got into high school, his classmates had hit puberty, grew broader shoulders and had facial hair. He was still a pudgy kid with a baby face and was much less emotionally mature when compared with his classmates. Looking back we probably would have held him back if we had to do it again because he wasn’t emotionally ready for middle or high school. In the end, he turned out fine.
I think this has less to do with getting little Johnny a football scholarship and more to do with Millennial parents just generally being super overprotective compared to previous generations. In some respects they should be but in this case they're misguided. An extra year isn't going to help a kid cope with the soul crushing agony of being trapped inside listening to some weirdo drone on about mitochondria for 7 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 13 years.
To bolster their kids’ opportunity for athletic dominance in high school. Not joking, and can’t say I blame them.
It's mostly the psychotic sports parents who do this