I had never heard of nor even considered academic red shirting. This is such a new topic to me. I am not aware of anyone having done this nor if this is even possible in our district. All of the children in my son's first grade class were the "right" age for first grade.

Interesting thread. My son's elementary school has a high number of students who have scored very well. It was enough to be considered into the gifted program, however, it was only one componet of a matrix.

For the most part, my son's 2E issues didn't persuade me to have him participate in the GT program until middle school. I thought at the time, he needed to learn to manage his time and study skills well before we attacked something more challenging (little did I suspect ADHD problems)

Anyway, I think my son's elementary school also considers only allowing less than 10% to be serviced with a pull out program because, the students will get advance work within the regular classrom

I find this topic kind of interesting that many people 1) get accused of hothousing and 2) care that people think that they do it. Let me preface I've never been accused of it, but I kind of wish I had been challenged. I feel like I'm missing out (just kidding of course).

I never, ever went about teaching my kids to read. My MIL did try with my eldest though when she was about 4 and I was embarrassed that she was sitting DD on her lap trying to point words out in books to have DD parrot them back. I, on the other hand, read and sang a lot of songs to her. She didn't read to me until K - but quickly progressed (basically, once I pronounced a tricky word, she subsequently remembered it and was progressing fast through the grade levels. She moved from not reading to reading 7th grade material in 2 years). She also draws parallels between books or other information she takes in. It's really cool to watch those connections being made.

My second dd self-taught. Truly. One day she couldn't read and the next day she's reading to me Green Eggs and Ham (though she spent an inordinate amount of time making up her own stories based on the pictures in the book). She was 4.5 at the time. She's not quite 6 (September birthday) and will be going into K and finished her first chapter book (dinosaurs before dark). She's not a voracious reader, but she'll read at least one book or chapter a day (well, I must amend she reads to herself on the toilet a lot - will take a stack of books in there, but as far as reading a lot out loud to me, not so much). But she is still becoming quite fluent for not having to work hard at it. She'll take a stab at quite complicated vocabulary words and often gets them correctly the first time around. Other times of course she needs a hand.

Had it not been for her selective mutism, I would have probably been alright to push for early entrance. But that would not have helped her anxiety. She simply wasn't ready. But I always viewed this holding back a year as a negative, not a positive. I don't know. Maybe because it to me seems that way because it could be interpreted as being "held back" because you repeated kindy (even thought that's not the case). I didn't realize until recently that this was seen as a "good thing" for any kids unless they weren't academically ready.

But aside from that, I do show my kids lots of things. I don't force anything into them, but whereas many parents might do crafts for their kids, we study nature and we do science experiments and I provide lots of math materials and math games to play with. The older ones occasionally teach the youngest one her letters (they pretend play "school" with her).

My dd5 comes to me with her dry erase board and says, "mom, lets do math". So, do I tell her "no"? Of course not. So I draw her picture with some addition problems (three flowers + four flowers = ?) and she fills in the number sentence. Then she says to me, "okay mom, it's your turn to answer". And she'll laugh as she draws me 7 flowers plus 12 flowers and thinks she can stump me. Not that she's far ahead in math, because right now she isn't.

In fact, she tells me she's worried that she doesn't "know math", and seems to not believe me much when I tell her that the teacher will teach her what she doesn't know. My guess is though she'll pick up the patterns because she's great at seeing where patterns exist. She just doesn't know that's what she does and that will work out to her advantage. I just have this feeling that, like with reading, she'll just "get it" and will adapt rather quickly.

My oldest 7 comes to me in first grade and says "mom, can you teach me multiplication?" because she hears about it from her teacher. Do I say "no"? Of course not. I go buy a pack of flashcards and a workbook - not to quiz her on them, but so I can show her with manipulatives using the cards (because I don't like my handwriting). So, I pick an "easy" math problem, like 3*3 and set it up three rows of three objects. I show her that 3*3 is 3+3+3 which is also known as 3 groups of 3 items. After doing some other problems, she's realizing that this is where all the skip counting comes in handy (2,4,6,8 and 5, 10, 15, 20, and so on). Now she gets there was a reason for that.

I think kids quite plainly know what they want to know and to not honor what they want to know is the quickest way to kill their desire for learning new material.

I also feel kind of bad if I let DD play with starfall. We also have not done Leapfrog stuff as I'm not huge fan of DVDs, and if she watches something I prefer it not to teach her to read or count, I wish her to enjoy children's culture. Not saying there is anything wrong with Leapfrog but we have no time for it as I work fulltime and she goes to daycare.

I think it is just funny to think that if you would teach your child to read by yourself it would be worse than Starfall or Leapfrog, I would prefer the one on one parent time over computers or DVDs anyday

I don't see how the redshirting could be a big problem. I was always youngest in my class with late December birthday. I was also tiny and immature and the kids that were year older, big and mature maybe did better socially but not academically. They might have made it bit better during first few years than later but the difference was never anything huge that should make any difference in gifted placements.

I am actually pretty embarrassed about it because when I discovered starfall, I was just looking for a kids' website that would be interesting to DD, easy to navigate, and not too flashy/commercially/noisy. I seriously let her play on starfall for a year before it really occurred to me that it was designed to teach kids to read. I too prefer one-on-one time to computer time, but DD really wanted something she could do on the computer by herself, and starfall isn't horrible, like many preschool sites.

I guess the difference is that I wasn't trying to teach her to read (obviously). And, honestly, she gave lost interest months before she started sounding words out, so I'm not sure how much influence it had. It just drives me nuts because I'll say something to my mom about how DD taught herself to read, and she'll say, "No, she played that computer game."

Not that it really matters. DD was in charge of her own learning, and that is what is important to me.

We have found that being a lot older, combined with the type of parents who made that choice based upon giving their kids an edge, does make some degree of a difference in terms of GT placement in school. While the decision re GT labels isn't technically made until the end of 3rd grade here, the teachers do start recommending kids for GT watch by 1st grade and track them accordingly in class. The kids who weren't identified as being academicially ahead in the first year or two aren't given any enrichment or taught anything above grade level, so they are less likely to wind up in the GT placement which is based a lot upon prior placement and achievement scores in school.

Secondly, a couple of the kids in dd#2's GT reading class were redshirted to a significant extent by their parents (11 y/o 4th graders as compared to dd who isn't 9 yet) and have continued to be parented a bit differently to give them an edge. For instance, years of outside tutoring, Kumon, Sylvan, etc. along with being 1.5 yrs older, which does seem to make some difference in terms of achievement. Anecdotally, one of the moms told me that "you know, you can buy the CogAT online..." which has also left me wondering if some of these kids may have been prepped with answers to that test ahead of time to give them further chance of getting into GT classes.

I won't post where in that I wouldn't want to encourage that type of behavior, but I was concerned enough by that comment that I looked and, lo and behold, you can buy the actual test online.

What I'm getting at is that, if the reason a child was started in school later than s/he was eligible to start was due to really pushy parents and a desire to have the child appear better (academically, in sports or whatever) than the other kids, that type of mentality doesn't likely change. With a parenting mentality like that, it can make for a child who is hothoused into appearing to belong in a GT class.

I try to remind myself that someone else's decision to hothouse doesn't change who my children are. On that level, it doesn't really matter to me what others do (except that it makes me feel bad for the hothoused child).

A positive, I suppose, could be that my children (who are in typical grade for age) have peers a year older--instant placement with older peers! Does that count as acceleration? (Just kiddin' folks) LOL...

I think the primary reason that it chafes, is that so many of us have had our attempts to explain/get help for our DCs met with suspicion in school, and when DD9 is compared to redshirted DD10, it is sometimes more difficult for the school to recognize learning differences.

In our district there has been a lot of discussion about identification and programming. The question has been raised as to why a bright, high acheiving child who is not gifted should not be able to participate in the same types of learning opportunities as those given to gifted students (or, in the case of our school, *theoretical* opportunities ). For instance, should there be a litmus test to enter honors sections in high school? Or should anyone wanting to take it on, be able to take it on? After all, they would be incurring the risk of a lower grade if they are actually not up to the challenge. For the most part, I like this generalized access. However, I think that there is a danger too, because as teachers we need to let assessment and learning drive instruction. If a group becomes overly weighted with bright, but not gifted students, and therefore a majority of students are not able to meet the initially high bar set for pace and product, then gifted students may once again find themselves in classes that are moving to slowly and demanding too little.

The discussion about Leapfrog and Starfall reminds me of a revelation I had recently. My mother always claimed that I "taught myself how to read" when I was three. She remembers me spontaneously picking up a newspaper, saying "I know how to read now," and then reading the newspaper out loud to her.

A little while ago (last year, perhaps) I was flipping the channels, and on PBS I saw a tribute to the 70s show "The Electric Company". I didn't consciously remember the show, but I was amazed to find myself singing along to every song on that show. The character would say one thing and I instantly knew how the second character was going to respond.

Amazed, I called my mom and asked her about the show. She recalled that when I was three she was sick with her pregnancy and slept on the couch every afternoon after parking me in front of PBS.

So, I didn't teach myself how to read-- The Electric Company taught me!

So, does that mean I was "Hot Housed"? No, benignly neglected is more the truth. Even if Electric Company did teach me how to read, that doesn't discount the fact that I was a gifted reader.

What does hothoused mean?

http://giftedkids.about.com/od/glossary/g/hothouse.htm

Think of the parents from Parenthood. A common mis-perception is that we hot house our children.

JB