Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Red shirting

I don't like this term. It feels like people are not considering all the factors that go into making this type of decision. Sometimes holding back a child back for maturity can be a good thing. On the outside it is hard to know all the circumstances. There may be some people who hold back kids for the wrong reason but that's very personal so how would we really know to judge?

I don't mean to pick on anyone. I just think this is something to consider.

Glad you said something, onthegomom. I've been feeling the same way. My dd was always homeschooled, but we always said if we put her in school we'd hold her back a year. She was reading well by her 4th birthday and chapter books by kindergarten. Still, her birthday is a couple weeks before the school cut-off. At that time, she still just seemed so much younger than the older 5 year olds. We didn't want her to be the last of her friends to hit puberty or get her driver's license. The way we figured it, she was already going to need special gifted services, even if we put her in the grade for which she was technically was old enough.

The problem with 'red shirting' or whatever you want to call it, is that it changes the whole dynamic of what a Kindergarten class (or later grades) should be. Exceptional circumstances for red shirting make sense, but the regular use of red-shirting doesn't help anyone. When a relatively large percentage of a class (often boys) are red-shirted, this changes the average class age, and the maturity expectations of Kindergarten. This in turn gives false indications of what should be happening in a Class, from academic ability, to structured work and the length of time the children are expected to sit still without talking! It may help a single child to be one of the oldest in a class, but obviously someone has to be the youngest. I think a better solution is to expect the class to be one year group (use Malcolm Gladwell's age sorting for reading etc. maybe), but have the teachers, including those for Specials, and even Lunch time helpers, be clearly aware of who the young ones in a class are, and let them make exceptions for these children. Better this than classes we have now, with often 18 month age differences, but no differences in expectations made.

I totally agree. Our local PS kindergarten is basically first grade IMHO. It's all day and it's quite structured. I know several kids that it was definitely the right decision to hold them back. I know a couple other very young for grade kids who weren't held back, that struggled for K and beyond. For a sensitive child, to get pigeon holed as a behavioral problem can be damaging. And I do know other kids who were held back that definitely shouldn't have been.

I have a 5 year old I assume is GT and can read, write, do math, composes music, writes her own poems and stories. She turned 5 in the summer. She would have had a really hard time emotionally holding it together in all day kindergarten. We are homschooling "K" for her.

It's just a difficult problem that there need to be 25 kids in a classroom that are all at very different places emotionally, socially, and academically. So I don't necessarily fault parents for making these tough decisions.

Oh, I definitely don't fault individual parents for holding back either, with the system we have, I see why many parents do.

I think I agree that the maturity of Kindergarten has changed and made it more difficult for children who are at the right age. If a high percentage of the population holds their children back due to maturity concerns, then Kindergarten might as well have a 6 year old entrance age. I think it also sets unreasonable expectations of the maturity and energy level of children in Kindergarten especially boys as another person who replied said. We already have a school system that lets boys down more than girls...it worries me to perpetuate yet more ways that boys are at a disadvantage.

I see this issue with my son, who is right at age level. He is younger than many children in his class, so he is seen as not acting his age. At the same time, holding him back would have caused bigger problems. Both he and his brother need intellectual stimulation, and their behavior in pre-k was getting worse due to lack of good material.

The term red-shirting around my area doesn't really have anything to do with kids close on the border or near the age level. It's used for kids who are far beyond the age level who have been held back, primarily for sports reasons. When you have a "5 by December 2nd cutoff" and kids with August birthdays who are 6 start kindergarten, that makes them sometimes 1 1/2years older than a chunk of the class.

I actually do fault parents sometimes- just being honest! If you need to hold your child back for emotional, social or academic reasons, I get that. However, in our area, the most common reason to hold a boy back is to force a situation where he is physically bigger than the rest of the group and therefore, a better football player. I wish I were kidding but I'm not. As a teacher, I've had 6th grade boys well into puberty because the family was raising a football player. Earlier puberty means likely making varsity as a freshman, regardless of actual skill.

That's been my experience, too. Our grandson's stepmother tried to redshirt our grandson before starting K because her family eats, sleeps, and breathes football. Luckily, our son didn't go along with that and GS started K just after turning 5. I can not imagine where we would be now if he had been held back a year. Sometimes he complains about being one of the youngest in the 5th grade, there are boys that are easily 15-16 months older. The quickest way to stop that complaint is to ask him if he'd prefer being in the 4th grade right now and be one of the oldest. He's already way ahead of 5th grade academics, so the thought of doing 4th grade work right now makes him realize that being the youngest in 5th is not so bad.

I agree with this, and it does complicate things when kids are so much older than their peers. As has been stated by PP, having a 1.5+ year spread is huge! Mulit-age classrooms can be good for many kids for a variety of reasons, but this is not it.

The big problem comes when it is a generalized practice. I also agree that individual cases have to be considered as such; but still I think even in most of those cases, a school should not be forced to accept a child that is more than a couple of months past that age limit (summer b'day for most of the country with a 9/1st age requirement).

Our private school apparently saw that manyh of the summer birthdays were too young compared with the rest. This year, kids have to be 5 by June instead of September. There are a couple of other independent schools with the same "older" requirement.

Around our area, many children are held back for possible sports advantage as well, which raises the average kindergarten age. There have been two main issues:

1. Many girls are been held back because their parents do not want their daughters to attend schools with boys who are 2 years older. (As one mom put it, "It can't be a good situation when the hormone go crazy during teenage years.") Some also indicated that "it is hard for the child to be the last one to drive, etc."

2. When there is a gifted child, teachers are reluctant to recommend early entrance or whole grade acceleration because the child could be as many as 3-4 years younger than his/her classmates. With the current education system, where children are placed in a particular grade by age (instead of academic ability), this big gap in age is a big no-no for many teachers.

It is also interesting to note that in this sport dominating district, many teachers ask "why the rush" for academics. "Why are you pushing your child in math? They should be kids!" (I try to explain to them that we usually spent maybe 20 minutes per day "learning." Although, what I really want to say is that DD and DS's brain are regressing!) Yet, I have not heard any criticism for parents who are making their children practice sports 2-3 hours per day. Is this consider a double standard?

Yup. A lot of Asian kids spend 2-3 hours a day studying while little johnny is playing sports. Little johnny gets to sweep floors for a living while the other kids become doctors and nurses.

That's a great double standard to strive for.

If people logged the time their kids spend doing academics vs sports, they would be shocked.

I agree, multi-age classrooms can be great, but when they are great each child's curriculum is differentiated. They are not all required to do the same work. Unfortunately, this style of multi-age classroom just sets the younger students up for failure or at least unrealistic expectations. It's very frustrating, especially for parents of gifted children because our little ones usually ARE the youngest in the class.

I agree. This played out substantially in my DD's PS experience. She started K as a 4 year old. There were many in her class 6 turning 7 at the start of the school year.

I agree. Besides, a multi-age classroom planned as such, is self-defined, so emotional, social, academic and broader physical ability levels, are expected. I think knowing this is so important. Not only class teachers, but adults who come into contact with the kids through-out the school day, need to be aware of the wide age differences in age of many same Grade children.

The red-shirters we know are about equally split between people who's motives I agree with (neighbor with 4 year old, academically nearly ready but unable to even manage preschool emotionally/socially) and people I don't (sportsy parent of 2 year old who says mid-year birthday boy is not going til 6, irrespective of his academic and social readiness).

But perhaps single age classrooms are just a blip on the history of education anyways? Seems like prior to 70 or 80 years ago most US kids would have been small town or rural living and would have gone to small elementary schools where progression was all based on skill and content mastery, not on age. If not for sports it seems like a return to that wouldn't be all that bad. Perhaps what the US needs is a separation of sports and state.

Polly

This would be a great place to scan in the cartoon on my fridge. The one about the two kids playing baseball, one from Asia and one from Michigan. They discuss their summer break and in the end the Michigan boy asks the other what he's going to be when he grows up. The Asian boy answers, "your boss..." definately a double standard.

Polly - separation of School and State. Not as crazy as it sounds. Plenty of countries don't allow sports to dominate school life.

That's pretty much the group of older kids that wind up with that label (redshirted) here, too. However, it seems to be more for academic reasons than sports reasons where I live. The oldest kids are often the ones who are identified as gifted by teachers and tracked accordingly very early on.

We have a 5 by 9/15 or 5 by 10/1 cut-off depending on which district you are in locally. Dd#2 has a 9/27 bd & started in the 10/1 district then moved to the other. So, she is naturally the youngest in the class. She started K about a month before her 5th bd. There are kids in her current class who turned 7 by the middle of kindergarten. One of these kids who comes to mind is recognized as really bright, is being subject accelerated for math and goes to the GT reading class. Maybe she is gifted or maybe she should just be a 5th grader (and not even a younger end 5th grader) rather than a 4th grader this year.

My kids have bds right at the cusp where we could have waited a year to start them. I don't know that it would have given them an unfair advantage to do so b/c they wouldn't have been outrageously older than their grade peers had we waited. However, IMHO there should be a really, really good reason to wait to start your child in kindergarten until s/he is nearly 7 and not just he's shy or you want him to be the best athlete b/c he'll hit puberty first.

Like others have said, if it is a choice that is made by a small # of families due to personal circumstances, it really isn't an issue that tends to get the rest of us all riled up. However, when it becomes the status quo and your child is then 1-2 yrs younger than the rest of the class b/c so many kids were held out that extra year, normal developmentally appropriate behavior gets pathologized. And kids who are gifted but also a lot younger tend to get overlooked for enrichment in favor of kids who are achieving highly b/c they are a lot older.

LOL!

I had absolutely no idea that this sort of thing went on. Australia is renowned for being "sports mad" and generally or should I say just about always values its athletes over academics in adult life. Ironically this isn't the case at school, they are pretty much on a par. We don't have "red shirting" here and I really feel for you guys and the challenges it presents. As if the journey through school with GT kids isn't hard enough!

Well, I take exception to the cultural stereotyping.
However, I agree with the statement about the relative time involved for sports vs academics. DD in middle school has 3-4 hours of homework every night. Her classmates involved in sports spend 3 plus hours every night with team practice and games. DD has decided that she can't afford to spend that much time away from academics, so she chose not to try out for any teams this year. I think it's a very mature decision.

I completely agree with this idea--even amongst kids who are actually gifted, I think that this can be confusing.

Our DD was one of 4 kids in her K class who were considered an academic cluster. However, she was nearly a full year younger than two of those kids. This was not due to redshirting, just to late summer/early fall birthdays. Still, I have come to believe that performing/learning at the same level/rate as kids almost a year older is significant at that age. As kids age and share instructional experiences, perhaps making within grade comparisons becomes more valid--regardless of age, classmates would have at least the same number of instructional years under their belt. However, when they're just starting school, I think that the age differences are more telling--especially when the kids you are compared to are already leaps and bounds beyond the rest of the class.

DD's ability to keep up with, and in some areas consistently exceed the benchmarks set by the peers in her cluster, was one of the significant "aha" factors in our starting to think about giftedness. I realized that if she had been born five weeks later (thereby starting kindergarten a year later), she would certainly have been *vastly* ahead of even her strongest grade level peers.

I don't at all regret starting her on time. I do think though, that being clustered with "same age" peers who were really a year older, obscured her school's sense of her as a learner. Certainly it made it easier for them to brush off our concerns.

That said, I think the solution is probably not about the question of when to start children in school, it's about the question of improving identification tools/protocols. It seems to me that while, achievment measures are most appropriately based on grade level (post kindergarten/first grade), aptitude types of measures need to be age based and more widely administered and used. That would make it more obvious when a child might need a more compacted curriculum and/or other types of interventions.

Wonderful post, Taminy. You put my thoughts together much more cohesively and with much less emotional rambling. I am more bothered by those issues of younger kids being brushed off when compared to older grade peers due to seeing what that exact thing did with younger dd. My oldest managed to be so obviously different that it was hard not to recognize her as gifted even with a fall bd and being younger. My youngest blended in more with the bright kids and wound up being tracked such that it has taken much longer for the school to realize that she was unusual. As a result, her image of herself has been really set as someone who isn't that bright. It certainly wasn't helped by a year with a teacher who was convinced that she wasn't that bright and let dd know that, of course, and that had much more to do with a poor teacher than anything else.

Great comment.

Polly

It can also make it that much harder to get the school to agree to acceleration or grade skipping, since they are afraid of creating a situation where a very young child who needs the grade skip would be put into a class of children mostly 18 to even 30 months older.

I agree that *very* selective redshirting can be beneficial for children who need a bit more time. But in my limited experience, it is more often used by uber competitive parents (whether for academic or sports reasons) or recommended by schools more worried about test scores and how an older student population gives them a higher average score.


on edit- I should have read the other posts first, since others already pointed out these issues! : )

It is very hard to hold a gifted kid back. We have been trying to slow down DS4 because of his emotional maturity, well not exactly. To us he is actually more mature for his age, always tries to be good kid, actually extra hard but that just isn't enough at school. Things like being adamant at times and interrupting are the issues we are facing now.
He is reading like a champ, I would say at second, third grade level, started doing multiplication on his own and many other things and this is when we are trying him to slow down, scares me like hell.