My daughter, like my son, has a spring/summer birthday but we lived in the city when she was five and nobody redshirted. She started reading before kindergarten but not as early as my son and she never took an IQ test. I was a single parent and couldn't afford it. I think she might be gifted. She was bored in school and didn't care about grades. Her social life was more important and her friends were usually a little older. I think it would have been a mistake to hold her back also. If she was bored when she was kept at her grade level I can't imagine what it would have been like for her if she had been redshirted.
My birthday is after the cut-off date for a lot of schools. I was usually the best reader in my class even though I was one of the youngest kids in class. I can't imagine what it would have been like to be held back a year.
I made the mistake of telling people in our small town what I thought about the redshirting policy and they didn't like it.
