Red Shirting a June Birthday: Real Advice From a Mom and Former Preschool Teacher
The kindergarten open house gym smelled like goldfish crackers and wet paint, and Leo was three steps ahead of me, chasing a black ladybug across the scuffed tile. He stopped suddenly, squatted down, and prodded a crumb with his index finger while a boy a head taller than him read the “Welcome to Kindergarten” poster out loud from across the room. Before I could call Leo over to meet his teacher, the principal drifted over and nodded at his hand-me-down t-shirt that said “Worm Wrangler.” “June birthday, right?” she said. “We see a lot of families opt to wait another year with birthdays that close to the cut-off.”
I was a preschool teacher for eight years before I quit to stay home with my kids, so I’d heard this question a hundred times. Parents would corner me at pick-up, twisting their June baby’s permission slip in their hands, asking if holding back (what everyone calls red shirting) was the right move. My own son Leo was born June 18, our district cut-off is September 1, so I was the one panicking this time. My husband was already sold on the idea: “He’ll be bigger for sports, he’ll have another year to be little, what’s the harm?” Our neighbor down the street told me she’d held her June boy back, and it was the best decision she’d ever made—he was starting third grade on the honor roll now. Our pediatrician shrugged and said Leo was right on track developmentally, so it was totally our call.
I pulled out my old binder of classroom notes that weekend, the one I kept with little notes on each kid’s progress. Over eight years, I’d had 12 June birthday kids go through my class. Six had gone on to kindergarten on time, six had been redshirted. I flipped through the notes, and I noticed a pattern I’d forgotten. The redshirted kids who’d been held back just for their birthday, not for any identified delay, were the ones most likely to be checked out by October of kindergarten. They already knew all the letter sounds and counting skills the class was working on, so they spent circle time bothering the kid next to them or drawing on their desk instead of participating. Of the six June kids who went on time, all but one had caught up to their older peers in any areas they were behind in by the middle of first grade. The one who didn’t had an undiagnosed speech delay that would have showed up regardless of when we started him.
I didn’t want to make a decision based on other people’s anecdotes, so we tried three small things to test the waters before committing. First, we started hanging out at the elementary school playground right after dismissal, when the kindergarten kids were out playing. Leo ran right into a game of tag, got tagged out a lot, but he never asked to leave or got upset that the bigger kids ran faster. He could hold his own socially, which mattered more than his size. Second, I asked Leo’s preschool teacher not “is he ready for kindergarten” but three specific questions: Can he sit for 10 minutes of circle time without leaving to play with something else? Can he open his own snack and put on his own coat (even if he needs help with the zipper)? Can he ask a teacher for help when he’s hurt or upset? She said yes to all three. Third, we ignored all the talk about academics. It didn’t matter that he could only count to 12 and still drew his name as a series of squiggles. Kindergarten is where you learn that stuff, not where you show up already knowing it.
We decided to send him on time. Now it’s mid-October, I pick him up every day at 3:15, he always has glue in his hair and at least one dirty rock in his pocket. Last week his teacher sent home a note saying he’s still working on holding his pencil correctly, which is totally common for the youngest kid in the class. We practice for two minutes every night while we wait for our pasta to boil—just me reminding him where his fingers go, no worksheets, no stress. He’s still the shortest kid in his class, and he still spends half of soccer practice picking dandelions on the sideline. But he comes home every day talking about his friend Mia, how he helped her build a block tower that fell down, how he got to feed the class goldfish on Friday. The redshirted June boy in his class already knows all his letters and numbers, and his teacher mentioned to me last month that he gets bored easily during work time, because he already mastered everything the class is learning.
What a lot of people don’t talk about when they’re pushing red shirting for June birthdays is that the age gap shrinks really fast. That 10 or 11 month difference between your June baby and the September baby in the same class seems huge in kindergarten, but by third grade, it’s almost unnoticeable for most kids. If your kid has a confirmed developmental delay, holding back can be a great call, it gives them extra time to catch up. But if they’re right on track, holding back just because of their birthday doesn’t give them some big long-term advantage, and it can even leave them bored and disengaged early on.
If you’re on the fence about your own June baby, skip the panic about whether they can read sight words yet. Focus on those small social and self-care skills instead. If you can, visit the playground and see how they interact with older kindergarten kids, ask their current teacher specific questions instead of a general “are they ready,” and if you do send them on time, work on any small skill gaps in tiny chunks during your daily routine instead of cramming in extra practice that wears everyone out.
Last weekend, we had Leo’s sixth birthday party in the backyard, worm-themed just like he wanted. After we sang happy birthday, he dug a hole in the garden and stuck all his candles in the dirt to “let them grow into cake trees.” I still don’t know if we made the perfect choice. There’s no way to know what would have happened if we’d held him back, if he’d be happier or more ahead or anything else. Right now, he comes home every day excited to go back to school, and he says he’s the best dinosaur artist in his whole class. That’s enough for me, for right now.
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