Would You Redshirt Your Youngest-In-Class Son? Real Parent Experience and What I Learned
Rain smudged the window of the kindergarten classroom at our August open house, and I was leaning against a cinder block shelf holding painted clay handprints, watching my son Jax chase a loose monarch butterfly sticker across the blue carpet. A mom next to me glanced at his name tag, then at me, and said, “Jax? Wait, he’s five? You’re not holding him back?”
Jax is my second boy, born December 28. Our district’s kindergarten cut-off is September 1, so if we’d sent him on time, he’d be the youngest kid in his class by almost a full year. My oldest was born in early September, so he was always one of the oldest in his grade, and I’d never thought twice about redshirting before. All I knew was what I’d read in parent groups: some people said it’s cheating, stacking the deck to get an unfair advantage over younger kids. Others said it’s the best gift you can give a boy who’s just developing slower than his peers. I was stuck between the two takes, with a kid who didn’t fit any of the generic checklists I found online.
I remember his 4-year-old preschool conference, Ms. Rita, his teacher, leaning across the little plastic table and saying, “He knows all his letters, he can add up to 10, that’s not the issue. Last week we had a fire drill, and he froze because he couldn’t get his coat zipped fast enough, and he cried for 10 minutes after. He’s always the last one lined up, the last one to finish snack, and you can see him start to shrink when he realizes that.” That line stuck with me. I’d seen it too, at playground playdates, at birthday parties—he’d hang back instead of joining the tag game, because he knew he couldn’t run as fast or keep up with the rules the older kids made up.
I called my sister, who’s a first grade teacher at a different school in the district, and she didn’t give me a straight answer. She said, “I see both. I see kids who came in young and fought to catch up and ended up fine. I see kids who came in young and hated school from September on because they were always playing catch-up. I see redshirted kids who are bored, and redshirted kids who finally get to breathe.” I ended up enrolling him in an extra year of part-time pre-k, redshirting him, and I carried so much guilt for that first year. Every time I met another parent of a December birthday kid who sent theirs on time, I’d feel like I was doing something wrong, like I was coddling him for no reason. I read all the thinkpieces that said redshirting benefits don’t last past middle school, and I’d lie awake wondering if I’d messed him up before he even started.
Now he’s in second grade, and I can see what the year actually gave him. He’s still the shortest kid in his class, even with the extra year. He’s not the starting forward on the soccer team, he still trips over his own feet running drills. He’s not the top reader in his class, either—there are half a dozen kids reading chapter books way above his level. None of the generic benefits people promise from redshirting panned out for him. But what he can do that I don’t think he would have done if we’d sent him early is ask for help. Last month, he came home with a math worksheet he’d gotten wrong, and instead of crumpling it up and hiding it in the bottom of his backpack like my oldest did at that age, he said, “Can we practice for 10 minutes tonight? I don’t get this.” That’s the stuff that doesn’t make the thinkpieces.
I’ve talked to a handful of other parents lately asking me about the same decision, and I don’t tell them what to do. I tell them three specific things to try instead of just panicking about birthdays. First, go sit in a local kindergarten classroom for 20 minutes during a regular day. Watch what the kids are expected to do on their own, then make a list of three things your kid does independently every day, and three they don’t. For Jax, that list was: can do it alone: use the bathroom, open a juice box, ask for a snack. Can’t: zip a coat, sit through 15 minutes of circle time, lose a game without crying. That was enough for me to see he needed more time. Second, ask your kid’s preschool teacher for one specific skill, not a general “is he ready.” If you ask “is he ready,” most teachers will say yes to be nice. If you ask “what’s one thing he struggles with that kindergarten kids do every day,” you’ll get a real answer. Third, don’t do it for sports or college. All the stuff people say about redshirting making you a better athlete or giving you an edge for admissions evens out by eighth grade anyway. Do it only if your kid is already tired of feeling like they’re always the last one done, the smallest one, the one who can’t keep up.
Last week, Jax came home from school and said his teacher asked everyone how old they were, and he said “I’m almost 8” and a kid said “why are you so old for second grade?” He just shrugged and said “my mom gave me an extra year to play before I had to do hard school work.” I still don’t know if I made the perfect call. If I had to do it over again, I’d probably still lie awake for weeks worrying about it. He still forgets his homework folder twice a week, he still can’t spell “because” right no matter how many times we practice, and he’s still shorter than all the other boys on his soccer team. But he gets up every morning excited to go to school, he laughs when he messes up a test, and he still runs to the bus stop grinning. That’s more than I can ask for right now.
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