Would You Redshirt Your Youngest-in-Class Son? My Real Parenting Experience
The fluorescent lights of the elementary school cafeteria hummed over us during kindergarten round-up, and Jax’s hand was so clamped around my wrist I could feel his nail leaving a mark. He’d turned 4 the month before, his August 30 birthday falling one day before our state’s September 1 cut-off for kindergarten entrance. If we enrolled him that fall, he’d be the youngest kid in his class by almost a full year. If we held him back, he’d start the next year as one of the oldest.
When the principal knelt down to ask his name, Jax buried his face in the back of my denim jacket and wouldn’t look up. A boy three inches taller ran past, knocking the dinosaur sticker out of Jax’s loose hand, and Jax burst into quiet tears instead of bending to pick it up. I knelt down to grab it for him, and that’s when the question stopped being a hypothetical I read about on mom blogs: Would I actually redshirt my youngest-in-class son?
Jax was always my slow-to-warm-up kid. My older son was born September 2, so he was always the youngest when we went through this, and he hit every milestone right on time, never had a problem separating from me or joining in. Jax was different. He still needed me to cut his meat at 4, couldn’t tie his own shoes, got overwhelmed when the preschool classroom got loud and would sit in the corner by the blocks for 20 minutes instead of playing. Our pediatrician said he was totally on track, just a little young for his age. His preschool teacher wouldn’t give a straight answer at first, just said “all kids develop at their own pace.”
I ended up asking her to get coffee after school one day, off the clock, so we could talk honestly. She said what she wouldn’t put in a formal report card: Jax still needed help pulling up his pants after using the bathroom, he couldn’t follow three-step directions the other 4-year-olds in his class managed, and he still struggled to ask for help when he needed it. She said another year of low-pressure preschool wouldn’t hurt him, and it would keep him from spending kindergarten playing catch-up.
Of course, everyone had an opinion. My mom said we were coddling him, that kids have to learn to keep up eventually. A dad at the playground told me he redshirted his son and by third grade he was bored out of his mind and acting out. I spent a week writing down small, daily things kindergarteners are expected to do on their own, just to get the chaos out of my head: put on a coat independently, ask an adult for help without crying, sit for 10 minutes to do a puzzle, open your own snack packaging, zip your pants, put away your toys without being reminded three times, share with other kids, use the bathroom alone, remember to bring your folder home, tell a teacher when you’re hurt. Out of 10 tasks, Jax could do 3 consistently. That simple list cut through all the noise from other people, and I realized we couldn’t ignore what I was seeing every day.
We decided to redshirt. That first extra year of preschool was unremarkable, honestly. He played in the sandbox, learned to zip his own jacket, started asking the teacher for help when he fell instead of hiding. By the next fall’s round-up, he walked right into the kindergarten classroom, introduced himself to the teacher, and went to color with the other kids without looking back. I stood in the hallway and blinked back surprise, because I could see the difference a year made just in that 10 minutes.
Now he’s in first grade, halfway through the year, and I can look back and see what works and what doesn’t. His teacher told me at conference last month that he’s reading at a second grade level, he often helps other kids in his class open their lunch boxes and tie their shoes, and he’s always the first to volunteer to lead the line. He comes home and tells me about his friends, he does his 10 minutes of homework without fighting me most nights. He’s confident in a way I never saw when he was 4 and overwhelmed by a room full of bigger kids.
But it’s not all perfect, like every success story you read online makes it sound. There are days I wonder if we made the wrong call. He’ll be 19 when he graduates high school, a full year older than most of his classmates, and I worry about what that means for college, for starting his adult life. He’s bigger than almost every kid in his grade, and last month he got in trouble for accidentally knocking another kid over during recess because he didn’t realize his own size. He still forgets his homework folder half the week, and he still cries when he strikes out at tee ball, same as any other kid his age. Redshirting didn’t make him perfect, it just gave him the extra time he needed to catch up to where he needed to be.
The biggest thing I tell other parents who ask me about this is this: don’t make the decision based on what your cousin did, or what the internet says about sports advantages, or what your mom thinks you should do. Try that little list I did: write down 10 small, everyday independent skills your kid will need for kindergarten, and check off what they can do consistently. Ask their preschool teacher for an unfiltered opinion, not the one they put in the official report card. If your kid is the youngest in class and they hit all those skills, don’t hold them back just for a supposed edge. If they’re struggling with most of them, holding back a year doesn’t mean you’re coddling them, it just means you’re meeting them where they are.
I still have moments of doubt, honestly. Last week I saw a photo of Jax’s original kindergarten class on Facebook, and I wondered what it would have been like if we’d pushed him through. But then Jax ran through the front door after school, holding a dinosaur diorama he’d built all by himself, covered in glue and glitter, and told me he got a star for helping his table group glue all their pieces together. Right now, that’s enough. It works for him, and that’s all that matters right now.
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