Red Shirting a June Birthday: What I Learned As A Mom And Preschool Teacher
Last Tuesday, 3:15pm, my last parent-teacher conference of the semester. Sarah’s sitting across the folding table from me, her son Jax’s drawing of a blue truck taped between us. She twists the lid of her travel coffee mug and says, “Jax’s birthday is June 14. Everyone I talk to says we should redshirt him, hold him back another year before kindergarten. What would you do?” I pause, because five years ago, I sat where she’s sitting, asking the same question about my son Liam, who was born June 10.
I remember the night I spent scrolling through parenting forums, laptop balanced on a laundry basket, Liam’s dinosaur pajamas still tumbling in the dryer. Every other post said June babies are always the last to read, always picked last for teams, always the wiggliest in class. My mother-in-law mentioned a friend’s grandson who was redshirted and now is starting quarterback on his high school team. My neighbor, who held back her own July baby, told me, “You only get one chance to do kindergarten right. Why risk it?”
As a preschool teacher of eight years, I’ve watched this play out over and over. I’ve had 10 June birthday kids come through my classroom, half redshirted, half sent on time, and no two stories have been the same. Let me tell you about two that stuck with me. There’s Milo, who was redshirted because he was small and shy, and his parents worried he’d get pushed around. When he started kindergarten, he already knew every letter sound, could count to 100, and sit through a 20-minute story no problem. By October, his teacher told me he spent most of free choice time wandering the classroom, because he’d already mastered all the beginning-of-year work. He got bored, started acting out to get attention. By the end of the year, they adjusted his workload, but he still talks about wanting to be in the same grade as his best friend from preschool, who went on time. Then there’s Zoe, another June baby, whose parents sent her on time. She struggled the first three months: couldn’t remember her lunch number, needed help zipping her snow boots, cried a few times when she couldn’t keep up with the reading group. By spring, she was leading that same reading group. Now she’s in third grade, and her mom still sends me pictures of her science fair projects every year.
I ended up sending Liam on time. I didn’t make the choice based on his birthday, or what other people told me. I walked through three concrete questions I now tell every parent to ask themselves, no matter when their kid’s birthday falls. First: Can they handle basic daily routines on their own? Can they go to the bathroom alone, zip their coat, put their shoes on the right feet, and pack their own backpack? Kindergarten teachers have 20 plus kids to wrangle first thing in the morning, and if your kid can handle these small tasks, that’s a huge weight off everyone’s shoulders, and it gives them way more confidence starting out. Second: Can they sit through a 10-minute story and answer one simple question about it at the end? That’s exactly what kindergarten starts with, so if they can do that, they’ve got the attention span they need to start. Third: How do they handle small setbacks? If they mess up a puzzle or can’t build a block tower as tall as they want, do they take a breath and try again, or do they throw the puzzle across the room and refuse to touch it again? That ability to bounce back matters more than how high they can count or how many sight words they know before they walk through the classroom door.
Liam checked all three boxes. He just happened to be small. Now he’s in first grade, and he’s still one of the shortest kids in his class. He still struggles with writing stamina, gets tired after scribbling three sentences. But last week he brought home a little reader he wrote himself, all about a T-Rex who loves pepperoni pizza, and he read the whole thing out loud to his grandma over the phone. He’s the first one to volunteer to feed the class hamster, and he gets invited to every birthday party on the block.
Back to Sarah in the conference. I asked her those three questions, and she smiled and said Jax can already tie his own shoes, he sits through 15-minute bedtime stories no problem, and yeah, he pouts when he loses Chutes and Ladders, but he’s ready to play again two minutes later. He just is small, and everyone keeps telling her she’s making a mistake if she sends him. I told her what I’ve seen: the size and academic advantage people talk about with redshirting almost always fades by third grade. The only time that extra year makes a real difference is when your kid can’t check those three basic boxes, not just because their birthday falls three weeks before the kindergarten cut-off.
Last weekend, I took Liam to a birthday party for Henry, a kid from our neighborhood who was redshirted. Henry is a year older than Liam, they were in the same preschool class. They ran around the backyard chasing Henry’s golden retriever, both covered in chocolate ice cream. Henry is three inches taller than Liam, but Liam beat him at tag twice. After the party, Liam asked when his own birthday was, and I told him it’s June 10, just a few more weeks away. He said, “Good, I can’t wait to bring cupcakes to class.”
I still don’t think there’s one right answer for every June baby. Some kids need that extra year to build those routine and resilience skills, and that’s okay. Some kids are ready the day they turn five, and that’s okay too. The mistake I see most parents make is letting the birthday on the birth certificate make the choice for them, instead of looking at what their own kid can do right now. Right now, for Liam, things are working out just fine. I don’t know what high school will bring, if he’ll ever be starting quarterback or the tallest kid on the team. But right now, he’s happy, he’s learning, and that’s enough.
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