Today I read yet another article in support of redshirting kids with summer birthdays. That is, instead of enrolling them in kindergarten when they’re old enough (according to your state or school), you wait a year. So instead of starting kindergarten at barely-five (or not-quite-five), they are sometimes six before they start. Instead of being the youngest in the class, they might be the oldest. This is extremely common in our community, especially for boys.
Our son was born in September 2000. In April of 2005, we faced a decision. Enroll him in kindergarten that fall, or not? He would turn 5 after about a month of school and likely be the youngest kid in his class forever.
We sent him to school. What’s the opposite of redshirting? Green-shirting? Greenshirting.
At the time, we had some simple reasons.
He seemed ready.
Lots of kids do. He was ready to read and think logically. The readiness skills test said he was ready. He seemed confident enough away from us.
He was really tall.
This is superficial, but one possible worry is that the youngest kid will also be little. This wasn’t going to be the case with our kid. (And never will be — when starting his senior year recently at age 16, he measured 6 feet, 4 inches.)
He needed to go somewhere.
This one was entirely on me. His sister was a baby, and being SAHM to an infant and a preschooler was exhausting. Public school was free, which was nice considering that we only had one income. We knew that if he truly washed out in kindergarten, he could repeat it.
We didn’t really understand that we had a choice.
Since he was academically and emotionally ready, I don’t remember anyone even suggesting that we hold him back. (That’s how I saw it, too. Holding him back from something he was ready to do.) He now has many classmates that were redshirted, though, so it wasn’t that nobody thought of it. And I don’t think it was called redshirting.)
This is not to say that we didn’t know it was possible. My husband was redshirted way back in 1976 in a very small town. He could have started kindergarten as the youngest, but his parents decided to wait a year. (They had the benefit of a large local extended family to provide childcare.) As an adult, my husband understands that this decision gave him some academic and athletic advantages over his classmates, just because he had a few more months to grow. He also found his K-12 education to be extremely easy.
So, our son started kindergarten at age 4 and has been the youngest (or nearly youngest) in his class ever since.
Incidentally, our state changed the rule in 2013 and moved the “cutoff” date from September 30 to August 15 – closer to the first day of school. If he had turned five this year, he would have to wait.
What we know now, 12 years later…
The kid is now a senior in high school! Looking back, would we change our minds and redshirt him? No. Things are okay. Great, even! I’m not saying that his entire educational career has been filled with sunshine and rainbows. It absolutely has not.
There have been some drawbacks to being younger than his classmates:
- Motor skills and, later, athletic skills. But for our kid, another year would not have helped in this area. He’s simply not an athlete.
- Immaturity in middle school. I was a teacher in his school for those years, so I had a front-row seat for all of it. It was then that I started wondering if a gap year might be right for him when the time came. A year of young adulthood between high school and college, in which to mature and work or travel. (Keep in mind that ALL middle schoolers are not as mature as you might want them to be. It’s developmentally normal to look like an adult and act like a kid at age 12-13.)
- Driving. He was the last one to finally get his driver’s license after the start of his junior year. But he managed. He learned how to pay for a friend’s lunch once in a while to repay the favor.
Watch Angela Duckworth’s TED Talk about Grit here.
More than the drawbacks, though, we’ve noticed some surprising benefits to being the youngest.
Greenshirting benefits:
- Academic Grit. Being a little young and immature meant that he wasn’t the best and brightest, even in his favorite subjects. His grades weren’t great all the time, but I believe that being surrounded by kids who might be able to learn a little faster actually helped him. He learned how to ask for help (eventually), how to struggle, and how to fail forward. He learned that he accomplishes more when he is surrounded by excellence and hard workers. I’m not sure this would have happened if his brain was the most developed one in the room.
- Gap year opportunity. Some people say that their reason for redshirting is to give their kids another year of childhood. But what if you could give your child another year of young adulthood? Let them stay at home, work, travel, explore interests, find their passion, instead of rushing straight to the next part of their education? Until six months ago, we still thought a gap year might be the best thing for our kid. Now he’s applying to colleges and very excited about going straight to school next fall. And I’m excited for him!
- Self-confidence. He was aware of being the youngest very early on. Knowing that he could keep up despite a year or more of age difference helped him believe in himself.
- Driving. There’s no way to know for sure, but I think he is a better driver for having an additional year of high school before he got his license. He had completed his entire sophomore year and started his junior year before he got his license. This meant that he got to spend his freshman year figuring out high school and his sophomore year figuring out driving with his learner’s permit (and spending lots of quality time in the car with Mom as a bonus).
Should you or shouldn’t you?
Only you can know your kid. And how much can we know about them when they’re just four and a half? Not much. We took a risk and it’s been great for our kid. I can’t say what anyone else should do. There are a lot of stories about parents who did redshirt and were fine. There are stories about parents who did not redshirt and regret it. I thought it was important to share this story of the successful greenshirt experience.