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Why don't you talk to the Kindergarten teacher/assessment team. Let them give you some feedback and do their screening. You can always chose to NOT go but you can talk to them about your concerns and your particular child's needs.
We went for a spring screening (they call it DIAL here or something like that) and then I also spoke with the principals office about my child's temperament and what kind of teacher he responded to the best. You can at least determine what your child needs to have ready emotionally and educationally for the next year and what you need to work on to achieve that goal.
They could have started kindergarten, but we chose to wait, as each of them would have been the youngest child in his class. It seemed better to have them wait until they had just turned six than to start when they had just turned five.
We were thinking in terms of their possibly having an interest in sports, but that turned out not to be a consideration. Neither was into varsity sports.
Why don't you talk to the Kindergarten teacher/assessment team. Let them give you some feedback and do their screening. You can always chose to NOT go but you can talk to them about your concerns and your particular child's needs.
We went for a spring screening (they call it DIAL here or something like that) and then I also spoke with the principals office about my child's temperament and what kind of teacher he responded to the best. You can at least determine what your child needs to have ready emotionally and educationally for the next year and what you need to work on to achieve that goal.
They don't even do kinder assessments here. It would have been nice to have that, but it wasn't offered.
I'm guessing this is a fairly new phenomenon, as most of the questions I've seen are "My child just missed the cut-off date for Kindergarten, how do I get the school to let him/her enroll anyway?"
It seems that you could definitely run into issues in high school when a child (a boy, especially) is a year older than the other students. He'd be driving SOONER than his classmates (meaning he'd be the driver-by-default) and he'd be dating girls younger than him (consider the possibility of a relationship between an 18-year-old boy and an "under-aged" girl).
I can only speak as a high school teacher. So I only see the "down the road" perspective on keeping them out of kindergarten another year.
I see NO downside to it at all. It is all benefit for all of the kids I have seen who were DELIBERATELY "red shirted". The additional maturity can make so much of a difference in high school. The RS kids are either just typical teens or "more mature", I have never seen an "immature" redshirt. That maturity can really pay off when it comes to work ethic and commitment resulting in better grades, and more extracurriculars. I know some of the very young kids miss out on internships opportunities because they cannot drive.
I have no idea if it is problem for elementary and middle school.
I'm guessing this is a fairly new phenomenon, as most of the questions I've seen are "My child just missed the cut-off date for Kindergarten, how do I get the school to let him/her enroll anyway?"
It seems that you could definitely run into issues in high school when a child (a boy, especially) is a year older than the other students. He'd be driving SOONER than his classmates (meaning he'd be the driver-by-default) and he'd be dating girls younger than him (consider the possibility of a relationship between an 18-year-old boy and an "under-aged" girl).
I never heard of it when my daughter was in school (she is 18 now) but I have had in the past two year EIGHT boys who were redshirted (even if they did not know that was the term). For a couple of them it REALLY paid off.
I can only speak as a high school teacher. So I only see the "down the road" perspective on keeping them out of kindergarten another year.
I see NO downside to it at all. It is all benefit for all of the kids I have seen who were DELIBERATELY "red shirted". The additional maturity can make so much of a difference in high school. The RS kids are either just typical teens or "more mature", I have never seen an "immature" redshirt. That maturity can really pay off when it comes to work ethic and commitment resulting in better grades, and more extracurriculars. I know some of the very young kids miss out on internships opportunities because they cannot drive.
I have no idea if it is problem for elementary and middle school.
I have also read that the older "more mature" kids make better decisions about drugs, sex, drunk driving and all that stuff. One of my kid's classes has a 20 month spread between the oldest and the youngest. It seems like an awful lot to expect the kid who is almost 2 years younger to be as responsible.
I never heard of it when my daughter was in school (she is 18 now) but I have had in the past two year EIGHT boys who were redshirted (even if they did not know that was the term). For a couple of them it REALLY paid off.
It goes both ways though. Several boys in my daughter's K class were redshirted (because they had summer birthdays and that's just what you do with boys who have summer birthdays ) and they just seemed so...bored and beyond the other kids. I agree wholeheartedly that if there's a concern about a child's maturity, social/academic skills, etc. then holding them back is a perfectly acceptable thing to do. But holding your kid back JUST so they won't be the youngest is short-sighting your kid and not fair to anyone.
I'm guessing this is a fairly new phenomenon, as most of the questions I've seen are "My child just missed the cut-off date for Kindergarten, how do I get the school to let him/her enroll anyway?"
It seems that you could definitely run into issues in high school when a child (a boy, especially) is a year older than the other students. He'd be driving SOONER than his classmates (meaning he'd be the driver-by-default) and he'd be dating girls younger than him (consider the possibility of a relationship between an 18-year-old boy and an "under-aged" girl).
Driving was exactly one of the main issues we considered when we had Ds repeat kindergarten. We said we would rather he be one of the first drivers in his class than the last driver and wanting to be with older boys. Besides we strictly adhered to the "no passengers in the car for the first 6 months of driving" rule.
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) and they just seemed so...bored and beyond the other kids. I agree wholeheartedly that if there's a concern about a child's maturity, social/academic skills, etc. then holding them back is a perfectly acceptable thing to do. But holding your kid back JUST so they won't be the youngest is short-sighting your kid and not fair to anyone.
