“Redshirting,” as it’s known, is most often discussed in the context of college sports. In states and cities where it’s legal, parents who fall close to that cut-off date may decide to hold their child back for another year before they enter kindergarten. Some states have the cut-off as December 1st. In most states, if a child turns 5 by September 1st, they’re in kindergarten that year. There’s a growing trend of parents choosing to hold their children back in preschool for another year and delay their entry into kindergarten. “The time to continue to be kids - to be in preschool for another year, grow for another year, and then hit the ground running in kindergarten.” “I wanted to give them the gift of time,” says Jess. So, she decided to have them repeat pre-school. How could they sit, for eight hours a day, in a classroom and stay on task? She didn’t want them to struggle. She looked at her twins - born premature and small for their age - and saw two lovable 4-year-olds (who would turn 5 in May, just making the cut-off for kindergarten entry) who could barely write their name and couldn’t color inside the lines. I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? The child can read! He’s average!?’” Then, the teacher told me he was average. He could color in the lines when he was three. He was reading when he started kindergarten. “Because he’s a year behind my first, he was doing everything my first would do. Jess’s stance changed when she went to a first grade parent-teacher conference for her 7-year-old. “From the beginning, I didn’t want to hold them back,” she says. She liked the idea of keeping them together as a crew of some kind, protecting each other and sticking together. She had all four of her children (ages 8, 7, and twin 4-year-olds) in the span of three-and-a-half years, and wanted to keep her twins just two years behind her second oldest child. Jess’s decision to “redshirt” her youngest children - let them stay in preschool for another year and delay their entry into kindergarten - did not come easily.
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