{"id":232,"date":"2007-06-04T08:32:54","date_gmt":"2007-06-04T13:32:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elisalou.com\/blog\/2007\/06\/04\/red-shirting\/"},"modified":"2025-04-30T13:10:40","modified_gmt":"2025-04-30T17:10:40","slug":"red-shirting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elisalou.com\/blog\/2007\/06\/04\/red-shirting\/","title":{"rendered":"Red Shirting"},"content":{"rendered":"

I read this article<\/a> this morning.\u00a0 Red-shirting is a very common practice in our area.\u00a0 All of Austin’s friends that have summer birthdays were held so it just made sense for us to hold him back too.\u00a0 When he was in preschool the principal of the school he now attends visited to give a talk about kindergarten readiness.\u00a0 It was clear that she believed that kids should not start early.\u00a0 She ended her talk with the line, “education is not a race, it is a life-long journey.”\u00a0 I always thought that was such a wise statement and a couple years later when Austin started her school, I saw why.\u00a0 They are now using a 2nd grade curriculum for the kindergarteners and the expectations for reading scores were well above what was required for our district, and way above what is required for our state.\u00a0 School meant getting down to business, play time was over.\u00a0 When both of my school-age boys turned 5 we had the choice of paying for another year of preschool or sending them on.\u00a0 Both of their preschool teachers said they were ready to go to Kindergarten.\u00a0 As I went back and forth in my head about sending or holding (especially with Blake, who is absolutely huge) I just kept coming back to the same thing.\u00a0 My boys have one chance to be a kid.\u00a0 Once they start down the road of education, that’s it.\u00a0 If I can give them an extra year to play, let that be my gift to them.\u00a0 That last year before they started school was filled with preschool and tons of rec center classes taking everything from sports and swimming to art and music.\u00a0 I can honestly say that I soaked it all in and when I scooted their little butts out the door on the first day of kindergarten I did so with the feeling that I had done everything I could to give these little guys the best head start I could.
\nI realize what worked for me would not work for everyone.\u00a0 I am fortunate in that I can stay home.\u00a0 That we have an awesome rec center a couple blocks away with affordable classes and I know that everyone feels that what they did is best, including me.\u00a0 I have read so many books about children and schooling, about Waldorf education<\/a>, Montessori<\/a>, and lots of books by John Holt<\/a>.\u00a0 And tried to make the best choices I could based on my beliefs.\u00a0 I am aware that what works for me may not work for you.
\nNow my third child is going to go to school early simply because he drives me crazy.\u00a0 Just kidding.\u00a0 Sorta.\u00a0 \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I read this article this morning.\u00a0 Red-shirting is a very common practice in our area.\u00a0 All of Austin’s friends that have summer birthdays were held so it just made sense for us to hold him back too.\u00a0 When he was in preschool the principal of the school he now attends visited to give a talk about kindergarten readiness.\u00a0 It was clear that she believed that kids should not start early.\u00a0 She ended her talk with the line, “education is not a race, it is a life-long journey.”\u00a0 I always thought that was such a wise statement and a couple years later when Austin started her school, I saw why.\u00a0 They are now using a 2nd grade curriculum for the kindergarteners and the expectations for reading scores were well above what was required for our district, and way above what is required for our state.\u00a0 School meant getting down to business, play time was over.\u00a0 When both of my school-age boys turned 5 we had the choice of paying for another year of preschool or sending them on.\u00a0 Both of their preschool teachers said they were ready to go to Kindergarten.\u00a0 As I went back and forth in my head about sending or holding (especially with Blake, who is absolutely huge) I just kept coming back to the same thing.\u00a0 My boys have one chance to be a kid.\u00a0 Once they start down the road of education, that’s it.\u00a0 If I can give them an extra year to play, let that be my gift to them.\u00a0 That last year before they started school was filled with preschool and tons of rec center classes taking everything from sports and swimming to art and music.\u00a0 I can honestly say that I soaked it all in and when I scooted their little butts out the door on the first day of kindergarten I did so with the feeling that I had done everything I could to give these little guys the best head start I could. I realize what worked for me would not work for everyone.\u00a0 I am fortunate in that I can stay home.\u00a0 That we have an awesome rec center a couple blocks away with affordable classes and I know that everyone feels that what they did is best, including me.\u00a0 I have read so many books about children and schooling, about Waldorf education, Montessori, and lots of books by John Holt.\u00a0 And tried to make the best choices I could based on my beliefs.\u00a0 I am aware that what works for me may not work for you. Now my third child is going to go to school early simply because he drives me crazy.\u00a0 Just kidding.\u00a0 Sorta.\u00a0 \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elisalou"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elisalou.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elisalou.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elisalou.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elisalou.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elisalou.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.elisalou.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20955,"href":"https:\/\/www.elisalou.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions\/20955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elisalou.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elisalou.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elisalou.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}