This Mom I had just met at the ice rink was nearly frothing with rage. "There are four boys in Jonah's kindergarten class who are turning 7 in APRIL! 7!" She had been telling me about the elementary school that my son will attend in the coming years and I had asked her about some of the problems she had encountered. One of the biggest grievances she had was the growing practice of redshirting, parents who decide to hold their children, mostly boys, back from starting kindergarten. She felt that these older kids put her child at a distinct disadvantage. Little did this Mom know that one of the potential perpetrators of this spreading plague was standing right before her: me. Because I'm considering redshirting my own boy.

Linda Keenan worked 7 years as a head writer/senior producer for various programs on CNN...
read moreMy son is a late July birthday, and his district's cut-off date is September 1st. That means he will be one of the youngest children in the class. On top of this, my son has a suite of behaviors that have been evaluated and fall into the realm of the troublesome boy stuff: he has a hard time sitting still, staying calm, and writing letters. Do I really want my boy, with his irrepressible energy, to be the youngest kid in his class? No, I don't. Would you?
I've read the arguments against redshirting. There are some broad social concerns that I never would have fathomed. One is that redshirting hurts Social Security because it delays the entry of young people into the workforce. Revoke my Girl Scout Badge if you will, but the possible deleterious effect of redshirting on Social Security is not going to keep me from doing it. Then there is the general complaint by other parents that redshirting is unfair to the children who aren't held back. I'm not really sure how exactly this unfairness would manifest. It's not as if young children are graded on a curve. Most children I know who've been redshirted were both young for their grade and had a notable deficit in their development. I'm not sure I see these kids easily racing ahead of their peers, even if redshirting turns them from the youngest kids in class to the oldest.
I am under no illusion that holding my son back will be the magic bullet that he needs: there's little hard evidence that redshirting will do that. And so I was quite surprised when I had barely finished my question about redshirting, my pediatrician said "Do It". I had mentioned the lack of evidence but she had no doubt that boys mature a lot later than girls, and younger boys need more time, especially since kindergarten expects a lot more of kids than it used to.
As for the Mom I met at the rink, I sat silently and nodded during her mini-tirade because, well, I just didn't have the cojones to wage a comeback. But I was thinking about one in my mind. I might ask her "would you like to have your kid's teacher spending much of her precious class time getting MY child to settle down and helping him better grasp his pencil? Then I'll send him to school right on time. See you at the PTO!"...read more blogs