Redshirting Sawyer

We've made the difficult decision to "redshirt" Sawyer, keeping him back in preschool for another year. (Redshirting is what they do to freshman football players to give them an extra year to develop. It is also the term now used for holding young 5 year olds back from kindergarten.) With a late July birthday, Sawyer will turn 5 only a few weeks before school starts and his teachers have recommended  the extra year to allow him more time to mature emotionally.

It's been a year with lots of change here, and it just seems like there's no reason to push him into yet another new situation when he's already struggling to deal with the hand he has. He's clearly smart, but he just doesn't have the same interest in the quieter side of academics as other kids in his class ... he'd much rather build with blocks or play make-believe than write his name or work on an art project. As a result, his handwriting and fine motor skills just aren't at the same level as his peers.

There are lots of articles on the topic, and plenty of controversy. Many experts seem to think holding young 5 year old boys back a year only helps them down the road while others think it's just a fad amongst overachieving parents to make sure their kid gets to be captain of the football team. I assure you, this isn't a competitive move on our part.

Sawyer took the news amazingly well. I'm a little sad he won't be in the same grade as many of our friend's kids elsewhere, and it will be hard for him to watch some of the friends he's made in his class here move on without him ... yet again ... but I really think this will be best for Sawyer in the long run.

Here's a few interesting articles on the topic (click on link to see full article):

From Live Science:

Benefits or not, kindergartners are an increasingly older bunch these days. According to a 2008 paper published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, 96 percent of 6-year-olds were enrolled in first grade 40 years ago. Now, 84 percent of 6-year-olds are in first grade. The missing 12 percent haven't dropped out — they're enrolled in kindergarten instead. About a quarter of the shift is due to state and school district policies that push age cut-off dates earlier in the year, the researchers reported. The rest is due to voluntary redshirting.

From the Huffington Post: 

A kindergarten teacher commented, "Many schools set up their classroom and schedules to reflect a typical girl learner, not a young boy. Asking a 4 or 5-year-old boy to sit at a table and do prolonged work with a pencil and paper is asking far too much, and yet if we examine the kindergarten or first-grade schedule, they are shuffled from room to room, subject to subject, and we slowly take away their time to play and make independent choices, and recess becomes a distant memory to many fifth-graders. I watch parents as they tour our school and see the anxiety on their faces as they realize that their child is not 'ready' for all this." 

From the New York Times:

Kindergarten seemed to go well, but when her son entered first grade, she said, “I got hit over the head. They told me he was way behind.” She watched in horror as her son’s self-confidence tanked. “He was spinning his wheels just to keep up,” she recalled. “He even got pulled out of class for poor handwriting.” At the end of a miserable second-grade year, she withdrew him to repeat the grade at a private school. “It’s been a long and difficult journey,” she said. “I totally regret starting him on kindergarten at 4.”