FAMILIES REDSHIRTED TOTS

IN THE HALCYON days of the Fifties-when June and Ward Cleaver reigned as parental ideals-kids started first grade at the age of six. That was before the Divorce Age, the Secular Age, the Nuclear Age, the Preschool Age, the Drug Age-and before we learned to equate school with stress. Then came a new idea: Lest the little ones be pumped into the pressure cooker too soon, there dawned the Age of Retainment. Hold Johnny back so he can develop greater confidence and finer motor skills. Fight the fear of his ending up average by giving him the competitive edge of maturity. Especially in the more academically rigorous private schools-but in public schools as well-today’s first-grade classes have a complement of seven, seven-and-a-half, even eight-year-olds. Retaining, repeating, holding kids back-or what some call “redshirting” tots -has become part of the elementary school lexicon.

To some child development professionals, the trend toward redshirting (a term borrowed from the practice of holding back high school athletes a grade to give them an extra year of physical growth) is a healthy refinement by a generation attuned to the differences among individuals. But others fear the pendulum has swung too far; that retaining is unfair to the population at large and potentially damaging to the older child who may be urged toward a level of expectation that he will never attain. Ironically, the positive notion of assessing each child’s readiness for school and placing him accordingly swings to the negative when applied in a herd-instinct mentality. In some neighborhoods, parents and educators say, that is exactly what has happened.

Fortunately, child educators have made progress in assessing learning readiness. According to Dr. June Shelton, who has become something of a local guru in the arena of evaluating child development, a child is ready for first grade when he masters minimal social skills, develops large and small motor control and acquires enough language to begin learning the written word. And 85 to 90 percent of the time, says Shelton, the child is ready at the age of six.

For years parents have relied on their own intimate knowledge of their kids to make important judgments concerning them. But to a generation weaned on self-help manuals for everything from toilet training to making love, insecurity often rears its ugly head. In these cases, Dr. Shelton advises readiness testing. “If the purpose of the school is to train the mind-and I believe it is,” says Shelton, “then learning readiness should determine placement. But to hold a child back so that he or she might be bigger, more aggressive, more confident is incorrect.”

Much of the pressure to retain, teachers say, comes from parents, many of whom operate on the theory that it might heip and it can’t hurt. But one first-grade teacher in the Highland Park school system warns that dominance in the early grades due to extra maturity may be fleeting. “It might mean the difference between being grouped with the low and the high achievers, but ultimately any dominance in sports, academics or leadership by an average kid who’s been held back is temporary. On down the line the child will perform at a natural level.”

Greenhill School, a progressive, academically challenging private school in Addison, was one of the first to adopt-15 years ago- the practice of adding a potential extra school year between kindergarten and first grade. According to Dr. Phil Foote, the school’s headmaster, there has been no trend toward an increase in enrollment at the “primer” level during that time, perhaps because the school relies totally on its own screening procedure. “At Greenhill we don’t give parents the options,” says Foote. “We evaluate the child and then decide on placement.”

The green light on redshirting has turned yellow at another prestigious school. “The premise that older children do well in school is false,” says Sister Rachel Auringer, head of the lower school at St.Mark’s School for Boys. And though Auringer acknowledges that boys tend to mature later than girls, she says that some faculty members at St.Mark’s are beginning to rebel against candidates appearing for testing who are seven and seven and a half years old. “We are currently reassessing our policy at St.Mark’s,” she says.

Marion Crume, head of the lower school at Hockaday, the exclusive equivalent for girls to St.Mark’s, is more accepting of the redshirting trend. She sees a need for a more mature student that didn’t exist 20 or 30 years ago, when first grade was often a child’s first experience with school. Today, some four-year-olds have as ambitious a curriculum as the first graders of decades past, says Crume. But she does draw the line at the excessive ambition of a couple who proposed that their daughter repeat kindergarten a third year to help her chances of being accepted at Hockaday. Such a child, Crume contends, would be better placed elsewhere.

Just as parents sometimes let hidden agendas interfere with objective reasoning, some private schools have been accused of having a vested interest in perpetuating late bloomers to meet their own enrollment needs. Those with more openings in kindergarten than first grade-or those with transition-year programs-might profit from adding an extra year to a child’s school life. Naturally, the schools bristle at that suggestion.

Quite the contrary, says Hilda Patterson, longtime principal and acting director at St. Michael’s School in North Dallas: “Whenever we hold a child back it’s a wrenching experience for parent and teacher alike-one we all lose sleep over.” Like Greenhill, St. Michael’s holds to a philosophy that educators-not parents-can best determine when a child should proceed to the next grade. But even schools well-equipped to evaluate aren’t infallible in determining a child’s readiness. One family whose son had a late-fall birthday was advised by the faculty at St. Michael’s to have him repeat kindergarten. The family refused. The boy is currently thriving at St. Mark’s.



DESPITE THE doubts expressed by some, the redshirting trend has its out-and-out enthusiasts. Popular Dallas pediatrician Dr. Claude Prestidge lauds parents and schools who choose to retain children. “There’s no downside to being an older kid in the classroom,” Prestidge says. “Whether [the child has] a March, August or November birthday, we’re talking about a matter of months, not years. The physical aspect and maturity of a child are as important as the academics. If a child is successful in school, he will build on those successes.” The doctor points out that pecking order in the family may be a determining clue; first-born children tend to mature more slowly than their siblings, he says. Prestidge himself was pushed ahead and recalls the pressure of entering college at the relatively unripe age of 17. “An immature kid is a follower,” he says. “It’s harder to say no when you’re younger. I’m talking about the pressures of our society. I see no drawbacks at all if you think your child needs that extra year.”

At our house, we wavered over our late-August boy for years. Undergirding every discussion was a basic dissension over what the school experience should offer a child. Mom voted for confidence. Dad wanted challenge. My husband kept returning to his memory of Bobby Russell, a kid in his small Mississippi town whose Ivy League parents had him repeat kindergarten when he didn’t perform particularly well: “Everyone laughed about how Bobby flunked playtime.” And though Bobby won all the track events in the sixth grade because he went through puberty before anyone else, he finally got back at his parents. He dropped out of school.

At the end of last year, we faced the issue of retainment head on. Our son’s school suggested that he would do better with children his own age, most of whom were a grade behind. In fact, there were boys in his class older than his older brother, 16 months his senior. We agonized, then we agreed to hold him back. We rationalized, then we reacted with typical Yuppie excess: We handed him a $50 train set to soften the blow.