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After all those
attentive early childhood rituals – the flashcards, the Kumon, the Dora
the Explorer, the mornings spent in cutting-edge playgrounds – who
wouldn’t want to give their children a head start when it’s finally
time to set off for school?

Suzanne Collier,
for one. Rather than send her 5-year-old son, John, to kindergarten
this year, the 36-year-old mother from Brea, Calif., enrolled him in a
“transitional” kindergarten “without all the rigor.” He’s an active
child, Collier said, “and not quite ready to focus on a full day of
classroom work.” Citing a study from “The Tipping Point” about Canadian
hockey players, which found that the strongest players were the oldest,
she said, “If he’s older, he’ll have the strongest chance to do the
best.” Hers is a popular school of thought, and it is not new.
“Redshirting” of kindergartners – the term comes from the practice of
postponing the participation of college athletes in competitive games –
became increasingly widespread in the 1990s, and shows no signs of
waning.

In 2008, the most
recent year for which census data is available, 17 percent of children
were 6 or older when they entered the kindergarten classroom. Sand
tables have been replaced by worksheets to a degree that’s surprising
even by the standards of a decade ago.

Blame it on No
Child Left Behind and the race to get children test-ready by third
grade: Kindergarten has steadily become, as many educators put it, “the
new first grade.” What once seemed like an aberration – something that
sparked fierce dinner party debates – has come to seem like the norm.
But that doesn’t make it any easier for parents.

“We agonized over
it all year,” said Rachel Tayse Baillieul, a food educator in Columbus,
Ohio, where the cutoff date is Oct. 1. Children whose birthdates fall
later must wait until the next year to start school. But her daughter,
Lillian, 4, was born five days before, on September 25, which would
make her one of the youngest in the class.

With the wide age
spans in kindergarten classrooms, each new generation of preschool
parents must grapple with where exactly to slot their children. Wiggly,
easily distracted and less mature boys are more likely to be held back
than girls, but delayed enrollment is now common for both sexes.

“Technically,
Lillian could go to kindergarten,” Tayse Baillieul said. Moving her up
from part-time preschool would allow Tayse Baillieul to return to work
and earn income. But Lillian’s preschool teachers counseled her to hold
Lillian back. “They said staying in preschool a year longer will
probably never hurt and will probably always help, especially with
social and emotional development.” Regardless, a classroom with an
18-month age spread will create social disparities. “Someone has to be
the youngest in class,” pointed out Susan Messina, a 46-year-old mother
in Washington. “No matter how you slice it.” When Clare, now 9, entered
kindergarten at 4, Messina was aware of widespread redshirting.

“I thought, I’m not
breaking the rules, I’m not pushing her ahead, we’re doing exactly what
we’re supposed to do,” she said. “Then it dawned on me that in this day
and age, there’s a move to keep your brilliant angel in preschool
longer so they could be smarter and taller for the basketball team. But
my daughter doesn’t need a leg up. She’s fine.” Still, it bothers her
that children in the same class are as much as a year and a half older
than Clare. “She has friends who are 11 who are going to get their
periods this year, and she’s still playing with American Girl dolls.”
Another mother complained that her 4-year-old became hooked on Hannah
Montana by her aspiring-tween classmates. A 6-year-old wielding a light
saber can be awfully intimidating to a boy who still sleeps with his
teddy.

At the other tip of
the age span, parents who promote children to kindergarten before 5 are
often seen as pushy, “even ogre-ish,” Messina said. But suppose your
child is already reading at 4? Do you hold her back where she may be
bored to tears in preschool or send her into a classroom of hulking
6-year-old boys? In 1970, 14.4 percent of kindergartners started at age
4. That figure has dropped to less than 10 percent.

The self-esteem
movement has inspired parents to care as much about emotional
well-being as academic achievement, and with fragile self-images still
in the making, the worst fear for parents is setting up their children
for failure. One Connecticut mother in Fairfield County sent her
October-born son to kindergarten at 4, despite “the informal rule of
thumb that everyone holds back their September to December boys.”
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.” Many parents feel compelled to redshirt by what
they see as unreasonable academic demands for 4- and 5-year-olds. But
keeping children in preschool, according to both academic research and
parental experience, doesn’t necessarily offer every advantage.
Jennifer Harrison, a mother of two from Folsom, Calif., held her
October-born son, Elliott, back so he “wouldn’t get labeled as out of
control.” Overall, she said, it was the right decision. “But his math
skills are far above those of his classmates.” How to attend to a
child’s myriad needs, and which should be the priority? “There don’t
seem to be any rules,” said Rebecca Meekma, a mother of two from Laguna
Beach, Calif. “People are saying, ‘I want him to be big in high school
for sports!’ What is that? You can’t know who they’ll be in high
school.” And what about children who aren’t Leo the Late Bloomer? “I
have met mom after mom who is intentionally holding her child back a
year,” said Jennifer Finke, a mother of two in Englewood, Colo. “They
say they don’t want their kids to be the youngest or shortest. Is that
right?

Is it fair?”
Finke’s son, Benjamin, is soon to start kindergarten at 5. “There will
be boys in his class who are a year or more older than him. They’ll be
bored in class and then the bar will be set higher,

and the kids who
are the right age will find that they can’t keep up.” What will happen
in gym when the larger boys are picked first for brute force, leaving
the pipsqueaks languishing? “I’m afraid my children will feel
inferior.” Not all parents can choose when their children begin
kindergarten. “Though redshirting is common in the suburbs, in
Manhattan, it’s the schools – not parents – who decide,” said Emily
Glickman, whose company, Abacus Guide Educational Consulting, advises
parents on kindergarten admissions. At New York City private schools,
the cutoff date is Sept. 1; in practice, summer babies, particularly
boys, generally enter kindergarten at age 6. “It’s a ramped-up world,”
Glickman said. “And the easiest way for schools to assure that their
kids do better is for them to be older and more mature.” Meanwhile, New
York City public schools have a firm age cutoff date of Dec. 31.
Kindergarten isn’t required by the state, so parents could keep their
children out, but then they would have to start the following year at
first grade. And not everyone can afford two to three years of nursery
school or day care.

“Among parents
here, there’s a tremendous demand for kindergarten earlier,” said Eva
Moskowitz, founder of the Harlem Success Academy Charter School, which
pushed its cutoff back to Dec. 1. “If these parents could start their
kids at 2, they would.” Not everyone, alas, defines academic privilege
the same way.

© 2010 New York Times News Service