Say you have an 8 year old child who has signed up for an 8 and under soccer team.

How would you feel about a family who wanted their 9 year old child to be permitted to play on that team? And why?

It would depend on why they wanted him there. If he is developmentally younger, I could understand. I hate that kids have to be in certain grades, at certain ages. I have several each year in my K class, that clearly belong in Pre K.

Children should be grouped by ability and development, and not some magic age when they should be ready for something.

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If you are playing in a league or club, even recreational, they normally have rules for eligiblity and a firm cutoff date. The child's team is determined by the child's age 'on or before' a certain date. In soccer for my children's leagues it was always a cutoff of May 1...so, for spring soccer the child has to be 8 years old "on or before May 1, 2012" for example. The cutoff for softball was Jan 1. So in the leagues and clubs we were in, a 9 year old doesn't play on a U8 team but could play on a team of 10 or 11 year olds. You can play "up" but you can't play "down" out of fairness.

Your post reminded me of a story about this exact subject involving a former mayor and his 9 year old twin boys & I googled this

Worker Says He Was Fired For Angering DC Mayor | wusa9.com

We used to have a situation like that on my daughter's soccer team. There was a girl who was held back from Kindergarten because she had a late birthday, so she was a year older than everyone on the team but she was in their grade. As long as it was recreactional, she was allowed and it wasn't a big deal.

However, when the team went competitive, she had to leave because competitive is by age not grade, so she could no longer play with us.

I can see both sides. Although I don't know the reasons the parents for the child you are referring to want him/her to play on a younger team. If it's a rec team and they want to play with their friends, I can see that. However, if it's a older kid that they think they are in some way giving an advantage to, I don't get that...I'd think they'd want the kid to play against competition their own age. Not to mention it wouldn't be fair to the kids on the other team if this kid is really good or really big or something.

Lisa

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I probably didn't ask that quite like I meant to.

As the parent of an 8 year old child whose 8 year old soccer team suddenly had a handful of older, more mature and somewhat bigger nine year old kids on it, how would you feel about the situation?

My boys have always been bigger than the average kid their age (good grief, the 14 y/o is 6ft and wears a 14 shoe!! I can't buy his jeans off the rack anymore, too short!) And people have always wanted him to be w/ the older, bigger, more mature kids--wouldn't allow it then, would probably allow it now!

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Are the kids close in age? My grandson is just about the youngest in his classes at school and the youngest on all the teams he plays on, because his birthday falls a few days after the cut off date. One his good friends, who happens to be 4 inches taller, probably 30 pounds heavier, but is 6 weeks younger can't play sports with my grandson because his birthday is at the wrong time. He is also a year behind in school. Grandson is 11 and at times seem a little behind the other boys developmentally and socially. But he does seem to catch up eventually. The age thing is tricky. Chronological age doesn't always match ability, or social skills. My grandson is probably going to end up well well over 6 feet tall, but right now he is not even 80 pounds and height wise about in the middle of his peers. There are times when he seems a lot younger than the others and times when he matches them. I would give the kids the benefit of the doubt until I had a chance to judge if I thought they belonged on the team or really needed to be moved. Unless they are breaking some rules by being there.

Thanks for your thoughts, all. I gave the soccer example (it was a made-up one, by the way - my kids are way past 8! :0) ) but it could apply to a lot of things.

A friend and I were discussing situations when people hold their kids back because they feel they are not 'ready'... but a lot of the time, that's also coupled with, "I just feel like it will be an advantage to them to be one year older when they have that experience..." It happens in sports, in school, at camps, etc.

What I observed sometimes wasn't so much that it just gave held-back kids an *advantage*. It was also that it gave them an advantage *over* the 'right age' kids.

Two of my kids have very late summer birthdays, as do I. We didn't hold them back (and I wasn't held back). They've done fine academically and socially. I did, too.

I also have one with an early summer birthday who is about to graduate now, and we started her in the expected year at age 5. I was just mentally going over the class rankings for her classmates. I believe the kid ranked #1 is older for their class class and was held back (but he is taking easy classes, from what I understand). My own child is ranked #2. I have an awareness of who is in the 3rd, 4th, 6th, 7th, 9th, and 10th spots, and those kids all have birthdays that fall between May and October (yes, October - she started at four) who were five when they started school. They are taking advanced courses.

So at least 7 / 10 of the highest achievers in the class are students who were on the younger end of the spectrum for kids who fell within the expected 12-month range (the cutoff when they began was Oct. 28). I don't know who the 5th or 8th ranked kids are.

When those kids started K, there were several whose parents had kept them back a year because they felt it would give them an advantage. What I noticed - as a parent of a child who did not do that - was that the presence of those older kids altered the experience for the other kids in a big way. They were the oldest and most mature, oftentimes, so they got the speaking parts and the little solos, usually got to be the line leader, etc.

You always hear from the perspective of people who want to hold their kids back for whatever reason. Sometimes the kids truly are not ready. Sometimes it's the parents who are not ready. And sometimes, their kids would be absolutely fine but they are setting them up for that whole 'advantage' thing.

But I never hear that discussion from the perspective of 'right age' kids who wish their children could have their experience be unadulterated by the introduction of those older kids into the mix. That's why I used the soccer experiment. If your 8 year old was legitimately capable of being a starter on the 8 year old team... but if some nine year olds join the team and get those starting spots, it messes up the experience for the 8 year olds.

Obviously, having those older kids in there did not negatively impact the young-end-of-right-age summer-bday kids in my almost-graduating child's class, long-term. It also didn't put those older-entrant kids at a huge long-term academic advantage, either. And interestingly, through high school, I've noticed that several of the older kids in her class have ended up fitting in better socially with the kids a grade above the one they were in - the kids in the same age range as them.

You have to look at gender as well. Boys tend to develop more slowly early on, then start catching up early to mid teens. I had a boy and then a girl 32 months later. By the time she was 2, she was showing her older brother how to turn a door knob, escape from the car seats, and other things that, at that point, never occurred to him to try. They are both 40ish now and he is really smarter than her in many ways, but she is still more clever, if that makes any sense. I think most of the ones held back are boys.

There are advantages to holding some kids back, but there are disadvantages as well. For instance, sports teams go by age usually, not grade level, and unless they've changed, so do organizations like Boy Scouts.

There's also the problem of size at times. Kids are judged by their size and if you hold back a child who is likely to be taller than average, they will be thought of as sort of slow because why would that hulking child be in this class if they weren't slow? My daughter was not held back but she was tall and when she hit about age 9 or 10 it began to become obvious that it was, at times, a problem for her.

She was best friends with this petite girl and we were all at KMart one day just before Halloween. The employees were going through the store giving out candy. One lady came up, handed my daughter's friend several candy bars, turned to my daughter and said the candy was for kids under 12. Well they were both 10 and the petite girl was actually 3 months older than my daughter. Needless to say I stepped in, but I couldn't be at school with her every day and she had to learn to deal with that on her own. And when she hit 12 it really became a problem. She had 16 to 18 year old boys approaching her.

Interestingly, Wildwood, in our situation, it was our boys with the late summer birthdays. One ended up with a class rank that put him in the top 8%. The other is not yet at a point in his educational career where we know what his rank is. I would guess he is in the top 30%. He does fine - quite well in some subjects, and average in others.

The ones I mentioned in the class of my about-to-graduate child are, well, of the seven kids I could identify who had summer birthdays and are in the top ten in their class of 125 students, three are boys and four are girls.

Our daughter was just like me - the tallest in her class until 5th grade. I never grew an inch after that. I stopped at 5'6". She grew an inch beyond me, stopping in 8th grade. Like our youngest child, I was almost the youngest in the class, but was the tallest in the class for a very long time.

It would be a very intricate and involved study, but I would love to know the results of a study that measured family attitudes and the performance of kids in various situations. The kids that are close to graduating that I've been referencing all come from families whose philosophy is that they would rather have their kids experience a challenge than try to set them up for an advantage. It never occurred to me to hold ours back, though all were within the age range often associated with redshirting K. The parents of those other high-achievers were the same way. We all just had a foundational assumption that the kids would do well because it was 'time to send them to Kindergarten" and we had confidence that challenges can produce positive results. It wasn't a boot camp mindset or anything - just a quiet confidence and a willingness to be involved if a challenge seemed to daunting to our kids.

I have a friend who had a baby within three hours of when one of ours was born, and they were born on the cutoff day. RIGHT on the day. We sent ours, and she did not. Hers scores quite high for his grade on standardized tests, but is hard for her to motivate. She says, "This stuff is so easy for him - when I ask him the questions from his papers, he knows all the right answers! But it's like he just doesn't care! I would think you would eat it up if you knew you could get a 100 every time!"

It's purely anecdotal, I realize, and not evidence of any proven statistic. But I do wonder if he had NOT been held back and had to worry about whether he 'got it' or not (like mine child who is the same age does!) if it would've been something he had some motivation about.

I know that for me, from the time I started K, I had this 'thing' in my head about the fact that I was almost the youngest, but also wanted to be the smartest. This was 40 years ago when nobody held kids back, so everyone in my class was born within the same 12-month span of time... so the biggest gap was 11 1/2 months for us. It was a challenge that I never verbalized to anybody... but I wanted to do the best. I loved it when I got a higher score on something than somebody who was much older than me. By the time we graduated my GPA was good - not the highest in the class, but in the top few.

I kind of wish there had been a duplicate me in a parallel universe, but who had been held back a year.

I know there is no cookie-cutter answer, but I was just curious as to whether others had seen evidence that their expected-age children ended up with a disadvantage because they found themselves competing with kids whose parents were trying to create an 'advantage' for their children by placing them in groups that would ensure they were the oldest.

I think motivation is either a genetic trait or sometimes can be developed with the right parenting, at least to some degree. But I also think there are people who can not be motivated at all. There are few absolutes.

My son, who just turned 42 was held back. It was actually fairly common in this part of the world. He was too socially immature if I remember right. It was not a great choice, one that I would not make if I had it to do over. But, at that time, I knew little about development. The school tested each kid and made strong recommendations. I had doubts but the school said it was best, and my husband agreed so I went along. But, the other kids knew who was held back and it was a stigma. My son is highly intelligent, but I'm not sure to this day that he truly feels he is. I think he knows he is, but doesn't always feel he is, if that makes any sense. I also think that the problems he had might not have occurred if he had been put in his original class but that there would have been a different set of problems to take their place. Socially he was immature. That would have been a big problem.

In fact that is what I see with my grandson now being one of the younger ones in his class. But he catches on quickly and goes with the flow. His sports teams have given him confidence. He can watch how all the other boys act and do the same even if he is not sure why. Whereas my son was not an athlete so he didn't do much with sports and didn't join things. He was the geeky kid who loved setting up dominoes to fall down. In grade school the principal let him spend a day setting up thousands of them and then had the whole school come watch them fall down. He was so excited. He was also the wheeler dealer. He would have been that procurement sgt. in the army who always was trading and making deals to get the supplies to his guys. He did much better with adults than with the kids his own age. They were always impressed with him.

Boy I do run on don't on don't I? Sorry about that.

LOL - you aren't running on as much as me!

From my perspective, the goal is the end game - how are they going to turn out as adults.

My friend who held hers back always knew that she was going to hold him back, from the minute she learned she was pregnant and did the math regarding his birthdate. I already had one August kid in school, and my mindset was, "WHEW! Made the cutoff by ONE DAY!" lol

It never occurred to me that my child *wouldn't* do okay, and it always occurred to my friend that her child 'might not' do okay and she didn't want to risk that.

We don't live in the same place so it's hard to compare their performance, but I know my own has developed good study habits because he really needs to, and hers has always breezed through stuff and seemed to lose interest in about the 3rd grade.

My brother was very young for his class. The cutoff was in November and his bday was right up against it. My parents started him because they envisioned the kids in his class being a good social circle for him. We lived in a small town and his K class consisted of 15 kids, and four of them were boys he had pre-existing connections with. He was in the age range and knew some of the kids very well and so it didn't occur to them not to start him. As it turned out, at least one of those boys became quite the hotshot and was pretty ugly to my brother in ways that made it unpleasant, which is especially bad when your class is so small to begin with. His better friends ended up being the boys in the grade behind him.

Now he's an adult with a masters degree working at a university... so it all worked out okay in the end.

I guess it makes me really second-guess the whole 'readiness' thing. People get so up in arms over placement for this reason or that reason, and the reasons they think they see in a five year old will not exist in that same way even in six months.

I can't help but think of one mom who had her daughter do three years of Pre-K (at 3, 4, and 5) and opted not to start the little girl because of her size - she was so small and didn't want her to be seen as the peewee. Well... that girl graduated last year, and she's STILL small. It wouldn't have mattered one iota.

I will say this: I really, really, really, really, really hate seeing middle schoolers driving to school. I don't like the fact that when some kids are held back and start at age 6, they reach the age where they can drive before the end of their 8th grade year.

Wow! Middle schoolers driving to school. I need to do some math here. Don't think that can happen here. Ty is 11 and in 6th grade. Middle school is three years. He will be 13, a month shy of 14 when he's done with middle school. If he were on the older end of the scale and held back that would add two years and he would be about to turn 15. Too young here for driver's permit.

As for the peewee girl, people tend to be protective of small people, girls in particular.

Sounds like that was mom's problem. That was also the case with my daughter's friend that I mentioned earlier. She is just one of those people that others want to take care of.

My mother-in-law was like that as well. She was chubby, had a Scandinavian complexion with beautiful white hair from the time she was in her thirties. As she got older, people would volunteer to do all sorts of stuff for her that didn't know her. She got stranded at JFK one night, years ago, for something that was entirely her own fault and one of the flight attendants took her home for the night so she wouldn't have to sit in the airport all night. Stuff like that never happens to me or anyone else much that I know of. She had this winning smile and everyone thought she was so sweet. And she could be, but she could also be a bit** at times, to the very people who were helping her, at least behind their backs.

Back to the kids. I decided a long time ago that my kids would have turned out pretty much the same whether I had been doing the parenting or not. Sure some differences, but not many. I think nature is a much stronger influence than nurture. I see my son acting a certain way and it rings a bell and I say to myself you are acting just like your uncle. Or my daughter will start charming someone and I see my mother-in-law. They are who they were meant to be.

Yes - here kids who live outside the city limits can have school permits at age 14.

Funny about your MIL!

I am on the opposite side of the fence insofar as nature vs. nurture goes. I know without a doubt nature plays a part. We have too many adopted people on both sides of the family who met their birth parents later in life and had a lot of, "Whoa! You do that, too??" moments. But those things were more characteristics, mannerisms, bents towards different skills, etc. Their values, their level of confidence or lack thereof, faith, etc., tended to align with the families that reared them.

I had a great-great-aunt who gave up an infant she never even held for adoption in the 30's, and she 'found' our family a decade or so ago, after her bio mom was deceased. Their similarities were pretty freaky. The things they collected and some very unusual crafts that they had made out of recycled objects (2L pop bottles) were identical. They both were rather obsessed with the same not-that-big-of-a-deal-to-the-rest-of-us holiday and decorated for it in a huge way.

I have one thing to add to this fascinating conversation. What holiday are you referring to wow??? LOL

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Melissa

All kids can get a learners permit at 14 here. Both my girls started driving in 8th grade (a licensed adult has to be in the front seat with them). They can then get a restricted license at 15 years old with 50 hours of practice driving and drivers ed and can drive to/from school & work!

Lisa

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If you are really interested in this topic, I think there was a chapter devoted to this very subject in Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers. He thinks that age does give a huge advantage and gives a lot of examples to prove it. Here's a link to a review -- somewhat critical IMHO:

Why Malcolm Gladwell Thinks We Have Little Control Over Our Own Success -- New York Magazine

Very interesting!

And I guess, going back to my question...

He discusses the younger kids in a class having a disadvantage because they are the youngest. My observation was that with some kids who had parents seeking to create the 'advantage' of age for their child who was going to be on the young end of his own class, well... his presence creates for those 'right age' kids the very disadvantage he's eliminating for himself. If he's to have an *advantage*, it has to be an advantage *over* somebody else. So if he's not going to have an advantage naturally, then he creates it on the back of somebody who as a result, becomes disadvantaged.

Well, since you can never completely level any playing field, inequity and disadvantage is an inevitable part of life. There will always be someone richer, smarter, faster, older, or who had better coaching than you did. On the other hand, there will also always be someone poorer, dumber, slower and less privileged.

Why not take all the wealth in the world and re-distriibute it? Why not make all the pretty girls have breast reduction surgery and Tom Brady take performance diminishing drugs so that we can all have the same chance at hot guys and the Super Bowl?

I understand what you are asking, Wow, (I think) but it comes down to human nature and the tendency in America to be an extremely competitive society in so many areas. Would it be better if every game was "win-win"? I guess i am still thinking about that one

I guess I'm of the "unless there is some really obvious reason to divert things, ya play the hand you're dealt" kinda mom. :-)

You're absolutely correct - there will always be variances.

It's just situations where parents say, "We want our kid to be TOPS in the class, and he can't be tops in the class he's supposed to be in, so we're going to put him back with your kid so he can beat somebody out and have some confidence... 'kay?" that I'm not fond of. lol

In my sports scenario in the OP, what I was thinking that if I had an 8 year old competing against other 8 year old kids, whether he ended up at the top or bottom of the pack, I wouldn't feel like the deck had been stacked against him.

But if the parents of kids a year older than him said, "We want our kid to be tops, and he can't be if he's with the other 9 year olds, so we're going to put him down with the 8 year olds so he can be a starter."

Um... and kick some legitimately-8-year-old kid out of a spot? I think not! lol

We had that situation in reverse last year. Grandson was on baseball team that was 11U but at the time he was 9. He was not the best player on the team, but by far not the worst. Coach needed to cut someone and the three worse player's dads were all assistant coaches, and all required to play in that age bracket, so grandson was cut. Coach handled it well. No feelings were hurt. Grandson was mad for a little while, but he quickly found another team. (They have tryouts at that age of all things), and he has much better coaching now and is playing much better. So it all ended well. As you said, he played the hand he was dealt and it worked out.

That example is not school so it's not exactly the same, but we don't care what the kids in his classes are doing except when they are acting out. We just expect a certain grade to come home on that report card. He is competing only against himself at school. My daughter will ask him what kind of grades the other kids got on a test, but that is to judge whether the test was hard, or whether he just missed the boat. He wants ferrets and he won't get them if there are not all A's. Frankly Grandma is going to buy some ferrets if there happens to be one B in amongst the A's. That's what Grandmas are for.

Rules are rules, they have to play in their age bracket, no matter what, even if they miss the cut-off by a day. My daughter plays travel team softball and school softball, we always play by the travel team rules, she now plays on a 16U team. Our school plays softball summer league and those kids are up to 19, so you have 14 year olds playing against 19 year olds. It works out, our school team came in 2nd place against a travel team and the travel team let kids who had already graduated from school play with them, our school doesn't, they work with the kids who are going to be in school the next school year to get them ready for fall ball.

Once they get into junior high and high school, it doesn't really make a difference, they are going to be playing with all age groups. My daughter was 15 and went into high school this past year (which is 10-12 grade here) and is playing with 14-18 year olds. If your good you will get a starting position, doesn't matter how old you are, or what grade you're in, if not you won't. It was the same way in junior high. She was the starting pitcher in junior high, now she's not and I wouldn't expect her to be, although when the starting pitcher was injured, she held her own and they still won many games, but the starting pitcher is bigger, older and better and she took back over when she was better. My daughter still had a starting position in every game, but in another position. If you train, work hard, you're coachable, don't have an attitude and you're good then you get to play, if not then you sit the bench. If you have too bad of an attitude or you goof off too much, don't show up for practice, etc. then you get kicked off the team.

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Wildwood, that's one bad thing about the travel teams and Little League teams, most of the coaches have kids on the teams and you know their kids are always going to have a spot on the team no matter how bad they are. Fortunately when they get older they have to be better or they just don't cut it, but they can still be some of the worst on the team and be better than the average player at my daughter's age 16.

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I agree with the "playing with the hand your dealt." Kids need to learn that losing is okay, they will NOT be the best at everything they try and if you want something bad enough, WORK for it.

There's a big difference between a "dealt hand" and a "forced hand". The first example jbrockett posted would be a "forced hand". Tom Brady has the talent, Tom Brady gets the position. Period.

I'm not sure when all this "everyone is a winner!" was starting to be taught to kids. I know when I went through school and competitions or sports, *I* had to be the best to win. If I was not, then I wasn't. If I wanted to be the best or win badly enough, I worked harder to try and get it.

How does a kid ever learn to appreciate winning, feel that wonderful sense of achievement and accomplishment if "everyone is a winner!" I feel like whoever thought up that concept surely did not want to be bothered WORKING for anything - just hand it over.

And now parents are trying to get their children involved in lower aged sports just to give their kids and advantage? That's just pathetic and should not be allowed. What a lousy example to set for your kid. A parent wants their kid to be tops? Completely understandable. But teach the kid to work HARDER for what they want, don't shove them into a lesser group. If the kid doesn't want to work harder, then tough, that sport isn't for them.

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