Held back in school..... for sports?

I think there are definitely good reasons.

One of sozlet's friends is in this situation and people keep saying it was for sports. I don't think it was in his case. Same thing, his birthday is right after the cut-off (2-3 weeks ago), and he stayed in preschool an extra year before starting kindergarten.

He's an absolutely amazing athlete, and I guess that was always clear, but he also really did have emotional/ anxiety issues when he was littler. He and sozlet were in the same class in first grade, which was when I first met him, and he was having a really hard time disengaging from his security blanket (literal, not figurative). They put it under the carpet in the reading area, so he knew it was there, and he'd go ballistic if someone stepped on it.

He's now (fifth grade) a super-amazing athlete, popular, smart, etc. I think he really benefited from staying back a year.

He's been competing in some next-level sports leagues -- by age rather than by grade -- and excelling there too (won the local homerun derby with TWO actual over-the-fence home runs, against his age group + one year older). So he's not just good by comparison with kids who are younger than him but in the same grade.

He'll probably be amazing as a senior in high school but I know his mom and I think they made the right decision for the right reasons.

edit: anyway, while I think that was the right decision, the "right reasons" include "not just for sports." I think that socially/ emotionally it can help a lot, but it doesn't sit right to hold someone back purely so they can do better at sports.

Whew I'm tired, three "amazings." He is though

Yes, I have seen it done, especially for Football. I have also seen people move for only the purpose of their kid's sports (get into a different school). I have seen people change jobs and take major pay cuts only so that they could get their kids to sports (needed different hours). Just as we see with Beauty Pageants we often see with sports the entire life of the family revolve around sports, ie the attempt to create a prodigy.

I was essentially a year early all along and never knew anything about that.
I don't know what to say re good or bad - would depend on the child.

I will admit to snarffing about holding a child back for sports.

One more thought...

Sozlet went to preschool with a girl named Emma, the teachers encouraged her parents to keep her in preschool one more year and I definitely saw their point, the dad was vociferously opposed though and she has stayed in the same grade as sozlet. She's small for her age and socially behind a bit, and has had definite problems. Lacking access to alternate universes I have no idea whether things would have been better or worse for her if she'd stayed in preschool another year. But in that sample of two, the athlete dude seems to have come out ahead.

Basically I think it's important in some situations but I think it can get out of hand, with kids who are fine and would do fine regardless held back just because their parents want them to get a leg up. That has to stop at some point, as someone will always be the youngest in the class (and in kids, even 6 months can make a big difference in social/ emotional/ physical development). (I say, having just bought three pairs of new shoes for my kid since she had ZERO that fit anymore after a foot-specific growth spurt. I don't think she's taller, but boom she burned through 1.5 sizes.)

Some interesting thoughts. Thank you, all.

There is another discussion forum I visit. It has thousands upon thousands of users, many of them in the general forums are students. The topic of holding kids back in school came up several months ago (so I doubt I can find it since I didn't post in the discussion) and according to the young people being held back was a fate worse than death.

It was a kind of death in a way....... they didn't recommend it for anyone -- even the "cut off kids". Listening to them really changed my perspective. I'd probably pull Mo out of school altogether rather than do something like that at this point in his life.

I don't know about sports, but when Jane was first enrolled in Kindergarten,
any kid who was not 5 years old by September 1, had to wait another year. Jane's birthday was so close, September 18th, but they wouldn't budge and so we had to wait another year until she could enter Kindergarten.

At first I was upset but in hindsight it was probably better since Jane was so little and still so playful and wouldn't sit still for very long. It worked out all for the best.

Makes sense..saying that you have learning or behavior problems sucks, but saying that you are trying to game the sports competitions sucks too....there is no way to read that other than you want to win at all costs

Shudda mixed it up with some 'awesomes".

Tell your friend to have the kid concentrate on baseball and/or basketball, and leave American football alone. The sport produces a trail of human wreckage and lifespan for former football players, particularly for any who got as far as the pros, is more like 55 - 65 than the 70 - 90 which is normal for the rest of us.

Interesting. One of my cousins' kids - from the math/athletic side of the family as it later turned out - had to drop a grade for, yes, math. Mom has been long time dyslexic but done work arounds, used a tape recorder for university, later became a cpa; father, a big wig mech engineer. This kid became a high school teacher/literature. He's my fav "nephew". He spent time as vice principle and hated it, all punishment all the time, put himself back to teacher, where he thrives.

I've never talked with him about the drop back in elementary school (they lived miles away) but he was ok otherwise - those boys became life guards at CA beaches.

So, what? I think maybe the cut off or down grading has cultural significance and isn't really useful re later real life - except for the effects of the down grading and cultural significance.

Sort of a vicious circle.

It is nothing unusual and absolutely nothing to be ashamed of in Germany to repeat on school year.
There are many reasons for doing so and usually it does nothing but good for the child. I did it with my daughter and the result was nothing but good.
In Sweden when I went to school there was nothing to be ashamed of and I did it myself too. From being one of the yongest I was in the middle agewise afterwards , went from a class of about 30 to one with 16. All went just fine.
As a rule parents do not decide, but the school. Of course parents can decide too depending on the reason why you should repeat a year.
Parents who want their child to start early do not do them a favour - often they have to repeat a year when they get to be around 13 - 15.

As an addendum, that cousin who was/is dyslexic and used a tape recorder to get through college lectures got an 800 on the math sats (highest possible then) back when, pre getting her cpa years later. Which could help explain their perplexity with their son.. the guy who is now a teacher, not of math.
Picture the consternation in that house..

I can see why the kids at the other forum responded as they did to the thought of being held back. There was a kid, my closest friend when we were in the first grade, who was held back a year by his parents. He was already large for his age (we were both close to the "cut off" date, and we were both as physically large as our older peers), so that when he was held back, he became a giant among those younger kids. We had two first grades in our little school, and our teacher was an absolute saint, while the other was a nightmare. When they held him back, he spent his second first grade year with her.

He never developed an interest in sports. He had an easy-going nature, and to have been competetive with that new set of kids would have made a monster of him. Those kids just couldn't have competed with him--most of the kids in the set i remained with would have had a hard time competing with him. Thanks to the Wicked Witch of the West who was his second first-grade teacher, he never developed much of an interest in scholastic endeavors, either. He and i remained close friends (our birthdays were only two days apart, and both of us, being mere children, thought that significant), and were still friends into high school, although for obvious reasons we were often separated socially. It really didn't matter in his adult life--his father was a successful farmer, he had only one sibling, a girl, and so his father was able to set him up in a farm of his own right out of high school--something he apparently wanted. But socially, he always remained a loner, not fitting in anywhere.

I almost had the experience, too. My sixth grade teacher was a nightmare. She had taught the grade for so long, she had developed the mental age of her students. She announced that i would be held back, and my grandmother protested, and my aunt, her youngest daughter (only 13 years older than i am) went to bat with the school. Backed in a corner, the teacher claimed i had flunked because i had failed to complete a workbook and some assignments. The authority of the teacher is so great in people's minds that even my aunt was scolding me for this--i pointed out that i didn't have the workbook pages, so where were they? I could also show my work for the "term paper" she alleged i had never turned in. The fact of the matter is, in a corner over this, the teacher destroyed the evidence of the work i had done. So my aunt forced the principal to give me the opportunity to complete the work over the summer, and even he became suspicious when it was necessary to provide a new, unused workbook for me to complete the pages which were allegedly missing. The subject which she alleged i had flunked was "social studies"--essentially history. Even at that early stage in my life, people who looked closer into it began to question what had really happened because of my scholastic reputation, particularly in that subject.

I know that part is not germane to the specific situation you outlined, but it is germane to the question of how the child feels. I'd have been absolutely ruined as a student if i had been forced to accept being held back, the more so as i'd have had to pass another year with that lunatic woman (small school district, and at that point, there was only one sixth grade). It is definitely the greatest social humiliation for a kid--school is virtually their entire social universe. After that experience, i and my old companion from the first grade grew closer again--i now understood just how harrowing the experience had been for him. In the normal course of events, had he not been held back, he'd have been a sports star. Shorter than i am, he was compact and muscular (like most farm kids), and he'd have been a serious threat in football or baseball--basketball, not so much. I know he lost interest in competetive sports because, as he told me when i was in third and he was in second grade, he didn't want to hurt "the little kids."

Wow . . . blast from the past.

Usually you repeat/ed a class because your grades are/were very bad in math and languages or you have/had Fs in a certain amount of subjects.
To be able to learn all over again usually helps to understand better and keep up with the other kids.
Also if the class mates and you do not fit so well together or you have a teacher you really do not like.
I had a F in Swedish and that was the reason why I had to repeat a class - no matter what I had in the other subjects. Result - slowly got better and ended up leaving school with an A and some honoury gift.

Yeah.

Thank for writing that

It might interest you to know that within Europe there is a great difference in letting children repeat a year.
About 3% of all schoolchildren in Finland, Iceland and Great Britain do it.
Whereas about 30% of all children in France, Spain and Portugal do it.
I am sure that all children have the same IQ - not individually but nationally - and repeating a year or not is more of a national cultural thing than if the kids are bad or not.

I think timing makes a huge difference. An extra year of preschool is much different from being held back in 9th grade, for example.

Probably context too. It doesn't seem terribly uncommon here, I can think of three kids right off that I know about (in sozlet's grade) and there are probably more who I don't know about.

Kid one I already talked about, kid two is in a similar situation but is a less-amazing athlete (still popular etc.), kid three is more neutral but overall is doing well. Her main thing is bigness, she's bigger than most of the kids in her grade, and I don't think she loves that. But she's socially adept and seems to do well overall.

The boys had an extra year of preschool, the girl had an extra year of kindergarten.

totally