So, I sent my new fourth-grader to school in a red shirt -- but I never "redshirted" him.

After reading this article in Sunday’s New York Times the other day, by Sam Wang and Sandra Aamodt, about “redshirting” kindergarteners (that is, keeping them back a year if their birth date falls near the cut-off date, leaving them “young” for their class), I did one of those silent victory-arm-pump things in my kitchen: I had been right! Okay, well, at the very least, my own decision to send my sons to kindergarten at 4-and-three-quarters was validated: Manipulating school start dates may seem on the face of it to be yet another attempt to give your child an edge — who hasn’t heard writer Malcolm Gladwell’s contention, in his best-selling book Outliers, that January and February babies, usually the oldest in their classes, do better in life? We perhaps think an extra year in preschool will allow our younger-than-fives to get physically bigger, socially more savvy, and just, well, smarter; another year to get ahead on reading and writing. I always felt as though doing so was gaming the system for no real gain. According to these writers — authors of Welcome to Your Child’s Brain: How the Mind Grows From Conception to College — not only is the gain negligible, it actually comes with some losses, for all the kids.

This is particularly resonant right now, as both my boys’ birthdays are coming up in the next several weeks, both of them pushing the edge of the cut-off date for our district, which is December 1. And both are — of course — boys. Approximately 300 people (possible exaggeration; who remembers?!) asked me, as both were approaching kindergarten, if I was going to “hold them back.”

Hell to the no!

My oldest was actually a good case-study for considering a hold-back. A late talker, a November baby boy, a slightly (well, maybe quite a bit more than “slightly”) socially spacey kid, it would seem, if you believe the notion that boys are slower and less-quickly socialized than girls, that my boy was the ideal candidate for another year of prep-by-preschool. But here’s the thing with him: It was because of his developmental delays that I wanted to get him into kindergarten as soon as it was age-appropriate. He’d been in daycare since he was 19 months old, had been getting speech therapy since 23 months, and had been going to a special-ed preschool five days a week for two years by the time he was “ready” for K. If I held him back, what was I supposed to do with him?

Beyond the practical issues (what would he be doing in yet another preschool setting?) and the financial ones (boy, was I was looking forward to my daycare/preschool bill going down to one kid), I asked myself: Did I care if my child was the one presumably behind the eight-ball? And honestly, I didn’t — especially when you put the emphasis on the “presumably”: by whose metric might he be “behind”? Behind what, or whom? Yes, he was going to spend the first two months of kindergarten as a four year old, but he already knew the basic going-to-school drill: he was familiar with the bus, the backpack, sharing crayons at a table with other kids, and washing his hands before snack.

And despite the often-discussed fact that kindergarten is far more academically rigorous now than it was when I went (I like to say, and I mean it, that what I did in kindergarten back in 1971 is essentially what my sons did in daycare when they were three), those things I mentioned above? The backpack, the sharing, the predictable routines, the Pledge of Allegiance and hand-washing and circle time, and generally recognizing your environment and the other people in it? That’s all a kid needs to know when he gets to kindergarten. Everything else, as my son’s teacher wisely told me, they catch up on.

And if it takes a while for them to catch up? What’s the harm?

My second boy also started K at the tender age of four, though there’s much less that’s tender about my second son than my first. Mr. Social Butterfly (the “preferred friend” in his daycare), my younger kid was less a candidate for red-shirting. That said, aside from being calendar-age young, he’s also physically small (now a second grader, he’s the same size as some kindergarteners, my Skinny Minnie, and yes I know I shouldn’t call him that but I can’t help it; he’s such a squirt). He wasn’t great at some of the things that, according to popular wisdom put him at a disadvantage in kindergarten. For example, he wrote many of his letters backwards. He wasn’t great at scissoring, or coloring. And even though he’d spent the large majority of his young life in nearly full-time, out-of-the-house care, kindergarten tuckered him out in the first few weeks; his teacher told me he’d just lay his head down on the table at the end of the day, without a word (I know, cute, right?).

This may be either radical or mean of me to say, but honestly, much as I want my children to succeed in school and out, I don’t care if they’re the top or the best or the one with the best advantages, including this age thing. That’s why I did it, why I sent two relatively immature four-year-olds to kindergarten. The way I look at it, there are cut-off dates in every district, and school systems everywhere have their reasoning (which they change, too, from time to time). Given that there will always be some cut off or other, this means that some kids are going to be the young ones, and some are going to be the older ones.

Some will be, as in my older boy’s kindergarten class, the December and January and February Alpha girls who startled me with their wordliness and chattiness and (yes, even at 5) cattiness. Some will be like another November boy in that class, who didn’t talk at all. I spent some time in that classroom, helping out about once a month and you know what? Those Alpha girls would give me the lay of the land, telling me that (swear this is true) my son was the “best” boy; or that that boy (the other November baby) “doesn’t talk.” Not to be mean, just to clue me in. So I felt as though I were adding my child into a larger mix — from whom he’d learn, but also to whom he could offer a few lessons of his own (specifically, that not all boys are loud and they don’t all push, tease, or jostle).

Which was exactly what this article says is missing when parents try, en masse, to remove the younger, so-called disadvantaged kids from kindergarten classrooms. What’s lost in the evaluation parents make about whether their particular child might be a jump ahead by being the oldest instead of the youngest is an emphasis on how children actually learn. A classroom full of fully-five and close-to-six year olds might be easier for the teacher to handle, Wang and Aamodt write. That’s nice, though it doesn’t last. And when the work is relatively easy for these held-back kids or just plain older kids, they may try less hard. As for the younger kids: they are challenged by emulating the older ones (which is why it might be an advantage in some cases, the writers contend, to have a very bright child skip ahead a grade).

They also point out that kids’ brains, being so absorbent and busy in this age range, will basically be hanging around with nothing much to learn if they spend another year in preschool, waiting for their bodies or their “social skills” to catch up. It seems that younger kids like mine benefited from the increased in rigor from preschool to kindergarten, even if they had to be a little socially bewildered (my older boy) or tired out (his little brother).

They write:

Parents who want to give their young children an academic advantage have a powerful tool: school itself. In a large-scale study at 26 Canadian elementary schools, first graders who were young for their year made considerably more progress in reading and math than kindergartners who were old for their year (but just two months younger). In another large study, the youngest fifth-graders scored a little lower than their classmates, but five points higher in verbal I.Q., on average, than fourth-graders of the same age. In other words, school makes children smarter [my emphasis].

So it’s sort of ironic: the kids who benefit most from red-shirting are the younger kids in the next year’s class, who get the boost of learning from older classmates who should have started kindergarten a year earlier.

As they approach their seventh and ninth birthdays, I know my boys notice their relative youth; one of the first things my new fourth grader did in school this year was check the birthday chart, and he was quite happy to report that there are three other November birthdays — all later than his. Awesome.

A long while ago, I wrote a post about how much more involved parents of my generation are in our kids’ schooling and schools than my parents — well meaning as they were — ever were in mine. As my kids have progressed through more school since then, it’s naturally remained on my mind. Just the other day, my third-grader brought home a book-report project with glowing reviews from the teacher. It was neat! It was comprehensive! It was clearly written! The accompanying diorama of the Titanic was fun and detailed!

So where’s my grade? Admission time: I made the diorama. It was my plan, though it was executed with the help of my son (he stuck the silver star stickers on the black-construction-paper night-sky background; he stuck the “HMS Titanic” stickers on the wooden boat that started as a $1 craft kit from Michael’s). In truth, I didn’t mind doing it, because the meat of the book report — actually writing about the book he’d read, a Magic Treehouse volume — was his responsibility; all I did was make sure he was following the directions of this particular project.

But when it came to the obligatory art-portion of the project … I had to step in. Thing is, he’s not good with the scissors the glue and the glitter, and never has been. Neither am I, frankly, but at least I have 36 years more experience in life as well as in crafts than he does, plus I can drive to Michael’s. My family is full of creative, artistic types, people with 3-dimensional imaginations and skillful patience with things like this. I did not get that gene. (Which is why, though my parents didn’t otherwise get involved to the level of showing up monthly in the classroom to be a secret reader or lead career discussions, my dad — who did get the art gene — “helped” us often, including a social-studies project on Inca farming, involving an overturned flowerpot covered with clay fashioned into a mountain slope, and a bottle of homemade shampoo with a creatively designed label he “helped” my sister make for a science fair).

Anyway, I’m thinking my “grade” as a parent would be respectably high. But in all the swirl lately surrounding how well (or, let’s face it, poorly) American kids are doing in comparison with the world, the focus may be shifting from demonizing teachers (No Child Left Behind, anyone?) to parents, at least in some cases: I was reading Lisa Belkin’s New York Times Motherlode column the other day, entitled “Whose Failing Grade Is It?”. It’s all about current legislative pushes in a couple of states to “grade” parents on such criteria as showing up (or not) to parent/teacher conferences, or being sure their children are well-prepared for school.

At first I thought, well, I’d get good marks! And then I realized that at least some of what these state legislators are asking parents to do (and hoping to punish them for not doing) are things my folks did at their minimum level of school involvement (i.e., not including 3-D Inca farming models or shampoo recipes): fill us with breakfast, pack us our lunches, make sure we had enough sleep, crack the whip when we dragged our heels over homework, show up to conferences. The difference from then to now, or one of them, is that while my parents did those things, they were leaving all the rest of it, for good or ill, up to the teachers.

Maybe this shift of blame is inevitable, as teachers have been taking the brunt for a while now, but I don’t think it bodes well.

As Belkin writes:

Teachers are fed up with being blamed for the failures of American education, and legislators are starting to hear them. A spate of bills introduced in various states now takes aim squarely at the parents. If you think you can legislate teaching, the notion goes, why not try legislating parenting?

It is a complicated idea, taking on the controversial question of whether parents, teachers or children are most to blame when a child fails to learn.

But the thinking goes like this: If you look at schools that “work,” as measured by test scores and graduation rates, they all have involved (overinvolved?) parents, who are on top of their children’s homework, in contact with their children’s teachers, and invested in their children’s futures. So just require the same of parents in schools that don’t work, and the problem is solved (or, at least, dented), right?

Time was that children’s behavior in the classroom reflected on their “upbringing” and parents were expected to reinforce an accepted truth that “teacher knows best.” But today’s parents are just as likely to see the teacher as the problem — a view that has been reinforced by presidents who accuse teachers of leaving more than a few children behind, governors who want to eliminate their collective bargaining and mayors who want to be rid of laws that protect teachers who have been in their jobs the longest.

I gotta say, I agree. Blame, if we want to use that word, should be shared all around, and there should be a realization that zeroing in on one individual or group for systemic problems doesn’t get any of us anywhere good. We can all point fingers and offer bad grades, but that doesn’t help put our kids on par with students in, for example, Singapore or China, who in some areas are blowing us out of the water.

What do you think? And what are you expected to do for your kids in their schools?

So, last weekend my family and I were up in the Catskill Mountains, in upstate New York, at a family-style resort we’ve been going to, on and off, my whole life (my dad used to go there as a teen, that’s how long we’ve been patrons of this particular spot). By “family” I mean a lot of us–my parents, my sister, her boyfriend, her kids, her boyfriend’s kid, my brother and his wife and new-ish baby, and me and my boys.

I’ve written about this sort of vacation before, and I’ll write about the whole multi-generational family vacay again, I’m sure, but for now I bring it up because it was yet another chance for my boys to take in little tiny lessons about money. Specifically, the quarters they asked for so they could feed the machines in the game room and increase their stash of rubber bracelets, fake rings, and sticky frogs. As it was vacation, we were liberal with dips into our pockets for extra quarters after they ran out of the modest amount they extracted from their piggy banks at home.

But it was interesting to watch, especially as I’d just written a piece for the website DailyWorth.com about teaching small money lessons to kids. Not big teaching moments: we weren’t drawing up lessons about compound interest or how the Fed works (which I don’t always get myself). But little ones, like the value of a quarter, a dollar, a couple of bucks. Here’s what I wrote for DailyWorth:

I like to treat my five- and seven-year-old sons, but I don’t want them to believe Silly Bandz fall from heaven, or that my wallet is a magic dollar dispenser. So every time they troll the grocery store with me or get tempted by the snacks for sale at summer camp, I try to impart little money lessons—and they’re actually adding up.

• Dollars and sense. Candy and ice cream at day camp are usually a dollar or less, and my sons didn’t understand why I was reluctant to just hand over a buck or two. So I totted it up for them: $1 per boy, per day, comes to $10 a week. That number produced newfound respect for how much their snacks really cost. And respect is where responsible spending starts.
• Size matters. The other day, I tossed a loaf of raisin bread in the grocery cart, remarking that it cost $3.50 a loaf. My seven-year-old piped up: “The Subway sandwich at camp is $3.50.” Ding! “That’s one sandwich,” I said. “This is a whole loaf of bread—breakfast for you and your brother all week.” And he got it. I could see him mentally comparing the idea of all those breakfasts against a measly six-inch hero.
• No matter how you slice it… I sometimes let the kids buy pizza ($2 a slice)—but I usually stop them at one slice (they want more for competition’s sake with their friends, not because they’re hungry). I tell them: $2 may not be much money, but $4 is too much for a lunch they won’t finish, especially when I have perfectly good food at home. I have to repeat myself (often!), but the other day I heard my older son say to the little guy, “You don’t need two slices of pizza for lunch, you know.”

Of course, I get regular reminders that this is a big learning curve for them—and me. Yesterday was supposed to be Carnival Day at camp, and I gave the kids $5 for the games and activities. Well, the carnival was postponed due to bad weather, but guess who spent the $5 on candy anyway? Sigh. One step forward, two steps back.

Since the last time we went upstate to this particular resort, in those ancient, lovely mountains, we didn’t have a lot of things. We didn’t have, for example, the experience of my father undergoing (successful!) surgery for lung cancer. We also didn’t have my newest nephew, Nico, or know what college my older nephew Nicholas was going to. The point is, we’re growing, we’re changing, we’re together.

And we’re thrifty!

Have you read this article in the New York Times yet? It’s by writer and psychologist Alison Gopnik, and it’s gotten a bunch of media play in the last few days, because it’s about something supposedly revolutionary: Babies, Gopnik asserts, are quite a bit smarter than we think.

I’m pretty sure I knew that already. I mean, I knew it already because it’s not exactly new news (though the research Gopnik cites, some of it her own, from the University of California, Berkeley, where she’s a psychology professor, is new). I know that science has discovered amazing things about a baby’s inborn capabilities, and how those capabilities blow out of the water our previous beliefs about newborns–that they are basically inert lumps, taking in food from one end and pooping it out at the other, little more than  adorable amoeba. But I also knew it because I’ve seen my own babies at work, so to speak.

The first time I held James, my younger boy (well, maybe the second time; the first time, I was still numb from unwanted C-section surgery to remember much), I saw something familiar in his eyes. There was a knowing glint in those newborn eyes, I swear. “This one’s trouble,” I said to my husband later. James was sharp as a tack from the get-go, and he hasn’t let up since. Here he is, at two months (a different mom would claim he’s counting to one with that raised pinkie!):

My smart baby James. Just what is he planning in that elastic brain of his?

All of which makes me feel better about the fact that I haven’t tried all that hard in the intervening years to “boost” my babies’ learning.

The biggest example is, of course, Mommy & Me or Gymboree and other, similar classes meant to give babies a chubby leg up on a lifetime of learning. I didn’t do it. The only foray I made into that whole arena were a few free Mommy & Me-style classes at my local library, which I’ve mentioned before on this blog. I never really liked them much. The woman who ran the classes was a little too into the whole thing, for one; but more important, when it came to the craft portion of the session, she seemed to expect us moms to do the gluing and the folding and whatever, and I frankly am not into that kind of mom-directed art project stuff.

Mostly, I didn’t follow up on other classes because they didn’t fit into our schedule. At the time, we were new to our town, and I was working three days a week at my old editing job in the city (Daniel, then one, was home with a nanny). The baby and I had two weekdays together, and no car (the library happened to be in walking distance, or I wouldn’t have done that, either). We stuck close to home by necessity, but also by temperament — mine. I’ve never been a joiner. Also, though I can’t underestimate baby classes’ value for breaking up the tedium of life at home with a baby, I’ve always been skeptical of anyone who asserts that babies need them. At best, I find all those classes a crashing bore; at worst they felt like a replay of junior high, but with babies in tow. I never quite fit in; I wasn’t a full-time working mom or a stay-at-home mom, but a curious hybrid of both. (See what I mean about junior high? How would I find the right kind of friends? Easier to just avoid the whole thing.)

Gopnik makes the point in her piece (and the research bears this out) that babies and young children (say, under 4 or 5) can’t focus on just one thing, and that in fact, that’s not how they learn best. Their brains are elastic (I love that image!), filled with neuronal connections that allow them to explore and take in what their senses offer them with no preconceived ideas of how things should look, taste, react, feel or sound like. It’s all new, it’s all stimulating, and it’s all good. Even preschoolers aren’t really “learning” as much from the journal-keeping and flash-card-working that many of them do in school (or at home!). They’re learning by hanging around with their peers in the classroom, or with their siblings and parents back at home; by watching, by listening, and above all by playing.

Another Mean Mommy relief moment! My instinct (to not be a mommy-joiner; to not feel I have to get on the boost-baby’s-brain bandwagon; to do my own thing at home even if all I’m stimuating my child with is the sight of me folding towels or doing a Pilates DVD) was on target.

Gopnik mentions a famous experiment in which children and adults were asked to watch a video of two people tossing a ball back and forth, and count how many tosses they saw. Some time into the video, someone in a big gorilla suit walks slowly across the set. Guess who notices the gorilla and who remains focused on the counting task?

So I guess you can say by not doing more classes (and by using those insane Baby Einstein DVDs not as learning tools but as a mommy-needs-a-shower-break) I’m giving my kids a chance to see the many gorillas walking across the scene that they may otherwise have missed.

Do you think classes make your baby smarter?