On Saturday night, I took my book and my iPad to the Middle School gym. I was in an anti-social mood, so I sat in the upper most seat in the bleachers as I watched Jonah's basketball game. I waved at the gaggle of moms down below, but I didn't bother to go over to engage in the niceties.
Jonah isn't a bad soccer player, but on the basketball court, he's all enthusiasm and no technique. He runs around the court, wildly waving his hands to block the opponent's shots, but if the ball accidentally ends up in his hands, he looks horrified. He passes it off as frantically as he can. He's the Ed Grimley of the basketball court. Sorry, Jonah, but genetics are a bitch.
This is a recreation basketball league, so it's not that competitive. All of the other kids on his team are equally uncoordinated, except for one.
The one sporty kid had a couple of his fellow football jock buddies in the stands watching him. After each quarter, the three sporty boys grabbed three of the free balls and took shots together at the center hoop. The eleven other kids on the team shared one ball and took shots in the corner.
The sporty kids didn't acknowledge the presence of the other kids on the court, kids that they had known since Kindergarten. The other boys were invisible. The sporty kids made their shots. Swish. And loudly congratulated each other. While the other boys looked longingly at the balls that they needed, they were too afraid to ask for them back. It was naked power.
These boys were top of the heap, because they were all on the football team. They weren't especially good looking or smart or charming or well dressed, but they did have several inches on the other boys. Their moms had held them back a year to give them an edge in sports. They had formed a tight, exclusionary group with boundless confidence. They were eleven-year old frat boys, and I wanted to hit them.
Apt. 11d 
Where was the coach?
I’m not a “sports mom,” but as I age it seems to me that bad behavior on the part of sporty kids is aided and abetted by coaches and other adults.
At a minimum, the coach should have encouraged the sporty kid to practice with the other members of his team–and to keep the football team members in the audience.
You should read Bob Bigelow’s book, Just Let the Kids Play. I’ve heard him speak. He made a strong case that, for boys, adolescence makes an enormous difference. Before adolescence, the most one can say is the “sporty kids” are the “least worst” players.
Some of the uncoordinated boys on the team might have the potential to be great players, once they gain their adult height.
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Uhhhh!Frat boys are bad enough, but 11 yr old frat boys- Uh!
Must suck though to be “king of the heap” at age 11- in most cases, your “power” decreases as other skills and talents become more important until ,by age 30, you have way less power than those geeky boys and girls you tormented as a 11 yr old.(or is that just my geeky non-popular girl self hoping that’s the way it works out?)
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Why only four balls for fourteen kids? Decrease the scarcity and you change the social dynamic too, at least partly. Smack the parents, too, for holding their kids back like that. And did the coaches see this dynamic and just ignore it?
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Wait, their *moms* had held them back? Their fathers weren’t involved in the decision?
And do you actually know that they were held back because their moms wanted them to have an edge in sports? No worries about their ability to sit still at age 5? No worries about their ability to read, to follow directions, etc?
Or are you just observing that the result of their being ahead on their growth curves–being bigger and stronger than their classmates–is the goal that their mothers envisioned five years ago.
I’m considering whether my kid, with an October birthday, will be ready for school when he’s 4-almost-5. It has nothing to do with athletics. (Given his parentage, he doesn’t have a lot of hope of being an athletic star no matter when he starts school.) But he isn’t assertive, and he’s *very* kinetic.
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Around here it’s called ‘redshirting’ and I think it’s a 2 edged sword. I noticed it a lot for a kid at my kids’ day care, he was going nuts at 6 with picture books being read to the group and naps, and groups of 4yos running around and shrieking. I’ve seen him since in local league play – don’t think he’s doing either particularly well or particularly poorly. But God he had a boring last year in nursery school.
Get Jonah a truly garish basketball – one of the ones with alternating yellow and green panels, or with a team name on it, so it is unquestionably HIS and everyone knows it. Bring it to the games with him, and he and his guys can play with it.
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I grew up in a rural area and know that the sporty people are always at the top. I was never athletic, and therefore was way down the social ladder. My cousin however, was the captain of both volleyball & basketball teams in our small town and she was unquestionably the queen bee of not just the school, but our small town of 3000 with her tentacles reaching all the way to adjacent communities.
When my daughter started kindergarten in a small rural school and I realized that they had no music program, but had gym class in kindergarten, that clinched it. We moved to the city. If she enjoys and is good at sports thats great, but I want her to feel just as good about herself if she doesn’t.
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I was going to say the same thing as dave s. Get a ball…
I think another point is parents, namely 75% of my girls pre-school class, holding their kids back “just because”. The inequality is astounding to me, where are schools/administrators etc on this issue. On little boy will be 7 in kindergarten, 7 and will join the bully group I am sure.
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Jonah is a June birthday and is among the youngest of all of his friends. How do I know the parents held their kids back to get an edge in sports? One of the moms told me that she did. The dads don’t seem to have much input on school related issues. Why didn’t the parents step in? They were busy talking or just didn’t want to bother. Why don’t they tell their kids that they have to smile and say hello to kids that they’ve known all their lives? I have no idea.
They’ve done studies that kids who are redshirted in Kindergarten have an early edge in athletics and academics. That edge continues throughout their schooling, partially because that early self-esteem boost keeps them going throughout their lives.
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I completely get why people hold their kids back but at what point is it enough? Seriously, 7 in kindergarten? Who is to say that 7 doesn’t become 8?
My girls are June birthdays as well and we are sending them to K. It was a tough choice as we are in a highly competitive county with lots of educated/wealthy folks who hold back. But intellectually they are advanced and socially they are on track. If they stink it up we can repeat in our school or in catholic. I just can’t do another year of pre-school and the girls want to go to the big school.
My only experience is with pre-school and I see it there as well. Lots of parents do nothing about fresh behaviour toward other children they have known for 3 years. It seems to be ingrained in some parents to just be clueless or rude. It begins early.
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Our oldest has a July birthday and she did full-day 5-day pre-K in the DC public school system at the earliest opportunity. I would have preferred a shorter day or fewer days for her in pre-K, but being the public system, it was take it or leave it. Her fine motor skills, social skills, and attention span have lagged in later elementary school, but purely academically, she’s exactly where she needs to be at this point. She hates writing out spelling words, but her spelling is practically perfect.
Her younger brother has a March birthday, which splits the difference beautifully between early and late entry. He went into private pre-K at nearly 4.5. They offer pre-K a la carte, so you can have really as much or as little as you like for your kid (half days, full days, three days a week, five days a week). He did find the fall math program (shapes, counting, sorting, and brightly colored worksheets) boring and complained about it quite a bit. We kept reassuring him that things were going to get more interesting soon. His class has started actual addition and the complaints have subsided.
It seems to me that there can be a rather large mismatch between the academic demands of school and the non-academic demands (social, size, motor, maturity). The child may be advancing academically at one speed, and at completely different speeds in other areas.
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E is young for his class but is the smartest and is bored at times. We try to keep his brain active at home. I talked about acceleration, but his psych pointed out that he’s going to be easily bored no matter what, and he should focus on the social aspects right now.
That said, in terms of sports, he is *not* a team sports kind of kid. We did track in the fall, and now we’re doing tennis, and his teacher seems to think he is a natural for the sport. It really hits all his buttons: it’s constantly moving, it rewards focus and individual motivation, and he likes the competition aspect.
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but his psych pointed out that he’s going to be easily bored no matter what
Based on my experience in school and work, that falls under “True but you’re not supposed to say it outloud.”
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Where were the coaches? Sports should teach good sportsmanship. The coaches should have stepped in to encourage the sporty team member to stick with his team. The coaches (adults) should have reminded the sporty friends to stick to their role in the audience.
My oldest son is a late summer birthday. We did not redshirt him, and he’s been fine.
The school district should have the backbone to keep parents in line. Our state laws permit a child who’s turned 6 by December 31st to enroll in first grade. The schools in our area have instituted a de-facto date of September 1st for kindergarten enrollment, as they found the age range was getting really wide. As Kindergarten isn’t mandated by the state, the school districts are free to set their own deadlines. Our district does run a mandatory kindergarten readiness day in the spring. Families whose children aren’t ready for kindergarten yet are encouraged to wait a year.
I think if you showed up at our school with a 7 year old, you’d find him enrolled in 2nd grade.
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The coach should have distributed the balls better. It is a bad habit to resent 11 year olds though. They are just kids.
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R is a December baby and started SK (senior kindergarten) last September. Perfection would have been a January start for her – she’s hit her stride socially as well as academically this month. Had we held her back, she would have been bored silly in both realms during most of the latter part of her school year.
Somebody has to be the youngest – she’s the youngest girl and the second youngest kid in her class of 23. The kids are pretty much evenly spaced throughout the calendar year of birthdays.
And she’s not behind across the board – artistically, musically, and in gym she’s above average while academically/socially she’s on track.
To paraphrase Amy, no school grade will match each kid perfectly in every aspect.
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red-shirting doesn’t help in our community with competitive sports, ’cause you play your age (with strict upper age limits) in little league, league soccer. Our community centers may have more flexibility (haven’t looked).
It would help in school play, but only the private schools (including catholic) have school-based teams in elementary school and the in school leagues are less competitive than the out of school leagues.
I agree with decreasing scarcity & increasing coaching. But, I also think the kids have to stand up for themselves.
Bullies (including those who capture all the resources) can only be defeated if the rest of the people stand together. I would be worried about telling the kids to risk it in a pickup game in the bronx, but in a community center, with parent observers? The kids without the balls have to go over and demand their share of them.
(Yes, Egypt is on my mind).
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Oh, and the age limits are different in different sports and in schools. It creates chaos, ’cause kids can’t play on teams together with their friends (from school, say).
Our school (a private one) has now set July 1 as the age limit for applying to kindergarten. There can still be a > than 1 year gap among kids in the class, though, because if you attend K elsewhere, and then apply to the school, you have to apply to 1st grade.
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In Fort Wayne, kids have to be five by August 1 in order to attend kindergarten. M has a mid-July birthday; she started kindergarten about five weeks after she turned five years old. It has worked out quite well for her so far; she loves school and does well, academically and socially.
I haven’t seen anybody mention one of the main reasons why we sent her as a very young five-year-old, instead of waiting another year: I was worried that her body would develop early. I was one of the youngest in my class, yet I developed MUCH earlier than all the other girls; I started wearing a bra everyday by fourth grade, and honestly, I should have been wearing one much earlier than that. I continued “developing,” to put it euphemistically, and was quite generously endowed by the time I started junior high…with further endowments hitting at the ages of 14 and 17.
It was a living hell. The girls were cruel, and the boys were disgusting. I wouldn’t wish that on any kid, least of all my daughter. The thought of her being the oldest in the class–and therefore possibly developing that much earlier than her peers–horrified me. So, I sent her at barely-five, and I’m glad I did.
And yes, there are a few girls in her class who already need bras. Thankfully, she is not one of them.
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If parents are red-shirting for sports, I think they have their eyes on high school teams. In high school, a year’s difference in age can make an enormous difference in a boy’s size and strength. They want their kids to make varsity.
Now, high schools could control this by instituting age limits for certain teams. To play on a freshman team, you must be 14 to 16, etc. No 20 year olds on high school teams. It would limit the high school athletic careers of the boys who enrolled in first grade at a later age due to academic readiness issues. Even if parents place a higher premium on sports than academics, it is not fair to a child to delay his school career in the hopes of a sports career.
I don’t think this proposal would fly with the schools. I think the adults in most communities like to have winning sports teams. It’s a shame, because many of the boys who are held back are eventually outclassed by others. Adolescence is unpredictable.
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That was me as a basketball player. I was good at defense, actually–I could figure out what to do to stop other players, not what to do to win.
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a different view of bullying: http://profmondo.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/in-which-the-prof-and-spawn-consider-natures-rich-pageant-middle-school-edition/
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