Our choice to Redshirt...

My father is a total absolute football fanatic and so the term redshirting was something I was always familiar with.  It was always an important decision Texas longhorns made each season with their newest recruits.  It was the question of are they ready to play now or will they benefit by sitting out and preparing to play for one season so that when they start they really are ready to serve the team best.

                                                   

When we had the twins Redshirting took on a whole new meaning.   I loved their due date of October 24.  It was perfect.  They were supposed to be my little pumpkins and it would be safely into the zone like Harmon is where you don't worry about your child being the oldest or youngest in the class.

Of course God always has other plans and they were born on August 28th.  A few days shy of the September 1st cut off to begin school in TX and in NM.  That left us with a choice.  First we decided that since I had nieces and nefews born that same week (6 of the 7 grand kids in my family are born the last week of August, Harm is our sole rebel) and they all started at age four going on five.  So the babies started pre-k one at age two and pre-k 2 at age three.  

I've been keeping a close eye on them though and I started looking at how the twins were not developing at the same pace Harm had in the same pre-k level.  Rachel was shy and sort of the class pet, everyone of the older kids in Kinder and in her class loved her because she was so cute but she didn't relate to the kids.  Callum hated being there full days and his classmates would call him baby.  To us it wasn't about sports or even academics it was the social emotional gap that worried us.

I was still on the fence though.  Academically they were ahead.  Rachel even tested out of Kinder when they did her diag for DD-Pre.  Callum is equally bright.  One of my best friends  would tease me "Redshirting #richpeopleproblems" and she was right in a way.  The cost of one more year of private pre-k was going to be huge.  Research on redshirting is always divided.  This Summer I was still undecided.  

Than my mom got sick and so I and left the choice up to Chris.  He choose the free one, kinder and so we enrolled the twins in Mesilla along with Harmon.  I figured okay but I never felt peaceful.  The twins attended a few days and everything was okay but I never gave up that feeling of uneasiness.  I remembered all the stories of people wishing they had waited with their August birthdays and how many of their kids ended up repeating the course or later courses.  Even one of my nephews repeated as did a brother of mine and it just made me realize that I didn't want to risk that.  I asked Chris to reconsider and he admitted he felt uneasy as well.  So we pulled them.

Now they are in a special class called Kinder Plus at College Heights called the Fox class.  It's all kids with either Summer birthdays or fall birthdays.  It's perfect for the twins because they are kids just like them.  They might have been okay but this way just seemed like a safer bet.  Friday I went to pick them up and Rachel was the best time with he new friends.  One told me they were BFFs.  Callum is doing just as well making really good friendships.  I'm elated to see them socially really fitting in and for us redshirting was the right choice.