Had she never touched a weight, she still would have been stronger as a senior. She just filled out from the skinnier teenager that she had been. She lifted, but I kept her away from the heavy lifting nonsense I see around me know. Did that hold her back on her power development? I don't know, but she has no operating scars and nothing hurts for her. I'll take it.
Parents holding kids back a year in school
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Had she never touched a weight, she still would have been stronger as a senior. She just filled out from the skinnier teenager that she had been. She lifted, but I kept her away from the heavy lifting nonsense I see around me know. Did that hold her back on her power development? I don't know, but she has no operating scars and nothing hurts for her. I'll take it.
The MS team I help coach was very young the past two seasons, and some of the girls are just small for their age. We were ALWAYS significantly smaller than our opponent, but a few of the teams had linebackers. It was insane, and I would comment on the size discrepancy to the coach and they would just laugh or whatever. I said it to one coach whose kids were HUGE and he pointed to the tallest girl and said "that's a 5th grader, and I have another, and then I just have three 8th graders."
I asked what they feed them and he laughed.
I found out later about all these hold-backs. I knew of just one around here. A baseball kid in this small town who repeated 5th grade purely for sports. Ended up a two sport D1 athlete. But apparently that giant team we played is well known for doing it a lot. So when he's telling me in late May that he only has three 8th graders, he's telling me he has a team packed with 14 and 15 year olds. When I inquired about it more to people in the know, I found out that it's really common in this area. So it was no surprise to me later when I saw their HS team and it may as well have been grown men out there.
I don't understand why anyone would want to do that. School sucked. If my parents had tried to hold me back for sports I'd have stabbed them with a #2 pencil.
I asked what they feed them and he laughed.
I found out later about all these hold-backs. I knew of just one around here. A baseball kid in this small town who repeated 5th grade purely for sports. Ended up a two sport D1 athlete. But apparently that giant team we played is well known for doing it a lot. So when he's telling me in late May that he only has three 8th graders, he's telling me he has a team packed with 14 and 15 year olds. When I inquired about it more to people in the know, I found out that it's really common in this area. So it was no surprise to me later when I saw their HS team and it may as well have been grown men out there.
I don't understand why anyone would want to do that. School sucked. If my parents had tried to hold me back for sports I'd have stabbed them with a #2 pencil.
- Oct 3, 2019
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Girls stop growing 2 years after their menstrual cycle starts, which means, by age 14-15. Typically, they will have reached adult height by then.
Reclassification is the name for changing a students graduating class year. So for example a student scheduled to graduate in the class of 2024 can reclassify to the class of 2025.
I don't know the rules for different states but in the northeast where this is extremely common in basketball and football you typically need to go to private school to do this.
To give you an idea of how common this is my DD graduated this spring from an elite academic private school that has an excellent football program, they typically send 15-20 kids to play in college every year, 95% of the players have reclassed or are PG's(post grads)
Gladwell's book Outliers took a long look at this -- not necessarily in the holding back, but in the idea that kids are often competing with others who are significantly more developed mentally and physically than their peers based on age groupings and birthdays. It's an odd thing we do to put kids at different developmental levels together, but I guess there's no other real way of doing it.
Malcolm certainly had a string of very interesting books... Regarding putting kids together that are different developmental levels...the spectrum within a typical elementary school classroom is vast (and possibly bigger than ever post pandemic).
I sent a late b-day into Kindergarten at the age of four, and was 17 when she graduated HS. I don't regret it for a moment. She was a bit behind in the Fall semesters for the first couple of years, but picked up steam in the Spring each time. By late elementary, she was at the front of the pack. Had we held her back, she would have been more physically developed for HS ball, but it would have been a year of her life sort of wasted in the long run.
