PatchChat: Should You 'Redshirt' Your Child?

Should you delay your child's entrance into kindergarten? 

If you do, it's at "your own peril," say Sam Wang, an associate professor of molecular biology and neuroscience at Princeton and Sandra Aamodt, a former editor-in-chief of Nature Neuroscience.

Together, they co-wrote “Welcome to Your Child’s Brain: How the Mind Grows From Conception to College,” and penned a New York Times op-ed piece published Saturday that argues holding kids back to give them a leg up is counter-productive. 

The two discuss the origin of the term redshirting—a term referring to a delay in an athlete's participation in order to lengthen his sports eligibility—and note a delay may payoff for competitive athletes, but they caution, any academic advantages wear off by the end of elementary school.

Wang and Aamodt cite research showing that first-graders young for their year make more progress than kindergartners old for their year and say that high achievers who skip a grade pursue more advanced degrees—in other words, the "differences may come from the increased challenges of a demanding environment," they argue.

Read their full letter posted on the New York Times.

Students who resigestered in kindergarten at  for the 2011-2012 school year had to turn five years of age on or before Dec. 1, 2011.

What's your take on this issue? Let us know in the comments.