Okay, I admit, I have a bias against Texas to begin with. It all started when my parents would tell me stories about when they lived in Abileen, back when they were first married, prior to my being even a twinkle in my daddy's eye. If I understand correctly, there are spiders the size of your head, crickets or grasshoppers that are 6 inches in length and spit green goo at you if startled, and it is brown. There is a story about a tarantula that my father tried to kill with a broom in the breezeway of their house that exploded into thousands of either tiny other spiders from an egg sack or mites, which tarantulas can carry around on them. In either case, I was having NONE OF THAT when I was little, and I still don't like to be in close quarters with a spider of any size. Then there are the tornadoes. See one of my previous entries about me and weather systems.
So it is not my favorite idea of a place to live. Then I read this article on Babble.com http://www.babble.com/Not-Holding-Back-Why-I-didnt-redshirt-my-kindergarten-age-son/ about red shirting kindergartners and became more convinced than ever that I cannot live there. Ever. With or without a child I couldn't live there.
This concept was not new to me, the idea of red shirting a kid, because a friend of mine is doing this very thing with her son. He turned 5 in August, but she is holding him back for a year because she feels he is socially not ready. And she says it won't hurt when it comes to sports later on.
Hang on. He is 5. How socially evolved do you expect him to be? They live in Ohio, so I don't see them often, but I did see them this summer, and he seems like your average 5 year old. And he is already close to 4 feet tall. He looks like he is 7. If he starts kindergarten in a year, he will be 5 feet tall. He will be buying beer for his friends when he gets to 2nd grade. The part about sports, well what can I say. Sports are not the center of our universe, yet. If Cooper wants to play a sport, I will be a soccer/lacrosse/baseball/football/hockey-only-if-absolutely-necessary mom. Hockey is hard. The equipment is expensive and you have to go to ice rinks. They are cold. Sure, professional rinks are nice, but the ones kids play in are cold.
I am just dumbfounded by the reasoning going on in my friends' head and the other people in that article. Cooper was born in November. I don't know what the rules are in our town, but I am pretty sure that if he is able to go the year he turns 5 we will send him. If he has to wait a year because them's the rules, fine. But I was kind of hoping that we would make decisions about his education based on, oh I don't know, what the EDUCATIONAL benefits would be for Cooper. Not whether or not he would get a sports scholarship because he was 50lbs heavier than the other kids in his class and made a great nose tackle. Not that there is anything wrong with that.
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