Redshirting gives younger athletes an additional year to develop skills and extends their playing eligibility, since colleges allow these freshmen five years to attend and compete. On the other end of the student age spectrum, many parents of preschoolers have bought into this concept, choosing to delay their child's entry into kindergarten for a year--a practice known as academic redshirting. Their justifications parallel those of college coaches: these parents believe that their children need that extra year to develop the necessary skills and maturity to succeed in kindergarten. A redshirted child is a year older at kindergarten entry and thus becomes one of the oldest in his class and remains so throughout his school years, enjoying the presumed advantages of age. This article presents findings from previous studies that evaluated the effects on student outcomes of the two variables that by definition change when a student is redshirted: age itself and the student's age relative to those of classroom peers. Looking at the evidence, the authors advise parents to redshirt their child only in unique circumstances, such as extreme developmental delay, outside of the normal range, to such an extent that another year's development will potentially put the child in range of his classmates, or when a child is experiencing trauma, such as having a terminally ill parent or sibling.