If you want your children to be successful, enroll them in school later rather than sooner. Parents often dedicate a great deal of time and mental effort to taking decisions that will help put their children on a path of academic success. For those whose children are born later in the year, one of the most important decisions is whether their children should enter school early (and be the youngest of the bunch) or a year late (and be the oldest). The decision to delay a child’s enrolment in kindergarten — referred to as “red-shirting” — does not necessarily correlate with improved academic experience. However, a recent study from Stanford University has found that what red-shirting does achieve is that it improves the development of certain characteristics, including self-control, mental health, and discipline, that help children do better in school, Bill Murphy writes for Inc. “We found that delaying kindergarten for one year reduced inattention and hyperactivity by 73% for an average child at age 11…and it virtually eliminated the probability that an average child at that age would have an ‘abnormal,’ or higher-than-normal rating for the inattentive-hyperactive behavioral measure,” according to one of the co-authors of the study. The catch: The study doesn’t control for what red-shirted children do in the extra year they have before starting school, which could play a role in the child’s development, nor does it account for socioeconomic background.