How to date sort as date instead of string

I never noticed this until I actually needed to sort by a date. All my dates are in USA format (dd/mm/yyyy) but sort as they are strings. From what I read in various forum answers, I was under the impression that DataTables automatically recognized this as a date format. See screenshot for example.

This is all the code I have. Let's say the date column is column 5. How would I force recognition of that column as a date column so that it sorts as a date and not a string?

$(() => {
            $(".display").DataTable({
                dom: 'Bfrtip',
                scrollX:true,
                buttons: [{
                    extend: 'excelHtml5',
                    exportOptions: {
                        columns: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20]
                    }
                }]
            });
        });