A little background info first, my 3 kids have always been at home, when my first born turned 4 the Jan before his school year started I enrolled him in preschool in order to get him into a ’school type’ routine and some social interaction. This pretty much worked out fine, he was in pre-school from Jan-Aug and then went into Kindergarten. I did the same with my middle one, he is a July baby, so when Jan came around I enrolled him in a pre-school.
He did NOT adapt nicely, he had a terrible time adjusting, I was also pregnant with baby number 3. The pre-school closed in May 2006, so I enrolled him in a summer program the elementary school was running for incoming Kindergartners, perfect I thought…he’ll be here Jun-Aug and then Kindergarten starts. Well two weeks into the program it closed because of a low turnout. At this point I am 8 months pregnant and only 1 1/2 months to go until kindergarten, seeing that he did not adjust well to change, I did not want to enroll him in yet another school just to take him out in less than 2 months. I decided I’ll keep him home.
Augusts rolls around and it’s time for Kindergarten, at this point I now have a 1month old and the only thing my middle one understands is that he is off to school and mommy is home with the new baby. It was a very hard adjustment, but working with his wonderful teacher we were able to help him adjust. Here is where there was some issues, in both pre-school programs he was enrolled both teachers felt that he might not be ready for Kindergarten, his maturity level was not quite there. I was ready to pull him out of Kindergarten and wait one more year, especially since he had just turned 5 a month prior to Kindergarten starting. His Kindergarten teacher felt he was ready and to give it some time. By December he was doing wonderfully and made progress, he was promoted to 1st grade.
First grade was the same nightmare at the beginning, he was miserable, he was having nightmares and could not sleep alone. Once again I worked with his teacher, she was young and it was her second year of teaching. I sensed that even though I worked with him at home with flashcards and reading he was still struggling. By January I knew it was going to be a possibilty that he will not be promoted to 2nd grade. I had several conferences with his teacher, she mentioned that he is exhausted by the end of the day and she felt it was because he was constantly trying to keep up. She mentioned that he is the youngest in his class, I know some adults who were the youngest in their class and they did fine, I did not know if this was not the case with my son.
The idea of having him repeat 1st grade had me with such anxiety, I talked to anyone who would listen…. “what would you do??”. Along comes May and now I’m in a conference with not only his teacher but the curriculum specialist. In order to be promoted, he had to meet one of the three criteria for promotion. He barely passed one, he needed at least at 30 to progress, he got 34. After about one hour of discussing the pros and cons of retaining or promoting, they informed me it was my decision, although they reccommend retaining him, and I had through the end of July to decide.
What to do……..
2 responses so far ↓
1 Kimberly @ AllAboutKimberly // Sep 13, 2008 at 6:03 pm
My daughter is an August baby and I had many of the same concerns when she started school. I started her in prek as I wanted her to repeat as early a grade as possible. Her teacher assured me that she was ok and ready to go to K so we moved on. Throughout K I made sure this teacher also knew I was willing to let her repeat if she was ready - academically or socially. End of K, she assured me to let her go. Both PreK and K were first year teachers. I was so relieved to get an experienced 1st grade teacher. We discussed my concerns at the beginning of the year and then again at the end. Except for handwriting, she assured me Cameron was ready to move on. 2nd grade hit and we struggled!! Math was horrible last year. We’ve worked and worked and worked. But I think we are making progress.
My opinion as a high school teacher is if you really don’t think he’s ready, hold him back. My sister struggled in elementary school until we held her back. After repeating that year (1st or 2nd), she was back on track and able to keep up from here on out. I’m not sure where you are from, but here in Texas they move so fast in elementary school that if they are ever get far behind, it just gets worse every year and by the time they get to high school, it’s a nightmare as they’ve given up.
2 Janet // Sep 18, 2008 at 8:56 am
Here are my opinions on the situation. I am not one who is opposed to holding children back when they are on the younger end of the age spectrum. I think that it is better to let them be older and ahead of the class then to spend their school lives trying to keep up. I think when you have gifted kids who work very well even though they are younger you still end up with issues. My niece is in 9th grade and just turned 14. My sister has issues because all of her friends are older and have more privileges. I will end up making these kinds of decisions because I have one who turned 5 in July and started Kindergarten in August and I have another who will turn 5 a week after school starts next year. I believe at least one of them will end up in T-1 which is our transitional grade b/w K and 1st. Good Luck!
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