We are moving to a new state in march/april. I would like to take advantage of this move to have my now 4th grade son repeat 4th grade in the fall. We have considered it before and teachers have agreed with it but hubby would not accept the stigma-which will be a nonissue when we move.
Will a new school just accept that decision? He is not an F student but he struggles to get even Cs and has diagnosed ADD-official school dx is communication/learning disorder-other testing is “scheduled”.
Ive thought about simply homeschooling him through spring in our new location and walking in the fall and registering him like its a given. Yeah, I could ask but then Ive tipped my hand so to speak(in my experience, so little notice is paid to records I honestly wonder if anyone would notice) Would advice from this years teachers be taken seriously?
Any BTDT? Suggestions.
Will it help? Dunno -but for speech articulation alone, I hate to see this kiddo in 5th grade.
Re: retention 101 ?-school personnel most helpful
I have mixed feelings about this. In one way retention can give the child more time to “catch up”, if indeed something worthwhile is being done to help the child (like multi-sensory reading instuction, for example).
On the other hand, just repeating a grade when there are unaddressed underlying problems may do no good at all. An ineffective curriculum for two years is really not accomplishing anything.
If it were me, I’d be having thorough outside testing done to find out what therapy or stategies (if any) my child needs. Then you could better determine whether the extra year would be beneficial.
I recently had my child (first grade) tested privately for auditory processing/language/reading disorders, and I was advised to get her some specific therapy to work on her deficit areas, not hold her back in first grade.
Janis
until this child I was sooo anti-retention
we live in an area where it is done regularly for sports advancement and my older 2(no LDs) were always struggling physically and socially to keep up with older, bigger, more mature kids. It p…..d me off bigtime!!!
But my third had an undiagnosed moderate/severe hearing loss till almost 4. He has been receiving speech therapy and early intervention services since 22 mos and still has huge issues. He is in resource pullout at school. CAPD testing is what were waiting on now but we might be better off going private since they are dragging.
So he has gotten plenty of help already but still struggles. This year Ive gotten 2-3 comments on how “innocent” he seems. Worries me-sounds like a kind word for “immature”.
In retrospect though, Im going to have to be forthright with the new school as he does have an IEP. Id have to forego that to “sneak” him in and Im not willing to do that.
Im going to fill current teachers in on our move and see if theyll write a retention suggestion of some sort.
Thanks for your post
Re: until this child I was sooo anti-retention
Mary,
Now that you give me more detail, I do have a few more thoughts. My primary area is teaching hearing impaired children (also LD certified and have a child of my own who is diagnosed CAPD).
First of all, I can understand your son’s struggles with the hearing impairment. That would be typical, unfortunately. Especially since he was not aided presumably until age 4. I’m not really sure what you’d gain by having APD testing, really. I’m not even sure those tests could be considered accurate on a hearing impaired child since I am assuming they are normed on children with normal hearing. Significant hearing impairment from birth or before language has been well developed almost always causes academic delays. I really can’t see that the therapy would be any different even if they could separate out part HI and part APD. (I am assuming your child has good amplification now.)
Regarding APD testing in general, there are only a relative few places (audiologists) in the US that would even be considered specialists in APD. Testing ordered by the school system is probably not going to be quality APD testing on most cases. Have you been on the CAPD list? You might want to ask Dr. Jay Lucker there if he sees value in testing a moderate/severe HI child.
Now, all that said, I will tell you that we frequently give hearing impaired children with academic delays an extra year of elementary school to help them progress as far as possible in reading. Now that we have these required state tests, many of our LD and HI children are at risk of not meeting graduation requirements. Now that I know your child is hearing impaired, I might lean toward repeating the year especially since you are moving. In the case of an LD child, if the school is not using proper remediation, then retention will not be that useful. I favor outside tutoring by specialists in dyslexia, etc. I will tell you that from experience, fourth grade is just the beginning of difficulties for many children with reading deficits. Many of our HI students have to be pulled out more at that age because they just can’t do the required reading in class at that level. Find out about he hearing impaired program in your new location beforehand, too.
Janis
Simply tell them when you register him that while he was in 4th grade, his teachers felt strongly that upon moving he should be retained in 4th grade and you agree. Point out his birth date to them if they hesitate but I doubt they will.
These days many parents hold their children out of school or retain and you can find a wide age range in a given grade.
You might also consider requesting testing on him after he’s safely settled in school and getting the school to offer him speech therapy for the articulation issues you see.