retention

With tutoring, in addition to a combination of behavior modification and medication or diet changes she should be able to catch up, but you will have to facillitate this privately and stay on top of it. I wouldn’t retain especially if she is that saavy when it comes to her peers, the retention would haunt her as she sees her peers taking off and leaving her in the dust. I never retained my daughter, we made a deal and worked our little tails off and she is holding her own.

I agree, retention rarely helps a child’s self confidence, insetad it makes them feel inatiquit and ashamed. They begin to feel that because they are incapable of being on the same level as their friends, they are then incapable of doing anything for themselves. the biggest thing that helps, as i have found as a child who had to grow up with ADD, is lots of encouragment from parents and mentors, tutoring if necissary, and medication to keep me focused and on task. Sit down with your child and talk to them, ask them how they feel about staying behind a year. if they are unwilling to be retained, ask them what they think they should do to keep this from happening. Have them set goals, and write them out for the child. a schedual for an ADD/ADHD child can sometimes be just the thing that they need. remember to tell your child that they are unique, that nobody thinks quite like they do, and that that is a good thing, not a bad. I’m sure that with a lot of determination and optomisim, your child will succeed no matter what happens.

Don’t do it. I held my son back in 3rd grade. He did worse the second time around as he had a different teacher who couldn’t be bothered to answer or help him with questions he didn’t understand. Now he is not the 5th grade, eager to learn. I work with him constantly with reading and writing. I made a big mistake by holding him back as it really didn’t change anything.

Well, IF they had grade level tests and standards and held all the kids to the same standard, retention would make sense. However in the present system, there is a five-grade spread or more in academic standing in the average class (Your daughter’s class going into Grade 3 probably has at least two near non-readers, at 1.0, and three or more gifted kids, at 6.0 or higher). Given that in most systems there is this range, retention doesn’t do what it is supposed to do. Also given that few systems are using a cumulative reading program, retention doesn’t mean that the kid gets taught the material needed.
The present school system is trying to say two mutually contradictory things — that the grade level is determined by the child’s age, and that it is determined by academic achievement. Can’t be done. Since the vast majority of public schools now go by age, she might as well go on. But DO get that extra tutoring help to catch her up!

The benefits of retention vary from child to child. I would ask - what grade level is she thought to be reading at? And how was her year last year in second grade?

It is difficult for children to keep up while they’re catching up. To even attempt to do that, any child needs extra support. In effect, the child needs an individualized curriculum while still being in a group classroom. That’s hard but at times it can be done.

Whatever grade she spends the year in, it does sound as if she would benefit from having an IEP in place.

And remember, the beginning of the year can be very hard. Most children, though, make the transition fairly quickly after their initial disappointment and make friends in their new classroom. To best support her - if you intend to allow her to remain - encourage her to make new friends in this year’s 2nd grade by inviting children in her class over for play.

Good luck.

I think every situation must be looked at individually. However, I have a strong preference for first grade to be the grade that is repeated. It is very easy to determine if a child has the foundation they need in reading and math by the end of first grade. If they don’t and they are pushed on to second, then they struggle. And the older they are, the harder it is socially to retain. I agree very much with the person who said that it is difficult to be remediating and while keeping up with new, more difficult material. It is for these reasons I decided to retain my own daughter in first grade this year. She did not have the strong foundation and I knew she would trail along at the bottom of her class forever if we didn’t give the extra year to try to build her skills. A plus is that her school uses Saxon Phonics in the regular classroom, and it is one of the best programs. Plus, she can have speech/language therapy intensively this year without us worrying too much about missing class time.

I think retention can be made into a positive thing if it is presented to the child with all the advantages. But it is essential that there is something there worth repeating or else that extra time can be taken for remediation without the child missing new material.

Janis

It can be. Before you retain, I would ask yourself if she would be successful if she was a beginning second grader instead of a beginning third grader. How do her skills stack up against the incoming second graders? If they would still be lacking, she might do better to have resource room and special tutoring, and stay with her grade for now. If she would suddenly become an average student if retained, AND the curriculum would be substantially different from that previously taught, then retention (still with extra tutoring) might be a good option, although I would also suggest changing schools. .

My twin sister and I were both advanced a grade on school entry, and then were retained at third grade which put us back with our agemates. (We had a remarkably ineffective teacher during the second semester of third grade and quickly discovered that there were no apparent consequences for simply walking out of class and playing outside or going to the library to read books. We therefore learned very little that year.) We switched schools for the second try at third grade, and there was no embarassment whatsoever, although our mother was NOT happy.

My brother was advanced a grade on school entry and then retained at eighth grade entirely for social reasons. He was small for age, quiet, diligent, studious, late to enter puberty, and a gifted musician: soprano soloist in the church choir and first violin in the junior high school orchestra. Mom plucked him out of the public school and repeated him in eighth grade at an all-boys preparatory school with a great music program when he told her that he was wondering if he might be gay, because after all, everybody else in his class was four inches taller, scorned music and academics, had lots of girlfriends, and excelled at football and basketball. This turned out to be a good decision also. He stopped feeling like a midget, quit worrying about his sexual orientation, and found his academic and musical skills to be modest assets instead of crippling liabilities during his second eighth grade year. By ninth grade he had entered puberty, taken up the suitably manly sport of fencing (at which he excelled), and discovered girls.

My elder daughter had a late August birthday, and beat the Kindergarten deadline by five days. She was therefore the youngest in her classes and by the end of her first try at third grade it was clear that this was a humongo disadvantage. One of the major reasons we moved from the east coast to the Midwest was to give her a fresh start. We repeated her in third grade against the school’s advice, and it was SOOO good for her. The curriculum was totally different, and she found she was no longer struggling to do work everyone else found easy. She solidified her math and reading skills, and is doing very nicely in sixth grade in preparatory school now. However, one of the common themes among these three success stories is a CHANGE OF SCHOOL. I’d seriously think about doing that if you are going to repeat her. That way, the curriculum will be different and the social disadvantages will be minimized.