Help for almost 6 year old son...

You can request that your local board of education test him even if he’s in private school. Or you can persue private testing . I would ask your pediatrician, school psychologist, and/or any local university or school that does work with children having learning disabilities in your area. (Where are you, maybe we can help…)

I defnitely would have him tested before deciding to hold him back, because if there is a learning issue he may need a different type of instruction, not just more of the same.

Oh yes, definitely have him tested! Lots of what you are describing is consistent with dyslexia or an auditory processing disorder. Repeating K won’t address any of that.

Have him testing right away. May have to do it privately to get answers soon enough to make decisions for next year. He may not be in the right school environment for his needs.

These are the early signs of learning disabilities. Good job noticing them!

Since he is a May birthday it might benefit him to hold him back, but not in the school where he is now. He needs different type instruction. In my area it is typical for all kids born May-August to be held back bec the schools are so competitive (Sept 1 cutoff).

The types of issues you describe will not disappear simply by repeating kindergarten. My son was much like yours and first grade was even worse. After struggling for years to catch up, we held him back in fourth grade. K would have been much better for retention but only if we had understand the types of issues he faced and had worked on their underlying causes. We really didn’t (when he was in K) even though he had been in the special education system since age 4 (for language delays).

I would pursue private testing, if possible, and then consider therapy programs that would address the underlying deficits. My son has made wonderful progress—we started really after he finished first grade. My only regret was that it wasn’t a year earlier—like your son is.

Beth

Thank you everyone. I have contacted our local public school and am waiting on a reply from them. If I go to the private sector what do I look for or better yet…..what do I look under in the yellow pages. :lol:

He has had a lot of self confidence problems but we seem to have solved that by placing him Tae Kwon Do. It is working wonders with his confidence and focus and because of that I’m leary of holding him back - especially in the same school.

I’ve tried a lot of different approaches for him - sound boxes, computer games, etc and haven’t found a style that really clicks. He is very stong in “science” fields but is craving the ability to read. So I know his problems aren’t for lack of trying. He works very hard at home and at school.

that is great that you have contacted your local school. but make sure you put your request in WRITING! and DO NOT take no for an answer! it certainly sounds like visual memory disabilities and closer yet to dyslexia. repeating kindergarten in the same class, with the same instruction will not help him. it seems he needs to learn this information in a different way, so repeating it exactly the same way will not help him. since you were quick enough to catch it, some extra attention (programs) during the summer can easily help get him to an adequate stage to start first grade.
previously i said not to take no for an answer. many schools are hesitant to test/evaluate at a young age. but learn what your rights are both under the federal IDEA (individuals with disability education act) and your local state laws. studies have shown the importance for diagnosing learning disabilities early!
good for you for catching this early! and best of luck!!

Testing is of course a very good idea.

Meanwhile, some nitty-gritty down-to-earth teaching may also help.

You say he is having trounle remembering the sounds for letters — well, a lot depends on how these sounds are presented. If it is pure abstract memory (B - bee - [b]) well, there is nothing to hang a memory hook on.

Many kids can do this kind of abstract memorization BUT — here is something for you to hang on to for the next few years — the facile quick memorizers are also very often facile quick forgetters. You often meet a Grade 2 teacher in September saying in a shocked and hushed voice, as a state secret, that the kids in her class have *forgotten how to read* over the summer. Well, my take on that is that they never knew in the first place — they just played imitation, and two months off the daily recitation, the short-term memory just did a core dump and left a blank slate.
In order to really *learn* something — and to me, learning implies retention-included — you have to integrate it into your thinking system. People (kids included) who ask a lot of “why” and “how” may seem slower tortoises at the beginning, but they take off and race ahead later while their hare cohorts are gasping out-of-breath in the ditch.

You need a lot of multisensory work — see, say, make, feel. Say the name of the letter and the sound of the letter *simultaneously* with tracing it, drawing it, air-writing it. etc.

You can also benefit by a lot of mixed input-output and part-to-whole / whole-to-part work — some exercises of seeing letters and saying sounds, other exercises of saying sounds and forming letters (finding and circling first, tracing next, writing later); some exercises of putting letters together to form words, others of looking at written words/ listening to spoken words and finding sounds.
There are literally dozens of different types of exercises that can be done, hundreds of ways of putting them on paper and making puzzles and games out of them.
One problem with having every teacher make up her own curriculum and materials is that every teacher will fall back on a very few favourites most of the time. Kids miss out with a limited presentation in only one mode.
I regularly recommend getting a *good* book — there are lots of good ones out there, although there are even more bad, so take time and look hard — and doing *all* the exercises in it, *in order*. If a book is good and has been used with real kids for a while, there will be lots of variety thought up over time, lots of practice of each skill, and a planned order that builds more advanced skills on top of simpler ones. If the child has real trouble, sometimes you can even use two good books for extra practice and reinforcement.

If you keep this fairly light, twenty minutes a time to start with a kindergartner, but every day, positive reinforcement and praise for correct answers and immediate correction but no blame for incorrect ones, usually you start to see positive results within a few weeks. It won’t do any harm if you keep it relaxed, and it almost always helps.