Hello everyone, I am going to try and make this as short as possible.
I am the mother of 2 girls. My oldest is 6 and in Kindergarten and my youngest 3. My oldest daughter was born at 23wks gestation , 1lb 2oz and spent the first 4 months in the hospital. She was expected to have all kinds of physical and mental delays…most of which she did not have. She does not wear glasses, her eyes are fine, her hearing is fine, she physically has caught up and is even taller than most of her classmates, so for that I am blessed. But, we have delt with what we knew was an obvious speech delay for years now. To make matters worse their father (which I am still married to but now seperated) was a drug addict and our 10 year marriage is now ending because of his physical and emotional abuse to me. So, I and WE had a lot on our plate. I have to admit that because she was doing SO well in all other areas I may not have taken the necessary steps to see that she received the proper testing and help at an earlier age. She did however receive speech therapy for the summer in our home before entering kindergarten. She made TREMENDOUS improvement. Before starting school she could not write ANY letters, although she knew her alphabet and still had trouble with the sounds of most of them. Now, she is writing every letter from memory can sound out words, knows all sounds and her speech seems to be the least of our worries.
Where we live (maybe it is everywhere now) kindergarteners have to pass an exit exam just to move to 1st grade. I KNOW this was not around when I was that young. I have had many conferences with the teacher about my daughters dramatic improvement (that of course they dont see because they did not know her before she began school) but they are still concerned about many things. For instance she does not recognize rhyming words, while studying her sight words she will see a word for example ME and will sound it out MMMM - EEEE and I will say right, now what is the word and she will say the word is TODAY, after sounding it out. Then other words she will just fly through, knowing them perfectly. She also does not comprehend questions very well. For instance if she is asked something like “Why did you tear up your book?” she will say “Because I knew I would get into trouble” This causes a big problem when there are problems at school and she can never get across to me what she actually did and why she may have done it. She gets things confused and does not know how to express her feelings and words. She also has lack of motor skills, she can not use scissors correctly and that frustrates her. She can color beautifully and is VERY creative while coloring, but she can not draw even the simplest thing. While just being her usual self, she speaks as if she is 16…she acts so grown and her intellect is above a lot of children her age (from what I have seen).
Her teacher has let me know that she very well may not go on to 1st grade. My daughter will be 7 in Oct. so if she is held back, she will be MUCH older than her classmates. She already has self-esteem issues because of what she has been through with her father and I and the fact she knows she doesnt learn the way the other kids do. Her teacher says at her school that they can test her, but she KNOWS that they will not find her to have a disablility or enter into special ed. She says that the diagnostician (spelling?) there will hardly ever put a kindergartener into special ed without giving them a second chance in that grade because of the “label” it will put on the child. Instead of saying if this child DOES truly have a problem and we help her early enough, maybe she wont need special ed in the future and wont have a “label”. Also, in my opinion…the fact that she will be 7 in kindergarten when all the other kids are 5 will be worse on her than if she were in special ed. We are talking about KINDERGARTEN here, they are acting as if we are talking about graduating or not. I am getting very frustrated even as I type this because it seems as though they do not want to take the time or effort to focus on the true learning disablilites that any child may have because it that is just it…it WILL take time and effort on their part. I am confident my daughter had a LD and I feel if we find it early enough she has the chance to over come it.
It also doesnt help that her sister which will be 4 in July was born full term (After 8 months of bedrest) and she is WAY above average and learns faster than her sister. When I will sit down with my 6yr old, my 3 yr old can answer all the questions before the 6yr old (so I try to keep the apart while we work). My 3 yr old can already write her name and most letters and it took my 6 yr old a month after entering kindergarten to write her name correctly. It is tough, it is frustrating……
If anyone has any insight on what type of LD my daughter could have based on the examples I gave PLEASE let me know. It would be great if I could let her school know that I KNOW a little about what I am talking about.
Re: New Here, looking for answers!
Sigh…..exit evals for kindergarten absolutely blow my mind!!!
I read on another board that CA is LOWERING its kindergarten graduation requirements is response to so many failures there
I would find out if this is recommended or absolute. TEachers have a way of making their recommendation sound ‘official’
So, my first step would be to take it to the top and out and out ask what happens if I disagree with this decision-can I insist my child me moved to 1st grade next year? Its possible she will go ahead with a note in her file that this was against the schools recommendation
Get the testing-they may not ‘label’ her but her scores, particularly her subscores, will help you understand her strengths and weaknesses
OTOH, next to having started her in kindy a year late, this is the BEST time to hold her back. If you end up in 4th grade going-dang, I wish I had held her back a year-it will be MUCH harder
My son was full term but was in Early Intervention and special ed preschool. Going to kindergarten on time was a sort of success story for me, KWIM??? Wow-we are entering on time-look how far we have come-hes normal
By 3/4 grade I regretted my decision but it was too hard to hold him back at that point-he was too aware
NOw, hes in 7th and we’re having an awesome year so I cant say its been a total disaster. BUT……if I could go back in time, I would have waited a year to send him OR had him repeat kindy(it was suggested though no one ever gave me a solid reason-its like they were begin soooo positive, I never got a negative to justify it)
It just makes sense to me now that a kid who had a rough start of any kind can probably use some extra time to mature.
And, having had my oldest move out now, theres a little bit of “whats the rush-hold onto them a little longer” Its NOT as big of a deal as it seems when they’re 6
And hindsight is always 20/20-
Re: New Here, looking for answers!
I would guess, based on your description, that your daughter is LD. The deficits you mention seem to be both verbal and nonverbal, which is true of my son also. The reading a word and then not remembering it is a early marker for reading issues. The lack of motor skills and drawing are more nonverbal.
If you can, I would pursue private testing with a neurospychologist. It tends to be expensive and often not covered by insurance. Alternatively, , I would get a comprehensive speech and language evaluation and an OT evaluation. You may be able to get some of the speech evaluation done through the school. You need to have her receptive language skills tested and there is a test CTOPP (I think) that can pick up the presence/absence of the auditory skills necessary for reading. An OT can evaluate the motor skills.
On the holding back. My son is one that we did end up holding back in fourth grade. Years of trying to catch up took their toll. It has worked out well for him, but we moved him to a parochial school which was more demanding (where his siblings were). This was face saving for him.
Still, it was a rough year last year because he was pretty mad at us, even though he helped make the decision. He had changed his mind and we would not.
In retrospect, I wish we had him repeat k or 1st grade. It would have been easier on all of us. This is helpful mostly if you get information to help your child. Maturation on ly does so much for a kid who is LD. In my experience you cannot depend on the school for remediation. You can see that by the fact that they are reluctant to test her, even though all the studies say early intervention is the way to go.
I am sure you can push, as marycas suggests, her on to first grade. The question is whether you want to. How are her social skills? Does she fit in well with kids in her grade? How big is she? If she towers over other kids, it will be more apparent that she is older. My son is one of the tallest in his class but he is a slim kid which helps.
I will also tell you that when my son finished K and was not reading that I didn’t think too much about it. His older sister did not read in K either. What I realized in hindsight was that she had all the prereading skills while he was way behind. The bottom line is that he ended first grade without really reading either, despite being placed in special education. It was a long hard road of catching up which is why we had him repeat fourth grade.
Beth
Re: New Here, looking for answers!
My brother was a premie, way up in northern Canada in 1948, with meningitis caught in the womb. He was lucky to survive. My mother’s doctor gave her some very sensible advice that could bear to be repeated. He said: “Look, this kid has spent his first year of life just surviving and catching up to where most babies are born. Treat him as if he is a year younger than his birthday says.” Until the school got into it and pushed him ahead and then held him behind causing total confusion, this advice worked very well.
With your daughter, if you tok that first year of just survival off her age, if she were 5 1/2 instead of 6 1/2, how would she fare? Is she physicall and socially and emotionally more like five than six? The question of height comes in here too — the doctor was right in my brother’s case, he matured normally but later than his age-mates. Is your daughter reaching her milestones normally but later too?
Definitely get her help, probably outside the school system.
As far as reading, summer tutoring using an effective method can cover way more than most kindergartens — in the typical K half of those kids are working on pure imitation and will probably forget it all over the summer and have to re-do it in Grade 1 anyway.
Then make a decision about repeating based on how your child acts and not just on birthdays. If you explain to her and her friends and the school that she was born too early and is really a year younger, that can make it easier for everyone.
Holding Back from Kindergarten
I held my son back from starting kindergarten-he is an October baby anyway. He has speech delays, some fine motor and is rather small. I was told to treat him as “just younger” than his birthday…which, for my son was really true. It was hard to hold him back…but having started this year, he is doing really well. He relates so well to his peer group…and in fact the teacher said it was the best thing I could have done because he is doing so well. The other kids are young enough to shrug off the age thing…they don’t care as long as everyone is playing! I am glad I did it…for you it is abit more difficult as she has done a year but it is way easier at this point.
parenting a child with LK
My oldest son (now 23) was born at 36 weeks but weighed only 3.5 pounds. We were also told to expect many complications which never materialized. As he approached school age we could see some motor delays and some learning disabilites began to show up too. I searched everywhere for an answer, read everything, tried every diet, we even sent him to a private school for kids with LD. All of this was somewhat helpful but it wasn’t until we found a nutritional product that we began to see what we had been looking for. I wish I had found it 17 years ago when it first came out. It hasn’t erased his difficulties but at age 23 things are going much better for him. I would love to tell you about it.
Re: New Here, looking for answers!
I was just recently referred to this site by a psychologist I spoke to regarding my 7 1\2 year old son. He is in grade two and has been diagnosed with a nonverbal learning disorder and ADHD. He has been consistantly below grade level, is now just starting to form sentences, can’t spell and quite often doesn’t understand what he is reading because he isn’t able to put it together as a full thought. To him each word is separate. Like your daughter he didn’t know his alphabet,couldn’t write anything and didn’t recognise any words in kindergarten. If he saw a word at the top of a page and then again at the bottom, he would have no idea what it is. I know how frustrating it can be. Put this together with the fact that he can’t sit still or pay attention, It makes school very difficult for him. I strongly suspect that dislexia is a factor, but the teachers in his rural 70 student school keep telling me that dislexia isn’t real. WHATEVER! I am glad to say that he is making progress but not enough to catch up. I want to hold him back a year because form now on school is only going to be harder for him. The school work will continue to be more often written. His teachers think that retention is a bad idea because it would be hard on his self esteem which is already low. I said will it be any worse than thinking that he is the dumbest kid in the class?
It’s hard and I’m frustrated, but I continue to do everything I can for my son and hope that everthing will work out. Good luck. Tammie
I would definately have the school test her so you can tell what her strengths and weaknesses are. I have to think about strengths and weaknesses, when I help my daughter who is great at visually learning, she remembers pictures well, so I draw pictures to help her remember things. As for determining if special ed is the spot for your child, I would definately view what your choices would be by sitting in on those classes, and sit in and see how your child is doing now. I wish you well-