Hi, I’m new to this discussion board. I have a 3rd grader with learning disabilities. Last year was horrible, socially very stressful (girl bullying), academic confidence was low, this year has been wonderful with lots of growth both academically and in confidence socially. She is young socially, plays with mostly 2nd graders, multi-age classrooms, small k-8 school, big jump up to later el both academically and socially. She is also asking to stay in 3rd grade and initiated discussion. Do any parents have experience here? I know studies show not to, but would love to know what others think.
Re: holding child back in 3rd grade for another year
My youngest niece was held back in 3rd grade at her own request. It has been a wonderful experience for her and where she was struggling before, she is now doing well. She did, however, change to a different school, which I think helped things socially. It would have been difficult if she had stayed in the same school.
Re: holding child back in 3rd grade for another year
I think retention is fine when attitudes of all concerned are positive. I’m another who had a child stay in first grade two years.
The one caution I will give you is if there are learning problems, they will not go away by just repeating a grade most of the time. You probably should have her evaluated and possibly tutored if it turns out that she has some kind of reading or other problem. The retention will just delay the problem, if there is one, and it’ll reappear later.
Most kids object to being held back so the fact that she initiated conversation is significant.
We held our son back in fourth grade. The reasons were many: he is LD and we had been struggling to catch him up since first grade. His LDs were also global, meaning we did not have a kid who excelled at math while lagged in reading. We also discovered inadvertently when we put him in a scout troop of kids a year younger (because he was new to scouting and we knew the leader) that he did much better with kids a year younger. We were also switched him from public to parochial school (where his siblings were) because we wanted to avoid the public middle schools here and the circul. was more demanding.
It was the best decision we ever made. We had an extra year to do therapy to correct his underlying deficits. He is finishing sixth grade now and is a B student. He had not been before we held him back but most importantly he has maintained it for three years, well beyond the material that was repeated. The repeated material was mostly useful for math which he was really struggling with at the time.
He also has lots of friends and is very socially integrated. For me, that has been the most gratifying part. He was really on the edge socially and now is well liked. He fits in well maturity wise. He plays sports so I know the kids who are in 7th grade and are his age mates. They seem much older than him.
Beth