I have enjoyed reading all of your messages and replies and was wondering if maybe someone out there could offer some advice. We recently discovered that our 6-year-old daughter has a "mild to moderate" auditory processing problem. The clinician seemed to feel that because she is very bright, she could easily learn to compensate for these problems with therapy, which we're beginning next week. She is a good student and has been promoted to 2nd grade but she is immature. We're not sure if this is related to environmental factors(no siblings, no young children who live close by, cousins who are infants) or if this is related to CAPD. Maybe both. Anyhow, her teacher said that repeating 1st grade wouldn't hurt. We think it might. She has completed all of the academic requirements for 1st grade successfully. With speech therapy specifically designed to address these processing problems, wouldn't that significantly help with maturity? I know lots of parents who were so glad they held their children back, initially, but I wonder how much it really helped.
Maybe it did. I have read a few articles on the Internet which cite studies that show that holding a child back, whether for academic or social/emotional reasons really doesn't help much. In fact, they said it usually has a negative effect on the child, especially their self esteem. What these articles said was that letting the children go on and providing them with the special services they need like therapy, etc. is the way to go. Has anyone dealt with this before? I'd appreciate any help.
Re: Holding a Child Back
A lot of the research about retention is basically statistics on performance of kids who are retained. Lots of them continue to have problems. And if the kid has needs that aren’t being addressed, then not addressing them again doesn’t help a whole lot. But even if 75% of kids arent’ helped… if your kid’s the 1 in 4 that it would help, that’s what you want to do.
Especially if a kiddo’s immature, addressing her needs and holding her back means she gets to tackle this stuff with better weapons and another year’s development under her belt. (I don’t know whether speech therapy would help maturity.) With processing problems, she may have gaps in the foundations for later stuff.
ON the other hand — a very bright kiddo can get bored pretty quickly and it may be that she thrives on the challenge of making up for any lost ground. How’s her temperament as far as confidence and tackling new things?
And another snippet of research sticks in my mind — socially, boys struggle most if they are on the “small/young for their year” side, whereas it’s girls who are more mature than their classmates who are more likely to struggle socially. And again, these are stats, not kids.
Re: Holding a Child Back
I held my youngest back in Kindergarten. He turned 5 in July and immediately went into kindergarten,so I felt that one more year would help him mature. It’s ironic,but in some ways,yes it helped him mature and in other ways it made him angry.He did need the time to learn social skills,writing skills,letter recognition, all of these areas,it helped in some ways. The problem was: by virtue of being “held back” so were the related services he needed. See,even though he needed this time,it was used instead of more Sped services. He is now in 5th grade,uses Tech Assistive Devices for writing,and reads fluently. But it didn’t come with out a little phase where he became unruly,ticked,and miserable. Just because the writing was easier didn’t mean he could write legibly. He still can’t!
Now he has help of a laptop.Too bad he didn’t have this help in 1st grade.Sometimes it seems that if we had of toughed it out ,and gone on to 1st,it would of forced us to push the issue of correct services,not just a substitute.In the end , it prolonged the one thing he really needed. It all depends in what the kid really needs. Hind sight is twenty twenty,I didn’t know this at the time,and made the best decision I knew at the time. He DID need time to mature,I just allowed it to take the place of better services. This is where I would change the decision I made.
Re: Holding a Child Back
I have a 6 yr old that we held back from kindergarden my wife and I agonized through this decision but I think it was the right one, the only thing we have been continued fighting is the school, they diagnosed him with LD w/speech impediment. We took him out of kindergarden and put him in a private school that had a pre-k where he has bloomed.
Today at 8:00 am I have a meeting with the school about him returning next school year but I want to know what are they going to do for him, all of last year we paid for all his speech therapy, we also went to our Pedriatician where she told us that we had to put main emphasis on our son education placement.
The school issue is that they do not have the funds to provide other than speech therapy.
Does anybody have any input on how to handle schools. Pls advice.
Re: Holding a Child Back
Sue J -
Don’t know if you received my reply - I’ve had computer problems the last day or so. In case you didn’t, I’ll try to reply here. You asked about our daughter’s temperament. She is a happy, outgoing child and very competitive. Regarding her willingness to try new things, depends on the situation. Usually, you have to push her to do new things. She can be
reluctant at first, then tries it, and then is thrilled that she accomplished it. If she’s around her peers and they are all doing something new, she’d do it and work really hard at it, just to be competitive.
She is also very tall, one of the tallest kids in her class. 95% percentile for height. That’s another reason why we’re a bit concerned about holding her back. She’d tower above the kids.
Re: Holding a Child Back
When my son was in 1st gr. his teacher suggested that since she was moving to 2nd gr and he did so well with her that we should wait 1 more year see how he does and then consider holding him back. He has CAPD,was very immature and had a speech, fine and gross motor difficulties. We took her advice and knew at the end of 2nd gr he needed to be retained. We spoke to him about it and he was very open to the idea. He was struggling and I felt if we pushed him ahead we would lose him. We did have to fight the school district to retain him. He loves going to school. He is now in 7th gr and having the time of his life. Through all of this he also learned to advocate for himself. He would never ask for help before but since 6th gr he now will. He has had no ill effects from holding him back. If anything he fits much better with these boys and girls due to his small stature and immaturity. He has made some really good friends since 2nd gr that he has kept throughout these years. I will never regret the decision to hold him back and I don’t think he will either. But it also depends on your child and situation. Not every child retained will be able to make that adjustment. It could be very traumatic.We were very lucky.
Re: Holding a Child Back
I think a crucial variable is the child’s attitude. We explored holding back our son this year. We were even going to have him switching schools. He was totally opposed to it so we dropped it. For him, it seemed like failure. We thought internalizing that attitude would cancel out any other benefit.
Beth
Re: Holding a Child Back
JL Wieland wrote:
>
> Sue J -
>
> Don’t know if you received my reply - I’ve had computer
> problems the last day or so. In case you didn’t, I’ll try to
> reply here. You asked about our daughter’s temperament. She
> is a happy, outgoing child and very competitive. Regarding
> her willingness to try new things, depends on the situation.
> Usually, you have to push her to do new things. She can be
> reluctant at first, then tries it, and then is thrilled that
> she accomplished it. If she’s around her peers and they are
> all doing something new, she’d do it and work really hard at
> it, just to be competitive.
No, I didn’t get the reply. If she’s competitive, then she may really thrive at being top dog, and learn some good solid leadership skills. I’ve got a real bias here ‘cause in the middle school setting I”ve watched kids go from that “okay, give me half a chance and I’ll go for it” to kids who are beaten down because they *aren’t* given quite enough chance — everything is always just out of reach. The bright kids are the ones that get especially frustrated and tend to be *Very* hard on themselves. I guess that would be my next question — is she hard on herself when she doesn’t think she’s succeeded? (The other thing to know here is I taught at a private school for kids with LDs so I didn’t see the kids who were succeeding, and I know they’re out there!)
On the other hand, she could figure that she is only doing okay “for being a year behind,” too. How does she feel about the idea? If she knows t hat by not staying back, she’ll have to work harder and be frustrated sometimes, but that it’s because she chose to take the challenge — because she’ll be learning more even if things like grades don’t necessarily reflect it — then she will feel some sense of control over the situation. (And maybe she isn’t mature enough to be thinking about it that way… but you could present it that way.) The *main* thing is that her LDs get addressed. I think the only other reason to hold her back & make things easier — but it’s a biggie — is that lots of times the remediation work is sort of an “extra” — added on to schoolwork. And if it’s good remediation, then it’s hard work! Some parents actually pull their kids out of school for it. If a kid’s going to have time to breathe, much less play and be a kid, having to “work extra hard” at school *and* work extra hard on getting skills and processing issues up to par can just be too much for a kid. Other kids have more natural endurance and focus and will stick to things and drive themselves — so if she’s more like that, then go for it.
I know, this is still more questions than answers ;)
>
> She is also very tall, one of the tallest kids in her class.
> 95% percentile for height. That’s another reason why we’re a
> bit concerned about holding her back. She’d tower above the
> kids.
on this very subject, including a link to a research article on the net.
I happen to agree with you, that holding her back could hurt. There would have to be significant benefits to retaining, and I don’t think “time to mature” meets that criteria.
Mary