What are everybody's thoughts about retention

[sixpence1978]

We got my DD's IOWA test results back and they echo everything we have been seeing since she started school in kindergarten. She is half a year to a full year behind in all of her subjects. We've known this for a while.

 

After homeschooling K, I wasn't sure she was ready for 1st since I was already seeing some signs of her dyslexia. She went to private school for 1st and her teacher recommended retention. She came home again after that because my DH didn't think she needed to repeat an entire grade. So after 2nd at home, I didn't think she was ready to go back to her school for 3rd. We've done 3rd (on her level) this year with many complications.

 

She was tested at a learning center at the beginning of the year, and her evaluators thought she was behind, but not enough for retention. I'm just getting so weary about it all.

 

She is a smaller girl with a July birthday, so she is on the younger side. She also sounds a lot younger because of her lack of fluent speech.

 

I know that it isn't the biggest concern in a homeschool environment, but DH does want her to return to school someday and we have to register her by grade level each year. Otherwise I wouldn't worry about it as much.

 

Any wisdom for you ladies? A been there, done that? Is there a stage where things do start to balance out?

[Tokyomarie]

Usually, retention is not recommended for social reasons. Dyslexics who have had intensive 1-on-1 through the years usually do get to where they are performing at least at lower end of grade level if not higher.

 

It is harder if your husband is pushing for her to go back to school someday. Could you register her at one grade level but not make a big point of talking up to your daughter what grade she is in?

 

Natural points at which to consider retention could be transition to middle school (5th for some districts), junior high (7th for others), or beginning of high school.

 

We homeschooled our daughter full-time gr. 6-12 (part-time before that). Our decision when she was in high school was to give her an extra year at home. She was never retained during her main growing years but was given a kind of "Gr. 13" year. It had its pluses and minuses but was generally a positive overall.

[jenbrdsly]

I'm a former PS teacher, so this would be my response from "that camp". Children with LDs should not be retained simply because they are not meeting grade level expectations. But in your case your daughter has a July birthday. So there could be a case for having her repeat a grade so that she would be older and more mature.

 

Basically, I'm no help at all!

[Ottakee]

What are her thoughts on this? I had friends in school that were never held back but had summer birthdays that put them on the older side for our grade.

 

If your daughter is OK with it, I would redo a year and give her extra time to mature.

[Melaz4]

My son is now 12 but when he was in kindergarten there was talk about holding him back. I did a ton of research on it and believed he had an ld. I read the same thing as the pp said. If there is a LD holding them back will not help. Being held back myself was hard on my self esteem. I hated being the oldest in my class. You do have a special circumstance though because of the summer bday.

 

With that said I want to mention that my son had a severe tic as well as what I assume to be dyslexia. With the retention research I also had to add on tic research. It led me to a book called "Is This Your Child" by Doris Rapp. Eventually I discovered he had a corn allergy. Once I took corn out of his diet his symptoms were greatly reduced. I still believe he has mild dyslexia but I also think his allergy made it worse. Now that my dd is showing signs of dyslexia I am revisiting this topic of allergies. If you do some research you will read that dyslexic children can be prone to them. Just a hint usually the food you crave the most is the problem food. In my sons case anything sweetened with corn syrup. I know this is totally off topic but your situation reminded me of my sons story and I wanted to throw it out there incase it could help anyone.

 

Good luck deciding.

[Crimson Wife]

My DS has a birthday 3 weeks before the cutoff for our state. He was reading, so I went ahead and started him in K at not-quite-5. However, he wasn't ready to move on to 1st grade work at not-quite-6. He struggled with attention span and fine motor activities, especially writing. Socially he got along better with younger kids so I had already put him in pre-k rather than K activities. For the purposes of our cover school, he technically repeated K, but I called it "transition" and continued on where he was academically.

 

He is currently in the process of being evaluated for Autistic Spectrum Disorder or possibly another condition ike NVLD, ADHD. dyspraxia, etc. I am glad that I did a "transition" year with him because he is much more ready for first grade level work now than he was a year ago.

 

I disagree with social promotion for students with LD's. It is better to repeat a grade than to fall even further behind academically because the student hasn't mastered the foundational material.

[jenbrdsly]

My son is now 12 but when he was in kindergarten there was talk about holding him back. I did a ton of research on it and believed he had an ld. I read the same thing as the pp said. If there is a LD holding them back will not help. Being held back myself was hard on my self esteem. I hated being the oldest in my class. You do have a special circumstance though because of the summer bday.

 

With that said I want to mention that my son had a severe tic as well as what I assume to be dyslexia. With the retention research I also had to add on tic research. It led me to a book called "Is This Your Child" by Doris Rapp. Eventually I discovered he had a corn allergy. Once I took corn out of his diet his symptoms were greatly reduced. I still believe he has mild dyslexia but I also think his allergy made it worse. Now that my dd is showing signs of dyslexia I am revisiting this topic of allergies. If you do some research you will read that dyslexic children can be prone to them. Just a hint usually the food you crave the most is the problem food. In my sons case anything sweetened with corn syrup. I know this is totally off topic but your situation reminded me of my sons story and I wanted to throw it out there incase it could help anyone.

 

Good luck deciding.

 

Wow. A corn allergy? Good for you for figuring that out!

[Pen]

We got my DD's IOWA test results back and they echo everything we have been seeing since she started school in kindergarten. She is half a year to a full year behind in all of her subjects. We've known this for a while.

 

After homeschooling K, I wasn't sure she was ready for 1st since I was already seeing some signs of her dyslexia. She went to private school for 1st and her teacher recommended retention. She came home again after that because my DH didn't think she needed to repeat an entire grade. So after 2nd at home, I didn't think she was ready to go back to her school for 3rd. We've done 3rd (on her level) this year with many complications.

 

She was tested at a learning center at the beginning of the year, and her evaluators thought she was behind, but not enough for retention. I'm just getting so weary about it all.

 

She is a smaller girl with a July birthday, so she is on the younger side. She also sounds a lot younger because of her lack of fluent speech.

 

I know that it isn't the biggest concern in a homeschool environment, but DH does want her to return to school someday and we have to register her by grade level each year. Otherwise I wouldn't worry about it as much.

 

Any wisdom for you ladies? A been there, done that? Is there a stage where things do start to balance out?

 

My son is back one year from what his age would indicate as to official records, testing requirements etc. For any areas where he is able to do more advanced work, nothing stops the more advanced work being done.

 

Also, like your dd, he is small for his age and looks more like what children in the year lower look like. Also perhaps similar, he had some speech trouble and was saying things like lellow, when everyone in the class was saying yellow already and he was starting to get teased.

 

Different than yours, he was farther behind when I made the retention decision--though he has started to catch up now.

 

His friends span from age 13 down to youngers.

This past year he had a concurrent IEP at the school where his original classmates are now a year ahead of where he officially is. (this is as close as I can come to the going back to school issue.) He was embarrassed at first, I think, but by the end of the year had become fine with both playing with some of the original classmates and some children from the new group.

 

The biggest negative has been that I think sometimes he does not work as hard as he might if he were comparing himself more to the more advanced materials and more advanced group. But that seems to be balanced/outweighed by less stress and frustration.

 

So far as I know, if he ever pulls ahead in everything, I could then advance his grade, or graduate him early. If not, then what he is tested on is at least at a more reasonable level to what his achievement level is.

[Heathermomster]

We got my DD's IOWA test results back and they echo everything we have been seeing since she started school in kindergarten. She is half a year to a full year behind in all of her subjects. We've known this for a while.

 

After homeschooling K, I wasn't sure she was ready for 1st since I was already seeing some signs of her dyslexia. She went to private school for 1st and her teacher recommended retention. She came home again after that because my DH didn't think she needed to repeat an entire grade. So after 2nd at home, I didn't think she was ready to go back to her school for 3rd. We've done 3rd (on her level) this year with many complications.

 

She was tested at a learning center at the beginning of the year, and her evaluators thought she was behind, but not enough for retention. I'm just getting so weary about it all.

 

She is a smaller girl with a July birthday, so she is on the younger side. She also sounds a lot younger because of her lack of fluent speech.

 

I know that it isn't the biggest concern in a homeschool environment, but DH does want her to return to school someday and we have to register her by grade level each year. Otherwise I wouldn't worry about it as much.

 

Any wisdom for you ladies? A been there, done that? Is there a stage where things do start to balance out?

 

I'm not clear. Is your DD diagnosed with dyslexia? If so, re-mediate the reading using O-G and multisensory techniques and teach her to her level on the other subjects. Use read alouds, videos, and audio books. Work around the reading until she's caught up.

 

If she's not diagnosed, I'd locate the nearest Scottish Rite Center and get her dyslexia screened for free. Whatever the case, keep her grade level and use explicit, multisensory teaching techniques.

 

In K, my son's teacher wanted to hold him back. We opted to have DS tested for reading disability at a local dyslexia school (aged 6). The tester didn't perform a WISC-IV, otherwise he'd been identified as dyslexic. Whatever the case, we were told that he was too bright to be held back. DS was diagnosed dyslexic one year later (aged 7).

 

Between 4th and 5th grade, DS took a mighty leap with school. DS has hours of O-G tutoring and writing accommodation. He outperforms many of his peers through study and in certain subjects, he just understands implicitly. He still struggles with grammar and spelling. Math is a chore. His SAT 10 testing scores are crazy and all over the place. I would not base a decision such as retention upon the results of a standardized test.

 

Overcoming Dyslexia by Shaywitz is an excellent dyslexia resource to start with.

[sixpence1978]

No, my DD definitely does not want to be held back. Her feelings on it as well as my DH's are why we haven't so far. She also doesn't care about learning (not that I know many kids that do). She doesn't want to try at all...would much rather spend her days playing or watching TV. During school time she is highly distractible and doesn't put any effort into problem solving.

 

She has an unofficial diagnosis of dyslexia from a learning center where she was tested for 4 hours. She is on the waiting list for a neuropsych to get a more official diagnosis. We are also getting into the SLP for some evaluation later this week. On tests we do here at home, she tests very poorly on working memory and problem solving skills.

 

We were doing AAS for her OG program since her reading was relatively good, but her spelling was very poor. And went through VT, but saw no results or just minor results with both approaches. She tests as fully developed (age equivalent 18 yrs) on phonemic awareness activities. She does still struggle with word analysis though. Her spelling has improved dramatically this year after switching to A&P. I'm not sure yet how much DB is helping her reading. She reads on grade level, but not accurately. She is also have trouble jumping from easy readers/early chapter books, to grade level books because of the smaller font and number of words on the page.

 

Over the past couple of years (since beginning homeschooling again), her math skills have been falling apart. She used to be really strong in math. She is accurate but not fast at computation, but application and real world math skills are very shallow. Again, no problem solving skills.

 

I guess, it has been on my mind lately because I'm tired of being frustrated all the time. I just wish I could see progress across the board. It seems like once one area is getting better, another area is suffering.

[PeterPan]

Since you're getting a neuropsych eval, I would ask the np. She/he will be in a good position to give you custom advice. I've known a couple people to hold back homeschooled adhd kids, and it can be a good thing. (Yes, I'm hinting you might get a different label from what you expect.) I'm not saying you should or shouldn't. I'm just saying you could go either way and it's not a crime or going to ruin her if you do. Sometimes it's for the best. After you do the np testing for the working memory, etc., etc., then get some stuff and start working on that. My dd's fumbling in decoding follows the same pattern as when she fumbles digit spans.

[sixpence1978]

(Yes, I'm hinting you might get a different label from what you expect.)

 

I actually wouldn't be surprised by an inattentive label at all. I know you have said in other posts that having high phonemic awareness scores mean a dyslexia diagnosis wouldn't be possible. She did take a dyslexia diagnosis test and Gardner Reversal test at her learning center which showed that she does have reversals, impaired spelling, and impaired decoding (as was shown on the nonsense word test). So they were confident enough to label her dyslexic despite those other scores. Who knows?

 

Now if only I could have the patience to wait for those answers.:001_smile: It really puts a damper on my planning for next year. :D

[PeterPan]

So when is your eval? And then is it a 2 week wait for the results or longer? There may be some therapy or remedial things you'll decide to do as a result of the information you get. If you really want to plan in the meantime, make some really basic plans for things you KNOW will work (math, handwriting, art, whatever) and just leave a big hole of say an hour a day. That way if you need that hole to work on some things, you have it. And if you don't, then you plug in history, that sort of thing.

[happycc]

based on my my experience of raising my 18yrs old son....

 

tell your husband to forget about sending daughter back to school ...if it didn;t work now, why would it work later....sending my son to school nearly killed or has killed him....the pressure was too much for him to catch up....he always knew he was not at grade level....it affected his self esteem etc. once he got a taste of school he never wanted to come back home when I knew that would be the best thing for him. At least he wouldn't be so stressed and could finish high school.

 

work at your child's level...but keep pushing forward without the stress of teacher/school/peer pressure

 

I have no regrets holding him back but have absolute regrets sending my kids to school.

[Quiver0f10]

We live in a state that mandates testing in grades 3-9. My son had not yet been evaluated, so on paper I had him repeat a grade while we got his neuro-psych eval done and his exemption from testing from the state. However, I don't worry @ grade levels other than that. He will graduate when I feel he has completed what he needs.