repeat a grade - or not?

Post Reply New Topic

Hello. I'm a father of a sweet, talented, creative and imaginative 7 year old boy. He has been diagnosed with ASD since age 3. He has a tutor at home and a helper in school, including various therapy hours during school to help him learn.

He did very well in kindergarten but now the school is saying he is behind in reading and they want him to repeat the first grade. My wife and I just want to make the right decision for him. Was anyone here held back? Pushed forward?

Any advice or thoughts from the community?

Ps I forgot to mention the class he's in now has an incredible group of neurotypical peers that love and support him. They would go on to 2nd grade and he'd lose those connections if he stayed back and repeated 1st.

Thank you.

i know a girl who struggled and was kept back. she became an "A" student and had much more confidence. however, one story may not be indicative of what will happen in your son's situation.

I think this really depends on your son. Do you know what about reading he finds difficult? Could be possibly be dyslexic? Or is it a language issue?

If he's got a good set of classmates now it would be very unfortunate if you have to separate them.

(I wasn't set back, or push forward as a child, but I was in the special needs unit for most of primary school/elementary school. Until I just stopped going to school. Personally not going to school at all was best for my learning)

Can you catch him up during the summer?
If not, you probably should keep him back. Hard to say for sure from the outside, though.

Usually when they test reading they have specific metrics for different aspects of reading comprehension. I would look at the report closely and see if that helps you make decision.

As the grades increase, the social/theory of mind/inferring type skills become increasingly important.

We kept our ASD son back in pre-K. Best decision ever. I think if you're going to do it, it's better to do it in earlier years rather than later years. I mean, wouldn't it be worse if you waited until 4th grade, and the relationships are even stronger, and now they are at an age where every will understand he's being kept back - more of a stigma is what I'm getting at.

However, as the others have suggested, I think it's worth getting more details on exactly what the reading deficits are. Maybe it is something that you can focus on during the summer to catch him up to speed.

Perhaps your son's learning and developing speed is a bit slower at this moment. That is totally fine and okay- every child has his or her own pace and learning style. Sometimes they slow a bit down to suddenly catch up. I'd personally say it really depends on your son, but take into account that perhaps it's actually good to respect his pace at this moment. Not everyone goes as fast as ''supposed'' all the time. The school systems are cut for a certain margin and if your son doesn't fit into that at this point it may be best to let him repeat 7th grade. I mean, it greatly depends on how he's doing and what skills he's lacking, and it's not bad to stimulate and motivate him to get the best out of himself, but there's a fine line between that and forcing a child into a mold he doesn't really fit in.

Furthermore, how bad is the deficit? And how able is your son in dealing with pressure/stress? Maybe it's better for his mental health to let him stay a year.

I hope you make the wisest decision (with that I DON'T mean what I wrote here I just mean that what's best for your son)

I think this is one of the toughest decisions ever. I was all prepared from the title to think the teachers thought maybe he needed a little more time due to social or organization/developmental issues but, no, this is academic and ... wow, hard decision.

How are his other subjects? He is well ahead of the curve in any of them or is it all mostly so-so?

Reading is extremely important to the next levels of learning but, also, once that hurdle is crossed, it is crossed, and how smart a child is overall tends to take over. If he could be caught up by the end of 3rd grade, it would no longer make a difference.

But can he be?

What is the pattern at that school for holding back? Most schools don't make that request lightly.

Have you discussed with your son at all? Can he grasp what the decision is and see enough of the considerations to have an informed opinion?

This is, really, your last good chance to do it, if it is going to need to be done, and that increases the pressure. I faced a similar choice with my NT daughter at the end of Kindergarten and again at the end of first grade due to age and developmental/social maturity (she is one of the youngest in her class), but she wanted to stay with her friends and make the decision to suck it up each fall as the organizational and maturity expectations exceeded her development for a few months. Academically it was never a problem; she was doing great. But every fall was rough for her through most of elementary, as expectations increased on simple things like how long to pay attention, how much personal responsibility was required, etc. But, she had made that choice and was able to accept it and adapt. That is a lot of weight for a little one to have to consider, but I knew how upset my youngest sister has been to this day to have had a hold back forced on her, and if we going to do it, I wanted my daughter to be on board with it. She has rarely looked back. My husband and I ... well, we'll never know, and we spent a lot of time second guessing ourselves wishing we had started K later (the first time we had to choose), but ... shoot, my daughter is a straight A honor student with wonderful friends. This is a done deal, no long term issues fester related to it, so maybe we should accept we did well by her, eh?

Something about the way they are teaching reading didn't work for him this year. What are they going to do next year that is different? If it's just going through the same reading program again I would object -- he should be getting assistance from a resource teacher or reading specialist, whether you decide to retain or continue to 2nd grade. If you read Overcoming Dyslexia by Sally Shaywitz she recommends against retention, because it does not fix the underlying problem with the reading program. Since your son has good bonds with the NT kids I would place a high value on that. Perhaps counter with the option of going on to 2nd grade but having pull-out to work with a specialist to catch him up?

We haven't had to make a decision about retention -- because we delayed kindergarten, they pushed DS on to 1st grade despite being behind enough to retain, and in 1st we ended up pulling him out to go to a school for kids with Aspergers -- but DS8 (now in 2nd grade) is having significant trouble learning to read. I pushed for phonological testing (as this will uncover most cases of dyslexia), and the tests they used included CTOPP-2: Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing, and the GORT-5: Gray Oral Reading Test. Separately, I also took him to a developmental optometrist, who evaluated eye tracking, teaming, convergence, and also did the TVPS-C: Test of Visual Perceptual Skills, and DDT: Dyslexia Determination Test . I mention these tests because I didn't know what to ask for. (In DS's case, it turned out not to be a phonological problem, but due to visual issues and a poor teaching approach.)

In DS's case, my inexpert advocacy resulted in his special ed school switching from an eclectic approach to teaching reading to adopting a dyslexia reading curriculum called Sonday System -- they even trained all the aides! (I asked the teacher to sit down with me and explain exactly how she was teaching reading, and made a lot of comments about my concerns of the results of the DDT and how we were pursuing further testing. It didn't hurt that DS overheard us talking about possibly pulling him out to homeschool, and he repeated it to his teachers at school!) You probably won't get such a big change from a general ed school, but being assertive about it will help you get whatever are equipped to provide. DS has made noticeable progress in fluency in the last 3 months, but I need to figure out how to assess his progress and decide whether it is "enough" or if we should pursue additional tutoring.

Here are the books I found really helpful:
Overcoming Dyslexia by Sally Shaywitz
Straight Talk About Reading by Susan Hall
Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read by Stanislas Dehaene -- covers fMRI research about how the brain processes text

If you want some things you can do at home, I found these helpful:
http://funnix.com/ -- Funnix is a computer program that has very detailed lessons on blending, silent e, etc.
http://progressivephonics.com/ -- Progressive Phonics is a series of funny books you read together with your child, and it's free!

Get him caught up during the summer. Then get him in something like Kumon. Encourage and involve him in reading at home, as I'm sure you've been doing (read to him from books in interest areas, read museum placards, take him to storytime at the library, get him to read road signs to you to "help you get unlost"), you want him to connect positive feelings with reading. If it's scary or stressful, he'll shy away from it. The friends he's made in that class are VERY important. I can't emphasize enough what a difference supportive classmates can make.

I don't have any good advice to give that other people haven't already given.

When I was a kid, repeating a grade was the ultimate boogeyman. The younger it happened, the more surely it meant you were hopelessly stupid. It was something to be avoided AT ALL COSTS.

I don't agree with that mentality AT ALL. I don't think there should be any shame in it, or that it should mean anything other than that you didn't get some of the material and need more time.

Personally, I don't even think there should be "grades" in the sense of groups of kids at "X" level of instruction that move through school together. I think there should be "groups," possibly with different teachers for each subject, and a kid should be able to repeat one "group" while moving on in others. I don't think that it should be that "you graduate after 13 years in the system," either. I think you should graduate when you've completed all the material, whether you do that at 16 or at 23 (and I think you should be able to "graduate" math and keep going to school for reading, or vice versa, or whatever).

I had this decision to make last year. It ended up being made for me-- we put him in the special reading group, and by the end of the year he had caught up enough to go on to first grade, and that was the end of the discussion.

I still kind of wish I had either demanded that he stay back, maybe with some enrichment tutoring in math...

...or that I had just kept him out of school one more year, and he had gone to kindergarten at 6 instead of 5.

If they want to keep him back, keeping him back is probably best. He will actually continue to see the kids he's with now at least somewhat (you can always collect phone numbers, and there will probably be recess), as well as hooking up with a new group of kids. If he's not in some special reading program (here it's Title I, and we love it so much that he and I actually CRIED when, every quarter this year, he scored just barely above the cutoff for being placed in the program) (I also note that I used a lot of the things we learned in Title I in kindergarten to teach the next kid to read-- she will be 5 tomorrow and already reads three-letter words), PUSH FOR THAT. DEMAND IT.

It's more than just about the kid learning to read, not falling through the cracks, et cetera. In those special groups, they have the luxury of teaching to specific learning styles. They get to learn with other kids who learn the same way (or at least are the same in learning differently). They get to have relationships with other people on their level, and other people who are struggling, and see that it's not just them, that it's not all about being at the top of the pile, that everybody has things they have to fight with.

That's WAY MORE IMPORTANT than avoiding some embarrassment and graduating on schedule.

Hey zette...

...you and I are probably polar opposites in our parenting styles (I think I'd probably go slap raving nuts if I tried to be as immersively involved; I'm definitely our resident laissez-faire mommy).

But I really, really have to thank you for the books and, especially, the links. I think I might check out Funnix and Progressive Phonics for the middle two this summer. DS is at grade level, barely, but I would like his ability to measure up to his intelligence and besides that right now he says what he really really wants is "to be able to read third-grade books, because all the cool books are for third grade." DD5 won't be going to kindergarten this fall (not making that mistake again here in Redshirtville, and I really do think she needs to mature a little more before some poor teacher has to deal with her). She's doing another year in preschool to work on behavior. However she's already mastered the ENTIRE preschool academic curriculum.

So I've been thinking that Bubby's remedial education can be Sissy's enrichment tutoring. I was digging for tools (because the Sing Spell Read Write box I bought totally did not work, and ABCMouse is under Bubby's head and just about under Sissy's too). Thanks for the material.

Lol I never had the impression we were opposites. I probably come across as more intense online than I am in real life -- I tend to do more reading and obsessing that actually taking action. DS has one activity (cub scouts), one therapy (speech), and spends most of his time on minecraft and his bike. On a good day we get 20 min of homework done, on an excellent one I can also get him to read with me. Anything beyond that is entirely the result of bribery (when he wants a new iPad app, he does Funnix or ReflexMath in exchange.).



ReadingEggs, Mathseeds, and ReflexMath are also very good.

I held back my daughter in 2 nd grade after starting her at 4 in Kindergarten. Son started at 5 and will not be held back in 3 rd grade even though he is falling behind. School says kids with IEPs and not held back. Daughter was held back with IEP in another school district. It has been fine with both kids. As long as they get the support they need than do what feels right.

The decision has probably already been made, but my first question would be "what would my child get that would be different that would help him make that progress if he stayed in the same grade?" If it's more of the same, then that's not always helpful. If he is on an IEP/receiving special education already, then it's not usually the best decision to hold a child back because they are already receiving services targeted to their level.