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grade retention issues
Thu, 08/24/2006 - 12:37Topic: Parents & Caregivers
Looking for any parent who has had their child's school suggest holding a kid back a year, even when child has an IEP. I am in a battle to keep my son from pyschological harm of being held back. At the end of last year's IEP mtg., my son was reccommended to be placed in the spec. ed. room for reading, writing and math (most of the day) and then return to his reg. classroom for specials, SS, science, etc. Except school wanted him to go back to 1st grade instead of 2nd. Our point as parents is the harm of holding him back and my son hating school and dealing with all that goes with hating school forever. Our school district policy is the principal said it is up to him. Help needed with this.
Comments
Re: grade retention issues
Submitted by Brandi516 on Tue, 2006-10-17 - 09:07
I am sorry you are going through this! I am not yet, but afraid that it is going to happen.
My daughter is in 1st grade & was just diagnosed with E. She is in a special class for math & reading. She has been missing alot of school because of appts, seizures,etc....
SO I am expecting them to reccomend her to stay back.
I can imagine how you feel about this, it is hard for the child too, esp on top of what they are already dealing with! I hope it all works out for you!
[IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v357/brandigirl/sigs/Brandideb.jpg[/IMG]
Re: Re: grade retention issues
Submitted by GodivaGirl on Tue, 2006-10-17 - 13:03
A question to parents?
Have you ever thought of things from the other side? What it's like to be a kid that keeps going forward in school, trying to keep up as best as you can & hating teachers and for the most part school.
That was me, until about grade 6 & not because of seizures (though that was diagnosed when I was 5 yrs old)
While you want your kids to be typical kids and be in all the typical classes, what's wrong with possibly holding them back a year, if that's what school recommends.
I REALLY (and I mean really) struggled with school until grade 4.
It was when we started doing multiplications & divisions where a top line had to line up with a bottom line that a grade 4 teacher realized I had a visual/spacial perception disorder (I wrote words scrambled on paper, but too me it looked normal).
Everyone grade 1-4 said, she'll catch up.
Maybe it's just from missing school.
I think my parents were thrilled with my gr.4 teacher, the fact that she put me in touch with a writting specialist.
I missed school a few afternoons a week, but it helped.
They debated holding me back in grade 4, but for me I think what they did was take into consideration that I'd caught up so much by seeing the specialist & I continued to see them for gr.5, gr.6 & I did a lot of extra exercises in gr.7.
Even now, at 32 I still have a bit of dyslexic (sp??) tendancies when it comes to numbers if I'm tired I'll read 'em wrong (goes great with a call center job, eh?)
Who knows though, maybe if they would've caught things sooner - primary grades wouldn't have been a battle so much & I would've liked school as much as I liked baseball, ringette, swimming & tennis. Yup, for me sports meant more.
If you're that worried about the psych. impact, put your kids in sports.
Think about the flip side. Think of the impact of forcing your kid to continue on, struggle with school and perhaps hate it because it's too hard.
Life gets hard when your an adult.
Let a kid be a kid. Everyone learns at their own pace, it's unfortunate that until you complete grade 12 you're graded on it.
I can also tell you I have my general degree in sociology/crimial justice from university, but in the adult world, that's just a piece of paper that gets me a job. My average means nothing.
Think about the flip side, guess that's all I'm sayin'.
Good Luck.
Re: grade retention issues
Submitted by alison4R on Mon, 2006-10-16 - 13:12
Hi. I just read your post, sorry I wasn't on the board until last week. I hope that your son wasn't kept back a grade. There should be classes available to help your son without holding him back a year. Our son is in the 8th grade and is on an IEP. He has never been held back, even though he's not up to grade level on many subjects. Please email me with any question and I will try to help Thank you, Alison