When did you decide to pull your child from a mainstream school?
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Anonymous
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My son is 6 and entering first grade. He has severe adhd and has been evaluated for ASD, which he does not meet the diagnostic criteria for, but displays some traits you’d observe in a level 1 type kid (such as misses social cues, trouble with back and forth conversation at times, can’t really sustain pretend play etc.)
His attention issues are significant. He is currently in a mainstream private school and with a reading tutor outside of school, is at grade level. Doing fine in math so far. But behaviorally the day takes a lot out of him and he can have difficulty regulating. He’s growing each year, but still just behind his peers. He also cannot take homework. He gets overwhelmed looking at long lists of words and shuts down. He does really well in 1:1 tutoring and small groups, but I’m just wondering how much he’s really getting out of school with his attention issues and if increasing expectations and homework will be too much for him. School has not counseled him out or initiated that conversation (at least not yet.) He has been evaluated through our district and has a robust IEP at our okay elementary school. I’d probably move him to a private special needs school for kids with adhd and language based learning disabilities, which is 30 min away from us. At what point did you decide to pull your kid? I’d say he’s doing okay but is not thriving academically or socially. He likes school. Has some friends. But I also think he’d meet some more kids like himself elsewhere. Are my expectations too high? Do I invest in a private neuropsych? |
Anonymous
| OP here - also adding that he is already medicated for his adhd. |
Anonymous
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If you are paying for private school, yes get the neuropsych. At least know what your kid’s needs are so you can target the best schools.
For me, kid with a similar profile was served very well in our local public. |
Anonymous
| Age 3 |
Anonymous
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Language based school until dyslexia was remediated and now public school. It’s not perfect but they’re doing a good job and child has a comprehensive IEP
If you don’t have a neuropsych I suggest you get one |
Anonymous
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I have a child with severe ADHD and maybe ASD (some traits but has longstanding friendships and can make new friends so it’s very gray) at a mainstream private school. DC also has dyslexia, dysgraphia and anxiety. Medicated for ADHD, anxiety, and did years of remediation for dyslexia and OT for dysgraphia. Also lots of CBT.
I feel like my DC has been/is well served by their mainstream private school. To be clear, it’s an independent school which has more resources than a parochial school. Small class sizes make a huge difference for the teacher being able to offer attention or redirect behavior. They have wobbly stools and fidgets and noise cancelling headphones and kids can sit in the hallway to complete an assignment if they need additional quiet. Lots of attention from adults who care, and responsive teachers and administrators. My DC had significant behavior and attention issues until about 4th grade (compared to their mainstream peers, only had a call from teachers twice and from divisions head once). Behavior and attention is much better now in middle school. Until 4th grade, homework in grades 1-3 (which was pretty minimal IMO) was a huge fight to get DC to sit down and do it. I talked with other parents and DC was not the only one - I wouldn’t use this alone as a marker of success for your DC. You are still very early in their education. Most independent schools are not highly rigorous academically in their early elementary years, focusing a lot of social-emotional learning and play. At DC’s school, the academics didn’t get to be a lot until 4th grade. To be clear, independent schools don’t offer therapies or remediation to students who are ND - we paid privately (or had insurance cover) all therapies for DC. So you will be disappointed if that is what you are anticipating. Think carefully about what problem you are trying to solve - is it the curriculum? The community? The environment? And recognize that there is likely no perfect school for your DC - it’s more that you are trying to optimize what you can provide for their education. |
Anonymous
Don’t do homework with a six year old who is working so hard to get through the day. That’s not realistic for him. |
Anonymous
| For us, we went to private because public was destroying his academic confidence and he had no friends. He hated school and was surly all the time. If your son loves school, I would consider stayin in public. You can continue to supplement with tutoring and add social skills group. There is no guarantee he will make “more” friends at a private, but even if he does , it’s not the same as neighborhood friends - ours are spread as far as a hour away. He probably needs time to decompress after school - one of my non-ADHD but more introverted kids is the same way. He really lets loose and needs a lot of downtime to himself during the week. I would question the necessity of a 6 year old having homework other than reading with you for 20 minutes. You don’t mention finances, but can you finance a $40-50k annually for 11 more years then college? If so, do it; if not, it sounds like you can wait. We switched when my kid was unhappy/showing signs of failure that the school couldn’t abate; is your son happy? |
Anonymous
| Pp - adding that the earlier poster is spot on. Even at our learning disability specific school we pay for speech services (at school); social skills and tutoring outside school. The school environment and style of teaching/learning skills are provided by the school, but while we love it, it’s not academically rigorous and although he is thriving we know other kids with more academic struggles who still struggle in this environment and supplement with even more private services. |
Anonymous
I think this and the earlier PP are key. Really evaluate how your kid is doing now and your finances. Private schools with small classes are not cheap (40-60K) and the tuition rises 3-5% each year. Couple that with the fact that you will likely still be having to pay from some outside services at least for awhile until your DD is more leveled and able to manage more on his own. |
Anonymous
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My kids are in 9th and 12th grade. One has SN and the other is in AP classes. I’d take any homework they are assigning and immediately throw it out. Your kid is 6 and should be playing after school. The day is long and he shouldn’t have the attention or shouldn’t be working on HW.
What matters is he likes school. I wouldn’t pull him if he likes it. We pulled mine for private school when we had a serious bought of school refusal as a teen that started to trigger mental health problems. A change was needed. I pushed academics hard in the early years ask my oldest and homework in K because they assigned it and I didn’t know better. It caused him to hate school from day 1 and that’s about it. |
Anonymous
| 17:20 and want I didn’t mention, we actually started in private school because I thought the small classes would be better. There was so much homework in K and it was rigorous. I switched my oldest to public in 1st and it was so much better for him for many years. He stayed in public from 1st - the beginning of 10th and that’s when he went to a different private. |
Anonymous
Thanks for this perspective. He didn’t get homework from school - but we do have a great OG reading tutor and she assigns him a short amount of homework daily that just takes a lot of effort for us to get through. We’ve pulled back a bit, but he needs to learn to read and write. He will start getting some homework in first grade - I will consult with his teachers. In a SN private school, I think he’d have more built in support at school to accommodate kids who don’t necessarily learn well with homework. |
Anonymous
| If you are asking here, time to move him. |