Reply to Bilingualism, Learning Disabilities, Special Needs, Immersion School etc.

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My DS (ADHD/inattentive & anxiety) started out in a partial immersion Spanish program in FCPS in K.  I'm multi-lingual and my DH's family South American and he is bilingual.  We had very high expectations for DS in the immersion program but after being in the program for over a year, it was clear immersion was not a good fit for him.  I'm not saying kids with challenges like his cannot learn a foreign language but our school systems aren't well set up for it like in countries where foreign language is mandatory and introduced in the early grades.  It was causing DS too much anxiety and becoming a very negative experience for him.  We came to the decision ourselves that DS would be better served by pulling him out of the program (his teachers remained neutral and tried their best to limit pull out services to when he had lessons in English). He's making much more progress, feels much better about school and has significantly less anxiety than when he was in the program.  He is finally at grade level in English and near grade level in math.  I have a NT DD in the program but my youngest with MERLD/apraxia is not in it.  While he is making good progress, it is not an appropriate learning environment for him.  Perhaps if our school system were set up for bilingual special ed, it might be different.  [/quote]

Very interesting post.  I'm the OP and DS' ADHD is primarily inattentive as well, along with anxiety.  I'm surprised to hear about the pull-out issues in FCPS.  DS gets pull-out for English-language arts (during English language arts time) but gets in-class help in math in Spanish from a special ed teacher, along with some of his classmates.  The only thing I think could be better about DS' program is if they offered special ed support for Spanish language arts - it would be helpful, although DS actually is doing ok with it anyhow.

It's hard to say whether our DS would be less anxious with only one language.  He has no issues understanding Spanish and his anxiety is primarily social anxiety -- it seems to us (right now at least) that he'd still be dealing with anxiety regardless, because we see the anxiety in non-school situations as well.  Still. your post is certainly food for thought.  Thanks for sharing.[/quote]

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