Reply to Retaining a child in first grade - turned out good/bad for your child? please help

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[quote=Anonymous]Long story short, we are considering whether we should ask teh school to retain our child (1 grade). she has been at the same school since pre-k. bright child, very very social, she is looking forward to second grade. summer birthday, she is one of the youngest in class. serious health issues made her miss or beign tardy to over 50% days of pre-k. health more stable in k, but hard medication made her tired and difficult to concentrate. a lot of children in her class were advanced (older), she started feeling she was as good as others. she made it through the end of the year and was extremely excited about going to first grade. we thought retaining her would do more damage that good. in first grade health finally fine, but she still has to take hard medication. just after turning 6 she is diagnosed with ADHD, doctor recommends an IEP. school rejects request at the beginning of the year but offers some support. since February we realize she is behind and started helping her at home too.

in the past months she has improved a lot, going through 4 levels of reading, but she is still two behind for the end of the year goal. math is also so and so. social studies and art she is beyond grade level, socially she is very engaged and curious (the doctor who found ADHD said that socially and some aspects of her emotions, like empathy towards other she was older than her age). for the school, she can go to second grade. when I asked if she would benefit from being retained, the teacher told me that probably it could be very good to her, because she could have more time to mature, gain confidence by being one of those ahead instead one of those behind and so on.

now we need to decide what to do. I wish we redshirted when she started pre-k but now it useless to think about the past. If I knew that she is going to struggle for years, getting low self esteem and hating school in the meantime, and finally fail in 4th or 5th grade, I prefer to retainer her now so she can have some kind of presh start. but I am terrified that she can take it the wrong way, after seeing all her friends of 3 years move on to the next class and end up with the kids she sees as little. that may be a bad blow to her self esteem too. also, if she is behind because of her AHDH, retaining her can give her a good advantage for a year or two, but after if she does not get the helkp she needs, she may fall behind again

I wonder if we should try to work with her in the summer to meke her start 2nd grade not behind (if ever possible) especially in view of the improvements she has done in the recent months.  I know every child is differenmt and every situation is different, and I know this decision is really very importnant and will have consequences down the road for years, so I would really appreciate hearing from other parents who found themselves in the same situation, what they did, and how things turned out. TIA[/quote]

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