Giving Advice

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My brother in law graduated from college and went right into teaching (high school science). He left after only a few years because he had such a hard time with parents who were almost impossible to please. He was either being too hard (when children received bad grades) or was too easy (when they received good grades).

My sister has a son who is severely below acceptable comprehension levels in reading, but the schools keep advancing him (at 10 years old) to the next grade because he hasn't failed enough.

I'd say this Mom is having a hard time coming to grips with her son having possible learning difficulties and is running on pure emotion right now. You are correct that we will all have to learn to deal with people who come into our lives as best as possible. And, I completely agree with you that it will be much easier to deal with now as a 5 year-old vs. being a 9th grader.

It wasn't until I was well into my college education that I realized I don't know how to study - I never had to learn because I could coast through my classes up to that point and have a good GPA. College taught me that we all have much different learning styles, and we're usually taught with one basic style. I'm awful at Standardized Tests and would much rather write an essay - most people in my degree program (Biology) were just the opposite.

I think you have sound advice. She may just need to vent and will hopefully do what is in her child's best academic interests.

I agree with the other moms here. You did good. More often than not esp w/ boys they mature at a slower rate than girls and repeating kindergarten is the best time rather than finding out in 2nd or 3rd grade when reading is an issue (which can be more detrimental to the child emotionally and socially). The school and teacher are really thinking about the child down the road. You should share all our comments with her and have her join Mamapedia.

My cousin, "failed" Kindergarten and had to repeat it, but went on to have success in school and life. It was more of a maturity issue at that time.

Kids learn at different rates and some kids may take longer to learn than others. That doesn't mean that there is anything wrong with them, but I agree if there is some learning disability, better to find out now than later.

It took years to diagnose my nephew with dyslexia. He started receiving services in 4th grade and has been enjoying school ever since (he's in 6th grade now and on the Honor Roll). I have to say that his parents really pushed the school to do the evaluations and recommend an IEP for him. The school said that he hadn't failed enough (whatever that means), but his parents knew there was something wrong and pursued it.

And I know when I was told my middle girl needed extensive intervention services (during a pre-school screening no less), I was very, very upset. I wanted to know what I did wrong. We enrolled her in the public school's Early Childhood Intervention program and she flourished in it. You would be hard pressed to believe she was the same kid. Same child needed Title 1 reading program in 1st and 2nd grade and did really well in that too. She's in 3rd grade now and reads the most books in her class.

I do think you gave her good advice. Keep being her shoulder to cry on. Good luck to your friend!

I'd say you gave her good advice! It would be hard to hear the news that your child isn't performing well in school (or anywhere, really) so just try and be a comfort and make her feel better, and it sounds like that's what you did! I will only add, though, that if you really feel like he has developmental delays, that could be a whole other ball game. If by delays, you mean that he is possibly retarded, autistic, etc. then that needs to be investigated further. Children with these types of issues should not be held back or asked to repeat grades because that will not necessarily help them. In fact, in my opinion, children with an extremely low IQ (who do not test as retarded) should not be held back either because they are probably functioning within their limits and holding them back will not make them any more successful. As a teacher, I don't personally support repeating grades in my instances, but if it does need to happen, then K and 1st are the best times to do it because that's when they learn the fundamentals for reading and math. It could be very beneficial to him to have more reinforcement in those areas, he just may be lacking maturity and experience and repeating K could help him there. Ultimately, I guess my advice is 1. yes you did the right thing, it can be really tricky to be friends with someone and see things that they don't necessarily see and 2. if she wants to investigate further and not take this suggestion laying down, you should encourage her to ask more questions so that she can understand why the school suggested this path for him. Good luck!

It would definitely be a problem if he were in 5th grade or higher, but in this case he may not have been ready for school, and by holding him back in kindergarten it could work out much better for him. If you push him to the next grade and he isn't really ready it could cause problems with keeping up his grades and getting along socially with his classmates.

I think you gave good advice...

Regardless of the teacher, it is ultimately the parent's responsibility to stay on top of their child's education. If she felt that her child was falling behind, she should have addressed the issue while there was still time to act on it. If it was truly a bad teacher, she could have reported the teacher and had her son switch classrooms. And in the interim, she should have got him tutoring and worked with him at home to ensure he was learning everything he needed to know.

This is an unfortunate situation, but like you said, in life, jobs, school, etc., we will have sub-par teachers/bosses. But it is ultimately the individuals, or with children, the parent's, responsibility.