Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy no longer Thinking about short term homeschooling

I am glad you have a good plan and are feeling better. You are definately making me think. We have signed DD 4 up for kindergarten next year rather than the transitional K (i.e. preK) that she should be in for her age. She just barely misses the cut off so we hoped she would be fine. I realize as I am reading your post that your kindergarten sounds far different than the kindergarten that my older DD attended that did not meet her needs. The kindergarten that I am putting DD 4 into is actually at a gifted school and I suspect will be quite different but we really made the decision by thinking about DD8's experiences. We don't have testing done yet either and I wish we did as it might make me feel more secure in this decision. Oh well, hopefully we make it through the year and can always repeat if needed. I just want it to be a year that she enjoys.

Just make sure she understands that if she repeats it is because you and the school made a mistake and put her in the wrong class. The other thing about exhaustion - is she an introvert? Just being in a room with lots of people all day can be exhausting and if the school discourages playing alone at breaks she just might be peopled out.

Coveln, they are all so different, and going with your best instinct now is the best you can do

That is good advice puffin, I definitely don't want DD feeling like she failed in any way if she does end up repeating. She has her psycho-educational assessment this weekend, and there are only 2.5 weeks left in the term. Hopefully we will go into next term with a much better picture of her educational profile.

Fine motor is definitely a challenge with writing being a struggle. I want to make sure we don't let that interfere with getting an accurate picture of where she stands and whether to repeat or not. Then again, I don't want her struggling too much with the writing demands of year 1. Anyway, no point getting ahead of myself, I will see what the assessment shows first.

I will keep you updated on how the assessment goes, and I am sure I will be looking for more advice about how to proceed depending in the results.

Just a thought, does your Dd's school allow a few days off here and there?

In the first year here parents are encouraged to keep kids at home or have a sleep in if they are tired. Maybe a 4 day week would help for a while

We had DD's assessment today. We won't get the full report for awhile yet, but she said DD ested in the moderately gifted range on woodcock Johnson. She saw areas of concern including eye scanning/tracking issues and sound production involving sh sounds, writing difficulties, and not having mastered letter sound correspondence. I think the recommendation from the psychologist will be to repeat. She even mentioned the idea of trying to switch DD to the preschool mod this year so she can doesnt have to struggle through the rest of the year. Although the teacher can also make the rest of K easier for her without sending her down to the preschool. If we plan to repeat. I guess next step is another meeting with her teacher to discuss.

It's great that you will soon have some real information to start working with, and can start to tease out whether there are underlying causes to address, or if your DD just needs a little more time to catch up developmentally. Given the flags above, you may want to try to fill in the psych's finding with assessments of auditory and visual processing. Both can cause issues with learning to read and write, and can end up looking a lot like dyslexia.

Hang in there! The assessment stage can get pretty overwhelming for a while, but then it all starts to come together and make some sense, and you will find the right way forward for your DD.

That's a nice idea. I don't think they encourage this, but luckily DD does not seem quite as tired lately. I have been trying to get her to bed a bit earlier.

This is last week of term for us, then the kids have 3 weeks holidays. Over the holidays, DD will have an assessment with a new behavioural optometrist, and she is also having a full assessment with a speech pathologist. I believe the WJ-III Cognitive that she took does cover some auditory processing. I believe DD is still too young for a lot of auditory processing tests?

I am looking forward to seeing her full psych report and seeing her areas of strength and weakness.

I don't like not knowing which year DD will be in next year. I know we have to wait to see where she how she is doing at the end of the year, but I just want to know. DD said the other day, "I am nearly halfway through K", and I thought, or nearly a quarter of the way through . . . Then the other night she said, "I don't want to go to term 3 mom, school is too hard". And I want to tell her its okay, and if she is not ready, she won't have to go to year 1 next year. (ETA: of course this is not how we would phrase it, it would just be that we made a mistake and she is not the correct age for year 1, which is technically true since her birthday is a month past the cutoff) But how will she take that news, relieved? disappointed? And I don't want to just give up on keeping her going, but I also don't want to push her too hard if she is going to be repeating K anyway.

It is hard enough to advocate when you know what you want for your child, I am torn. I know I am doing the right thing at the moment, collecting information, and giving her another few months to see how she goes. I guess I am just impatient to know something that can't be known yet.