Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Elementary grade retention for behavior issues?

New user here - apologies in advance if I'm missing any cues.

My daughter is finishing first grade at a private gifted school. She's doing quite well academically, but struggles behaviorally with body management and impulse control. We have been told she has sensory processing disorder, specifically a subtype in which perception of body position and orientation are impaired, and sitting quietly for long stretches is hard. We're seeing an OT and discussing accommodations, but the staff seem lukewarm. DD is on-grade but is among the very youngest in her cohort, and she has told us all year that she misses kindergarten. I'm wondering if the real root cause here is developmental asynchrony. Should we have held her back last year to let her body catch up and give her another year of less-structured play? Given that we didn't, would having her repeat first grade have any positive effects? Have you seen similar problems in your kid? How did you handle them?

A few other pertinent details. She has three or four friends in her grade, and two in the grade below. She's doing well enough with on-grade academic work that I do worry about boredom if we hold her back. A psychologist we saw thought she might be bored *now*, but I believe the school has considered and rejected this.

Thanks in advance for advice/stories/etc.

Welcome!

I think you will find that, although there is always space for exceptions even to the exceptions, the consensus anecdotally and professionally is generally to address asynchronous (whether simply for developmental reasons, or more persistent learning differences/disabilities) skill areas separately. IOW, if she is doing well, even possibly underchallenged, academically, then one should not repeat/hold her back for behavioral reasons--especially behaviors that are explicitly tied to her identified disability. Note that there is no guarantee that an additional year in first grade will make those behaviors vanish, if they are truly associated with a sensory processing disorder. In fact, repeating may add other behaviors, as her academics become a poorer match, which children often communicate through their behavior.

In the hypothetical, it is possible that holding her out for another year of play-based kindergarten (if such she was in) might have been a consideration at the time, but the reality is that that did not happen, and she has now had a year of academic first grade, so retaining her now would be a very different proposition. In any case, retention/delayed entry research finds very few long-term positive outcomes to retention in situations other than when students had restrictions in access to formal instruction (prolonged medical absences, displaced persons in settlement camps, etc.). Outcomes data is somewhat positive in the short-term (approx one to two years), but overwhelmingly neutral to slightly negative in the long term (approx six or more years). And this is including neutral outcomes that actually mean the student is one year behind their age peers academically (due to lack of that one additional year of instruction).

On a personal level, our #1 was a very wriggly, impulsive small person, then demonstrating end of first grade/beginning of second grade achievement, for whom we convinced our tiny private school to allow early entrance to first grade directly from preschool (no kindergarten). The lower school head was specifically concerned about behavior, maturity, and missing out on play (although the kindergarten was an academic full-day kindergarten, so not that much additional play), but our contention was, knowing our own child, the likelihood was that the active-impulsive-overly chatty behaviors would increase with a greater instructional mismatch--and less mature peer models. We were already placing academically into a level about a year below DC's true instructional level. (This was by design, though; as I've discussed elsewhere, my family has historically underplaced instructionally about 1-1.5 grade levels on grade skips, as a means of balancing instructional needs, executive function demands, and social skills considerations.) Sure enough, the underlying active-impulsive traits have never really gone away, although they are now, many years later, under generally excellent self-management. Even the lower school head acknowledged by the end of that year that kindergarten would have been a mistake.

And to the school's conclusion that she is not bored now, I would be curious as to the data they used to determine that.

Thanks, aeh, for the science and the story. Your answer is more or less what I expected to hear, but wanted to check anyway. It would be nice if there were a simple, non-stigmatizing answer.

Re: the school's assessment of boredom, I'm not sure. I know they do MAP testing to inform placement; DD tests above the median for her class in tested subjects, but not, like, stratospherically high. Though frankly the mean score for all subtests and all classes hits the 99th percentile, and I'm not clear on how much to make of relative ranks between kids on that test when everyone's way out in the right tail. I do know they considered giving her above-grade MAP this year as an add-on to the grade-level one, but I suspect they didn't actually do it (I wouldn't have; asking an already-squirrely kid to sit still for a second round of testing seemed to me like asking for trouble, frankly).

A major reason for me wanting to put DD in the gifted school (apart from the obvious) was the expectation that I could leave placement decisions to people who are actually qualified to make them. Words can't express how itchy this stuff makes me... But your question gives me an idea for how to broach the topic: start with the suggestion that since nothing's been successful so far, we should revisit all the possible causes of the misbehavior and lay out what sort of data would support them. Then in that conversation I can say something like, I know the psychologist mentioned boredom as a possible cause but she also mentioned you are pretty confident that's not what's happening; can you walk me through how you assess that? Sort of like burying kale in a fruit smoothie; maybe they won't even notice...

Mm hm...zucchini meatloaf. I'd agree that taking the approach that you and school are collaboratively problem-solving, to make your daughter's educational experience better, and to optimize her behavioral contribution to the overall classroom environment, may help to take down the adversarial tendencies that so easily creep into these discussions. Actually, you might enjoy reading the original CPS (formerly collaborative problem solving, now collaborative and proactive solutions, after an unfortunate copyright dispute with Mass General Hospital) works of Dr. Ross Greene. His work is often discussed in the context of much more severe behaviors, but has value for a much wider range of free-spirited learners, as well as generally negotiating for win-win solutions. Try www.livesinthebalance.org.

Hi Space Penguin,

This may seem super random but read up on Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. Just in case. Particularly type 3 AKA hyper mobility type.

There are an unusually high number of people on the board with kids who have been diagnosed and inability to sit unsupported, floppy ness and poor positioning are symptoms.