Re the language immersion program: we have several language immersion programs where I live and I would have *loved* to have sent my kids through them - they are lottery schools and we tried to lottery ds into them when he was going into kindy, but he didn't get in. We have instead had each of our children in some type of language learning program outside of school since they were very little (toddlers), and now that they are older my ds12 and dd10 have Spanish integrated into their required curriculum.
4) kids learn how to compensate. The brighter, the better. There might be a cost (they can spend a lot of energy compensating).
This would be my one concern in keeping my child in the program - the impact of having to compensate. Children with challenges are constantly having to cope with compensating in some way or another depending on the challenge. The impact seems (from what I've seen) to be the largest in early elementary. My ds12 still gets tired and fatigued more than his peers from dealing with school, and it takes him significantly longer than other kids his age to complete his homework, even though he has accommodations. That may or may not happen with your ds, but if it does, I'd consider that for now, maybe adding in the second language isn't as important as learning how to deal with the language processing challenges. I've seen with our ds that giving up some of the things we felt he could do or had hoped he'd have an opportunity to do was necessary in elementary school so that he had time and energy to do the therapies and learning he needed to do to catch up and keep up with written expression. Dealing with the challenges head-on early on made it possible for him to go into middle school able to have the time to add in some of the other things he wanted to do since he had made progress his challenges.
The other thing I'd be concerned about (but hasn't happened with your ds) is that a challenge might go unrecognized longer than it would have otherwise due to differences in curriculum.
I'm a *huge* fan of K-12 language immersion programs. Several of our friends and neighbors' children have gone through them and absolutely flourished - but they were kids who weren't dealing with other challenges. I truly believe that outside of growing up in a household where a 2nd language is native to one of the parents and spoken routinely, a K-12 immersion program is the 2nd best way for a child to learn a 2nd language - but otoh, I also know a ton of adults who've done well learning a 2nd language who didn't start until high school or later - so if I had to choose due to the amount of "stuff" I was piling up on my child's school plate, I'd choose the remediation for challenges over 2nd language in elementary school - simply because I think ultimately that is what will be of more benefit in the long run.
Also not exactly related to your situation, but fwiw, each of my three kids later chose to learn a different 2nd language than the 2nd language we started them on as young children.
polarbear
