Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Advice on repeating a year

I have posted before, but we are still up in the air on a decision. I have been convinced one way and then the other.

Basically DD5 started school this year, she was only 4.5 at the beginning of the year, and she is struggling with learning to read and write. We love the school she is attending. It does have a very high academic standard, and DD is struggling. We have to decide over the next couple of weeks whether we will have her repeat K or move on to year 1. Here is the info we are working with:

At school: she is making slow progress with her reading and her writing. She has shown signs of being disengaged and her teacher feels she is finding it all overwhelming. Socially she is very well adjusted. She has friends, and she is a very thoughtful, empathetic member of the class.

She took the WJ-Cog and scored in the moderately gifted range.


The psychologist diagnosed her with DCD for fine motor skills and we have started her in OT.

A speech pathologist assessment found her to be performing above average for her age in phonological awareness skills, sight reading, and spelling

DD disengages when she makes mistakes, and she currently has low academic self-esteem, which we have been working on building up.

I see the pros of grade retention as:
With the skills she has developed this year, she start the next year at top of the class rather than struggling, so she might build up her self-esteem

She will go from the youngest in her class to being in the middle of the age range

I see the cons as:
She might see the grade retention as confirmation of ideas she has developed of being 'dumb'. She might see it as a big failure, and disengage from school.

Socially she is quite mature, I am not sure if the grade below would be as good a fit socially for her

instinctively, I feel like reading is going to click for her, and while I am sure the school will challenge her appropriately even if she does repeat, if reading and writing are the main problems, then maybe she just needs to be given a bit more time to catch up.

I just don't know what is the best decision. She might end up having to repeat year 1 if we send her on and she can not catch up.

I know most of the talk on this forum is about grade acceleration questions. Has anyone ever faced a similar decision? Do you have any advice, or questions I should be asking myself or the school?