She wasn't an early reader but has always enjoyed more sophisticated books for her age. By 1st, she was placed in the lowest reading level. By nature, these books are not high interest and she suffered for it. Her teacher told us that she would notice DD inching her way towards the higher level reading groups to listen in on their books. It broke my heart.
We had this problem in a unilingual environment! My son's learning style is 'Auditory' and he had some late-for him-development in his eye muscles, so although he could name all the letters at 2, and knew their sounds, we had only two sight worlds when he entered Kindergarden - Start and Exit. (LOL!)
Early in K there was a 'reading project' at school where all the children had their minutes of reading added to a giant mural. Since he was in K, the minutes I read to him counted, otherwise I wouldn't every have kept track. DS12 was motivated to 'help the team' and I ended up reaing the first Harry Potter to him outloud on the couch for 3 hours. ((I was exhausted, but still in denial about both his giftedness and my own - it seems 'a little weird' but not so much.)) Every time I tried to stop, he would wheedle a bit more reading out of me. ((I was so innocent back then!))
It was heart breaking to see him turn up his nose at the 'early readers.' I'd take him to the library and ask him to look around the early reader shelf. "Nothing with talking Animals as main characters - that's for babies!" I would joke with the librarian, "do you have any early readers about weapons or spys?"
In the long run I just let him learn at school with the agemates. He was in the 2nd highest reading group, so I figured it was just me being over anxious. But it was a long long hard for me couple of years. Plus everyone thought I was nuts.
I will add as a postscript, that while he did have a 'behavior plan' in first grade, while he was occupied with learning to read, school got really bad the next year in 2nd grade, when he was reading on a 5th grade level. That was our 'bottom.' So perhaps you should count your blessings?
Self confidence doesn't come from doing 'baby stuff' well. It comes from doing well after great struggle. As hard as this is to watch, it's not as hard as watching a kid down the road who has poor work ethic.
Spend some time in the classrooms of the proposed alternativesobserving before you make any changes!Hope that helps,
Grinity
