Why are some parents against holding a child back a grade?

[bleedingheart]

My neighbor's son should have remained in Kindergarten another year. He was not really able to keep up with the other children and he is very unruly. I was speaking to his mother last night and she stated that he just doesn't seem emotionally ready but her husband is insistent that he proceed to first grade. Now she realizes that he isn't going to do well and that he is unable to sit down for any period of time, or even follow someone's instructions...but her husband is "king" so she is just going to watch the train wreck happen.

Now I am not really fond of this woman as she seems to be "out of it" most of the time and she leaves her children to fend for themselves (part of her husband's master plan to make his kids "tough")

Because I seriously believe he has some other problems going on, I told her about how she should pursue having him tested by the school to make sure that there aren't other problems...she said.."well I don't know that I can do that cuz my husband' wouldn't like it..."

So I then ask..."are you afraid of some sort of stigma if he has a problem?"..she says..."no"...and then I add..." it is a lot better for him in the long run if you get him help now"....and then I mentioned how my own cousin failed to get her eldest sons help and now they both have had immense problems as young adults....and then I shared with her the fact that my own child is being treated for Asperger's and OCD....adding that he has done very very well with therapy.....

I am hoping that she perhaps does pursue getting him some help.

[phylny]

1. An elementary school principal I worked with a few years ago

had studies that she said showed that holding children back a year, once they had entered school, made no measurable difference in their abilities and academic achievement later on.

She was always very hesitant to hold a kid back, choosing in the vast majority of cases to give them reading support, math support, or if necessary, have them tested for special education if the team thought it was warranted in first grade.

Just another viewpoint :)

[bleedingheart]

4. The father won't even let the boy be tested for special education

[rob-ok-vin]

2. The worst mistake I ever made

was to hold my son back. As a single parent father i listened to the experts at the elementary school and put my son in developmental first grade. Now 12 years later it is one of the actions I look back on in my life with regret. This action did not help him in grades 1-5. As he entered middle school he CAUGHT UP with the rest of the class. By high school he was ahead of the class and is now an 18 year old (will be 19 before he graduates) questioning whether to go back to school for his senior year. I hope he does, but he is a legal adult and truancy laws do not apply to him. I can only hope I have taught him well and support him in, as always, in any decision he makes.

[Hippo_Tron]

3. My friend quit high school, took his GED and went to college

Of course, this was very risky and in many ways he was lucky that this worked. Tell your son just to stay with it for one more year, even if he is ahead and it's easy. If nothing else, he'll have a lot of frun senior year.

[Ms. Toad]

5. As a former high school teacher

this (and the refusal to permit testing for special ed noted elsewhere in this thread) was really a sore point. My district had a policy that children could not be held back without parental consent until high school.

By the time kids reached high school they had been socially promoted for years - and then stayed in the 9th grade for up to 7 years (they could remain in school through the year in which they turned 21).

I don't think parental choice should be totally ignored - but unlimited social promotion fairly quickly creates kids without any motivation to catch up because they know they don't need to - which is not fair to the rest of the school population. Imagine trying to teach a class of students with not only the normal single grade range of skills - but with skills spanning the entire K-12 range. There needs to be a balance between parental desire for social promotion and a realistic assessment about whether the student has mastered sufficient skills to be able to catch up if s/he is socially promoted.

[FourStarDemocrat]

6. I think it all depends on the child...

Some children are socially and emotionally immature for kindergarten and it may help them to start one year later. With others, it doesn't. It has to be decided on an individual basis.

In my area, which is an affluent, competitive region of the country, we have cases where some parents are deliberately holding their children back a yar before they enter kindergarten with the motivation that their child would later be at the top of their class academically. It's kind of bizarre, but true.

[Ms. Toad]

7. Holding children back before kindergarten

is really pushed in my area by the school system. The parents of all children with summer birthdays who try to enter them as "young" 5 year olds get the suicide lecture (children who are on the young end of their class are several times more likely to commit suicide/try to commit suicide in high school than those on the old end of their class), accompanied by considerable scare literature I had to read and acknowledge before they would enroll my daughter.

Not terribly effective in my case given the demographics in my family (which includes a number of very early (and successful) early starters) - and my daughter's clear readiness to start school. But that whole scene left a really sour taste in my mouth.

I'm not convinced being a year older really does much for competition - my young starter is now (in 9th grade) tied for first in her class. My observation is that it is much more important socially than academically - at least past second grade or so (geometry aside - but that is another topic).