kindergarten

[Guest guest]

,

It sounds so great to hear how well Tanner is doing....our family enjoyed his

language story.

Just wondering....what are your plans for next school year? are you going to

keep him in the school with sign language or mainstream him to a regular

kindergarten class? It sounds as if he really is " cured " at this point.....what

is the school doing re testing and services(are they just going to monitor

him?). On Micah's recent eval. when he turned up so far behind on the motor

eval, he did amazingly well on the speech and language...average to above on

everything....he was really " on " that day....but the team still recommended

group discussion, social practice for him to keep on top of it I guess....just

wondering what you will ask for and what they are suggesting. I have the IEP

meeting coming up to discuss summer services and next year soon. Sure wish

micah had had great success with his motor on the proefa like it sounds like

others have...maybe I will try it again and start off with two but I think I

should wait until he heals from this middle ear surgery...he can't swim for 2

-3months I think it is funny we both have two boys almost the same

age...Tanner is almost exactly a year younger than Micah and CJ I think is a

year older than Dakota. how is doing with her move...soon right? Are the

t-shirts for sale yet? I really wanted to buy them for end of year therapists

gifts. Carol

[Guest guest]

Hi Everyone. I am extremely interested in this subject as my 4 year old son

is a December baby and therefore always the youngest in the class. He is

now in JK at a great private school that ends at SK. The problem is putting

him in the public school system. Right now he is a very academic child,

reading, doing basic math problems, while the rest of the class spends 2

weeks on words that start with the letter " T " and only counts to 10. He is

always working at a grade one level, while his fine motor skills are at an

SK level now - He prints his letters, his numbers to 10, his name and short

sentences. My first instinct would be to hold him back because socially he

is young and as high functioning autistic, has some language delays.

However, he does need to be challenged academically and I am certain that

keeping him back a year will bore him and not allow his academic strengths

to blossom. What would you advice in this situation?

Lori

Kindergarten

,

He needs to stay another year or he will be so behind socially he won't be

able to catch up. My son was the oldest in the grade and always found

friends with the youngest kids and these kids were often too advanced for

him. His best friend now is a year younger than him. Don't listen to the

teacher, she doesn't live what we do daily. I also am a teacher and you

can't hurt him by repeating Kindergarten, but you can hurt him by sending

him on.

Marcia

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[Guest guest]

I know many people have weighed in on this topic but we are another family

that waited for school. We did an extra year of preschool and it was the

best thing we have done. Because of having the extra year to work on

socialization and socially appropriateness we are mainstreamed in 2nd grade.

My son has many friends and is still doing great academically. He reads,

spells, and does math better than most classmates; but probably would not be

able to show these skills if he didn't have the time to catch up to the

" social " aspects of being in a class. He needed the time to further develop

his ability to follow oral directions with lots of distracters, to be able to

talk back to the kids in the everyday kind of way, and to be more responsible

for his own things. Hope this helps. Lori in PA