Mary Ann recently wrote a blog on Should You Hold Your Child Back a Year? This is really pertinent for me right now. I wrote a blog last month about my ambivalence about Regina starting school. She is a bit behind in speech and fine motor skills and is not big on sitting still.
(Adopted kids often have a difference between their developmental age and their chronological age. This may be because attachment anxiety keeps them from concentrating their energy on development, or because adopted children often repeat developmental stages with their new family. For internationally adopted kids, less time learning English may be a factor.)
Regina had already done a PreK program, and her speech therapist and my husband strongly felt that she would learn more by being around kindergarteners than around preschool children this year, even if she is to repeat kindergarten later.
I decided that since she wasn’t a “borderline birthday” kid but would actually be on the older side, I would let her go into the class with her age peers and see how it went. I did think she would to csome extent rise to expectations. Her siblings baby her because she is so physically small, and sometimes it’s hard for us to realize that she is capable of older behavior. And besides, she really wanted to go to the big school with her brother and sister.
She had a harder transition than I expected. She cried at school for four days or so, then we had good reports from school for a couple of weeks but tantrums and toileting regression at home. Regina complained that other kids wouldn’t play with her and that one boy had called her “stupid”.
Now Regina is much happier. She is proud of her increasing skill with letters and sounds and happily plays with several other girls at recess. But her class is definitely given more academic work than my other two were even a few years ago. Part of me says, if she may have to repeat kindergarten anyway, why can’t she and I have a final year of fun at home? Part of me knows she wants to be at school now.
Part of me just wants to say, “Stop the world, I want to get off!”