Started kindergarden at 5. I was born November 30 and the cut-off date where they make you wait a year was December 1. I was a smart kid, so they didn’t think it was a big deal.
The years passed, and I was an unusually immature kid emotionally. So they held me back in fifth grade. Not because of grades, because they didn’t think I would be able to handle middle school. It was humiliating, but I got over it.
I finished high school in three years to make up for it (doubled junior and senior years).
I can’t say whether it was a good idea or not. I choose to give my parents the benefit of the doubt.
I had to repeat first grade. I started in a public school which was very good, did well and was in the advanced placement classes. My parents then decided that I needed a good catholic education :rolleyes: so off to Catholic school I went. Except that they had a strict age requirement, I was too young to start second grade. So back to first I went, learned to hate school, and did badly ever since. Not sure if there is a moral to this story aside from pointing out the stupidity of arbitrary rules.
My (younger) son had some minor issues when he was younger. As a result, we decided to hold him back and give him an extra year of pre-school. The extra year has given him a great opportunity to work on his problems. At this stage, he is well advanced for his class scholastically.
The result of this is that both he and my daughter (who is a year younger) are now both in the same grade.
I was never held back totally, but I had to take remedial math in grade six. Why? I was bored stiff and not working.
I remember arguing with the teacher when she said that you couldn’t subtract a bigger number from a smaller number and get a number less than zero. There was no such thing as a number less than zero. “Of course there is. They’re on the weather forecast every winter.” It’s the single most important thing to notice about a Canadian weather forecast: has the temperature been below zero recently? Then water may have frozen where you walk and you have to be careful.
I was in a discussion to be held back, at the same time I was in a discussion to be jumped ahead.
I had learned to read really young, and do math a spelling and stuff. When I got to Kindegarden I already knew everything they had to teach. On the otherhand I was an social disaster at that point. I got in daily fights, Basically anybody made me mad in any way I would simply hit them. I had multiple suspensions in Kindergarten. So at the end of the year the KG teach wanted to skip first grade and go straight into second, while the principle wanted me to repeat KG to mature some more. I eventually just went into first grade like the normal schedule. From 1st-3rd grade I did all my little workbooks the first week of class, then spent an entire year doing USSR(uninteruppted susutained silent reading) basically the code-word back then for"If he wants to sit in a corner and read all day just let him".
There are some very good reasons to hold a child back a year, poor grades aside. My wife teaches ESL (English as a Second Language) and has quite a few students that would be at a significant disadvantage were they to pass on to the next grade due to a lack of English proficiency skills.
In many cases very intelligent children are held back not because they are incapable of progressing, but rather to ensure that they can be better served in later grade levels. The “damage” so to speak of holding a 1st or 2nd grade student an extra year for language development is much less than that of passing a child on to higher grades and having the child struggle for years. In many of these cases it may only take one additional year to build up the proficiency enough to be successful in the future.
I had to repeat the first grade but that was because I had to have leg surgery to correct a problem I was born with. For the last three months of the school year, I was in a cast from my waist to my toes…all ten of them.
I remember going back to school in the Fall and whipping through all those Dick and Jane books in no time. My teacher gave me some other books that I also sped through. Then she game me a thick book to read. I opened it up and the first page was full of small writing with big words and the next pages were too. I tried to read and understand it but finally had to go to the teacher and tell her I couldn’t read grown-up writing yet. She looked at the pages I pointed out and said, “Oh, that part is for parents and teachers.” Then she opened the book to where I was supposed to start reading. Boy, was I relieved to see it was more like what I was used to!
I still wish I was as good at math as I am at reading and writing.
There was a guy in my graduating class who was held back in first grade. He was born in Germany, so it made sense to give him some time to adjust to the new language (this was back in the late 50s).
Depending on your definition, my daughter was “held back.” Of course, at the time, it was called “pre-first” – a year between kindergarten and first grade for her to catch up. It did her a world of good – she would have been the youngest in her class, but was now the oldest, and her learning style was to wait until she could learn everything all at once. That would have been a disaster. She’s now in the honors program at American University. She would not be there if she hadn’t stayed in pre-first.
We actually pushed very hard to get her there. We wanted to wait an extra year before putting her in Kindergarten, but she needed speech class, so had to go to kindergarten at age 4. We kept telling the teacher she was appropriate for pre-first until they agreed.
The funny thing was a parents’ meeting. The idea was to tell the parents of incoming pre-first students that it didn’t mean their kids were stupid and that it was an appropriate learning experience, etc. We were gung-ho on the idea, which wasn’t usual.
Two years later, they eliminated the program. I imagine a lot of students were hurt very badly by not having it. The difference between 4 and 5 is a big one developmentally, and with all kids need to learn these days, an extra year to catch up is a great idea.
I wasn’t exactly left back, but I didn’t graduate high school with the rest of my class and had to go to summer school after graduation for one credit. If it had been more than one credit, I would have had to repeat my senior year. My assisstant principal was actaully chuckling gleefully when he told me I might be repeating my senior year. I guess he really enjoyed having me around, nice guy that he was.
I was salutatorian of my law school class, though. Go figure.
My wife’s brother’s son repeated the third or fourth grade. It was just what he needed. He aced everything from that time forward, and he got a university degree with honors.
I was held back in 7th because of “chronic truancy”, which eventually landed me in foster care.
My son’s cousins (his dad’s side, not mine) were both held back last year because their parents are completely retarded and they don’t try to work with them, or encourage them, or take any interest whatsoever in their academic lives (or, really, their lives in general). :mad: But that’s another thread, I’m sure.
We made my daughter repeat first grade. Her birthday was just a week before the cutoff. She made good grades the first time around but wasn’t really mature enough to go on to the second grade. I was reluctant to agree to it at first but in the end, it was the right thing to do. A good friend of hers went through it at the same time and I think that that made it easier on her. That was 8 years ago and I don’t think that any of us have any regrets about it.
During my first year of college (UK), I bashed my head in in a car accident, and missed a couple of months of college. I managed to catch up with all my subjects, but only after I’d dropped Maths to ease up my workload. I wanted to complete it though, to get a four A-Levels, and decided to take a third year to finish it off. I also took the opportunity to start some new AS subjects. It’s helping me get a wider range of qualifications and be more prepared for Uni.
It sucks that a lot of my closest friends are all away at Uni now, but I can go visit them, and I think another year at college has improved my work ethic enormously! I’m actually a ‘good student’ now, whereas before I was always the one with potential who didn’t try hard enough!
So I look forwards to next September when I get to go off to University and join all my friends. Well, join them in educational level, since they’re all off to different places!
I was a very tiny child and my mother wanted to hold me back so I’d be more in keeping (in size) with my classmates. The nuns wanted to promote me a grade because I wa academically advanced. They compromised and left me in the same grade (3rd grade), but the teachers started sending me to classes in the higher grades. It wouldn’t really have made a difference size-wise to hold me back a year - I was smaller than the 2nd graders, too. In the end I wore the same child’s size 4 school uniform from 3rd thru 7th grade. I had the smallest desk in the school, and for several years that desk went with me when I was promoted to the next class.
My mother purposely held me back a year, then registered me for kindergarten when I was almost six. When the principal told her I should be put in first grade, her response was “NO! She’s too stupid for first grade.” The school kept insisting that I should be put a grade above, and my mother would not let them. She insisted that my two years younger sister (her favorite child) be one year behind me.
Stephen King missed so many days of first grade to illness that he had to repeat it, and graduated high school right before his 19th birthday. His older brother Dave graduated at 16!
