Repeating Yr 1 - experiences of explaining to child?

[WildPine]

My DS is at a lovely supportive school in London. He is August born and though working at an expected level he has struggled with reading - phonics in terms of his enjoyment and confidence since the move up from reception, and bubbled just under the average. He took a massive confidence knock right at the start of Year 1 seeing how much more advanced other children were, particularly the girls, that he decided reading and writing just wasn’t for him and gave up. He would much rather be playing.

he has started attempting to refuse school, hiding in his wardrobe and getting very upset each morning. The drop offs have been awful and hard with his crying and not wanting to go in. Staff have been great but I’m so worried about this. We are always encouraging a love of learning and books etc so it’s heartbreaking to see. Since January most mornings have been full of upset.

His school operates a Danish model in year 1 so there is still a great deal of play-based learning, but come Year 2 it goes back to traditional classroom learning.

The Head has suggested DS might benefit from repeating Yr 1, to give him the chance to continue in the play-based environment for another year and crucially to feel like he is one of the more advanced in the class- gain more confidence in his abilities - as he does tend to compare and compete with others despite us trying to teach him otherwise.

Overall we think the decision could really benefit him. The school is very supportive and say they do this quite a few times each year for all sorts of reasons to support the child, not only in cases of SEN. (We don’t suspect SEN at this stage). They would also help with secondary applications when the time came to alleviate any knock on issues and seem very relaxed about it.

So in terms of his learning and confidence we think it could work well. I think he would really be boosted by feeling as if he was as good as most of the class at phonics and even “knew more” than some kids - just the way his mind works. What we now need to think about is how to explain it to our DS. He can be very sensitive and proud and we don’t want him to get a whiff of “not being good enough / clever enough” vibes from this.

Has anyone else’s DC repeated Year 1, and if so what was your experience and how did you explain it to the child?

When was his birthday? If summer then he was negligibly older than peers. There is a very wide range when kids go through puberty and this could happen to any child, deferred or not. Certainly not something you can plan for.

’negligibly older than some of his peers’ ie the one or two born in September.
but over a year older than the some of his peers who didn’t defer.

With an August baby I would not worry one iota about this. Whether there is a 12 month spread or a 13 month spread in the age range is a trivial difference.

It's always been a thing that boys, in particular, shoot up suddenly and there is a period round 13 when friendship groups can look a bit mismatched. But it's temporary. An August baby in their correct year group is more or less exactly the same distance from the mean as an August baby who's been deferred.