To feel that this is too much pressure on a 4YO

[Hangryhangryhrmm]

DS is 4 soon to be 5. He started Y1 this year. One of the younger ones in his class, some class members are as much as 10months older.

He loves school, happy and energentic child who is full of love and wonder about the world.

Homework every night which he is very good about - enthusiastic even, numeracy and literacy on track.

He finds sitting still for long periods hard, have been told by school he is inattentive and other criticisms. Got to the point where DS was getting v demoralised with the continual criticism.

School is aware that he is on a waiting list for grommets.

His inattentiveness (as they put it) is partly due to temprament, maturity but partly not hearing.

Have been called to meetings and feel they are trying to pin a behavioural label to DS.. feel the writing is on the wall from the buzzwords they keep throwing at me.

2 months in and this already?

AIBU to be fuming and upset!? Scared a poor report will affect DSs chances of getting into another school.

that sounds brilliant SmileEachDay!

I wish I had fought to defer him, but the date of his birthday falls just after the date at which it can be done automatically. LAs here have really tightened up on criteria for a deferrals too. The school have said that he wouldn't have come within the necessary criteria.

You raise good points Imaginosity. I am familiar with ASDs, and one of my closest friends has Aspergers. DS's Aunt is also a clin psych, she has spent plenty of time with DS and has also not identified any concerns.

SleepFreeZone, no SENCO so far. I am all for strategising and advice though. I've been clear that I'm willing to support the school in any way they feel necessary and implement suggestions at home if they feel it will help them with whatever their issues are in the classroom.

When I press them for specifics of what is going wrong in class it's mainly the lack of attentiveness and that focus can be relatively short unless he is doing something he likes to do. But I think that can be par for the course with 4 year olds? In small groups he is great (I think this is due to him hearing better in small group).

Feisty, you are right.

I think I need to be more confident in highlighting how the ears may be affecting him, if they continue to raise the same points.

They want a 4 week follow up meeting with me, but I feel this is pointless as not much will change in the next month in the hearing or the maturity. It is really draining to always be worrying what I will be hit with next.

Be open to what the school is saying. It may be they want to put IEP in place to help with his behaviour - it's a starting point. Our education authority need 3/4 iep to get ed psych to assess. So they may be starting the process and it may just stay at IEPs or they may even stop IEP if he improves.

Be happy the are communicating with you. He may need additional classroom support until he gets the grommits.

Have you thought about helping in the class one morning a week (if you don't work FT 9-5). My DD had a child in the class whose parents had almost exactly the same complaints, especially the idea he was being made to sit still and couldn't manage it, Scotland too.

I helped in the class, very little sitting still but their DS was pulling people off their seats, crawling under tables, pulling all the coats off the pegs... the school had tried to use nice words like "inattentive" instead of disruptive and it backfired when the parents got the wrong idea. I'd want to help out to see what they are expecting him to do and what he is doing. Then go from there.

OP - is this private school? I know some private school's start homework at 3 but don't really 'mark' it as such, its more of a getting them used to sit down and do some form of structured homework in order to prepare them for proper homework when they are older.

it's not a private school, no.

God, I bet that was a shock LetsSplash. I am FT but not 9-5, more irregular than that. I am going to ask DSs retired Grandma if she would be game to volunteer.

When my ds started school he was the youngest (law Aug birthday/ we are in England).

I kept getting the "we are concerned about....". I always engaged (as I knew ds had difficulties) and asked to draw up IEp/behaviour plan and sort interventions to help ds.
Except when I mentioned specific support for his specific needs they always backed off.

Basically the wanted me to somehow make his (what was then confirmed as asd) just disappear!

My suggestion to you would be at next meeting suggest they contact advisory service for children who are HI and ask for advice as a first port of call.

youarenot, what is "HI"? sorry, not clued on the acronyms

Christ we ask a lot of kids at age four don't we? Cant be bloody doing with this homework nonsense tbh. Kids learn through play. Surely you could ask what strategies they are employing to assist your son? And perhaps you should be clear about the purpose of any future meetings and how they are going to assist your son / not merely undermine any confidence he has

It was, OP.

Don’t underestimate the importance of physical development at that age - especially combined with hearing loss.

I’m also SENCO, so have a fair bit of experience of the full range of need.

I would absolutely go to review meeting, you’re right that his maturity won’t have changed but you will be able to ask for more detail - do you want the details of the program my boy did?

MY brother was similar - late July birthday so had only just turned 4 when he started school, and in a class with kids who had already turned 5. He is a bit of a fidget even now, and couldn’t sit still or concentrate. The teacher had my mum in almost every week about his “naughtiness” and he used to come home in tears all the time.

He ended up at Cambridge (and is and always has been completely NT, he’s just very active and sporty too). I agree that helping out in the classroom would be illuminating, but more than likely this is just him being a normal four year old.

I was the youngest child in my year by over a year, also in Scotland.

I had turned 4 in the March with the cut off being the February, however my entire nursery class were progressing and so I went too. Some of my friends were a year plus older than me.

My parents never had those issues due to age.

As a teacher I've also never been able to pick out the younger children in a class, purely based on behaviours (if it's a mixed class then this is possible). I'd notice behaviours first before age and assumed maturity.

If there is enough of an issue for them to contact you and want review dates etc I would be welcoming the support. If the behaviour stops after the grommits are fitted then there is no harm done to your child, if it continues then reviews and support plans will already be in place.

sailor there’s stacks of research that suggests being younger in the year makes a considerable difference, especially for boys interestingly.

Smile, yes I'd like to know the details. DS is very physical naturally, loves anything sporty/active.

Sailor - I am surprised that you have never been able to pick up on behaviour and age correlation in class. I can see that temperament is specific to a child, so a very sedate and shy child will always be so. But with executive function (frontal lobe development) a year of extra development can mean the a huge improvement to self control.

thanks Sashkin, your post warmed my cockles.

I feel so frustrated on behalf of all the children who are forced into a system which discriminates based on age.. it makes me want to retrain as a primary teacher.

The process for assessment of additional support needs is different in Scotland, so roles and abbreviations won't fit. He's very little to be coping with P1 - look to see what support they can put in place for him given how young he is. Also have a look at different schools around you - I know in my area there's a huge difference in attitude towards very young children in P1 across schools, it would be easy enough to move him at this stage if there were a school whose approach were more nurturing. Does your school have a nurture group? That might give him some space to relieve some of the pressure on him to manage his behaviour and learn.

DD at the that age didn't get on very well at school. She's a quiet shy child, always compared to her sister who is 1 year older and more boisterous. DD2 takes a bit longer to settle in, that's all. 3 months after starting the school advised me she was to be assessed as she has special needs. No - she didn't. They wanted to label her. She was quiet, apparently. I refused to go down the route of endless meetings that would worry her. Lot of wrangling back & forth but eventually sorted. DD2 is 22 now and she's fine, at Uni now and happy. Same attempted labelling happened to my nephew 'his style of learning was different/he is fidgety?!'. My cynical friend who works in a school says extra school funding for special needs children is s temptation...but who knows? If you can sort it OP then, fine. But to be honest if my DDs situation wasn't sorted I was fully prepared to remove her from school. Stress on children at a young age isn't something I'm interested in going along with and I don't happen to think school is always right and you must slavishly go along with certain things. For what? It's just anxiety for child and parent. Your little one may need more care and attention at school and that's what should be provided rather than all this heavy handedness which will make him miserable. At just 4 years old? No.

When I read these posts I am so relieved I don't live in the UK!!! My June born dd started school at 5 and 3 months.

Jelly and Mistress, thanks both.

I haven’t heard of a Nurture group? Perhaps i should find out if school has one. I am actually looking into other schools for next year. We will be moving area. I am hoping to start DS from P1 again to give him a head start. I am worried that a having this stuff on record/report could affect applications to other schools.

mistress, very interesting. I wholeheartedly agree. They are stretched and basically under resourced (crying out for parent helpers). At the risk of sounding paranoid, I think DS is a handy scapegoat. I don’t think that DS has additional support needs in the way that they are hoping to insinuate/build a narrative of. I think he’s 4, energetic and has glue ear, simple as..

Not wanting to come across as a ‘difficult’ parent, of course I’m receptive to what the school have to say. I have to say that is starting to diminish a bit. I do resent how stressful this has been.

Lola, DS would be just under that age if he was able to do another P1 next year. Still younger than your DC first time round (!)

It’s strange that our approach and perspective of education is determined by the jurisdiction we happen to be born into.. the Scandi system v the Scottish system - so different.

My DD is adopted and came to us after P1, and really got no learning in her first year of school unsurprisingly. I thought she would benefit from redoing P1 but her new school (who are fabulous with her/is) didn't recommend it because she might feel she's done something wrong in repeating the year.

They did suggest putting her into a P1/2 composite class so she could consolidate her P1 learning and still keep her P2 "status". At the end of this year we'll review how she's doing and if need be then make a case to keep her back but we (the school and DH/I) want to see if a year in a nurturing class environment will help her catch up. So far, the headteacher has been true to her word, the school is very nurturing and DD is starting to learn.

Your situation is different and your little one a bit younger but it may be worth considering.

HI is hearing impaired. I'm not sure how it works in Scotland but in England each county has access to specialist teacher advisories who advise on activities, classroom set up and supporting children with things like hearing impairment (for whatever reason) and visual/physical/social etc.

If they get involved and things are in place you can then judge if they work or not. If they do then it's clear the hearing is the cause and your ds gets a better learning environment