Has your child had a learning/language explosion during the holidays and if so....

[CrunchyStarlight]

does that mean that school is holding them back?

Interested in your thoughts. Is school really more than childcare for our SN children?

I'm very skeptical of the 'children regress' argument. First of all, AFAIK, a lot of the studies were done in the US where they have far longer holidays. And what the studies found was that working class children regressed, while middle class children progressed.

Secondly, I'm positive teachers here use it (sometimes) to cover up lies by the last years teacher. Basically it's in the previous years interests to inflate the grades at the end of the year and in the current years teachers interests to deflate the grades, so methinks I smell a rat....

For example, I know my DD didn't deserve her reading grade last year. And I'm sure this years teacher will say she can't read as well as her grade - she must have regressed. But she hasn't. The previous teacher lied black and blue.

Although, I'm sure some children do regress. For example kids without strong English who speak another language at home, do come back to school with worse English than when they left 6 weeks ago. But on the whole I think it's a way for teachers to cover their arse backed up by some studies that don't apply to their cohert :)

Indigo - Agree totally, but this doesn't just occur with reading. All my ds's TA work was that done at home, with support. We now let hime do the work which is to be handed in alone. School cannot explain why his literacy skills have appeared to drop significantly.

DS's speech and language has been improving over the past year (mainly due to him being in a brilliant lang. unit p/t), but there's not been a huge leap in language over the holidays, if anything he has been using a lot of gestures and hand dragging again as opposed to words. (btw he is nearly 4.10 and has asd.)

But we have noticed some progress with ds's attention and listening skills as well as self-help skills during the holidays. With a bit of prompting and supervising, he has started getting changed by himself, taking t-shirt and jeans off and putting on pjs. I thought he'd never get changed alone! Remain to see if he will carry over this new skill to reception in a few days.

We have also seen better play, more varied and a tad bit more imagination, and less stimming. He seems more 'tuned in' or so to speak.