Hi, I need some help from anyone who has any good ideas for me. I have two boys with learning difficulties - a 9 year old with ADHD and dyspraxia, and a 5 year old with speech and language delays and balance issues. Both were adopted from overseas orphanages aged 2, when they had severe delays due to social deprivation. We've been living in Belgium and they've been at local schools, where they have both repeated a year to help them cope with their developmental delays (so they are now a year below where they would be in the UK).
However, my youngest isn't coping well with two languages so we've been advised to put him in an English-only environment (as my husband and I are both English speaking) to simplify things for him, as he has some speech problems, but the picture is being clouded by having to cope with two.
We could move over the water to Kent so my husband can commute for his job, but I cannot find any schools that offer good support for my boys, and I am being told by Kent Council that it is impossible for the boys to continue being a year behind, despite their complicated background. I cannot contemplate what skipping a year of schoolwork would mean particularly for my older boy, who has worked like a trooper to keep up this far. He has had great support in Belgium so far too. It would simply be a recipe for disaster as he is very emotional and compares himself a lot to his peers. Skipping a whole school year and only having 2 years left at primary school would be setting him up to fail.
We don't have the money for private school, and I'm at a loss to know what to do. Any thoughts from anyone please?
Thanks for anything at all!
Louise