Years ago when my youngest child started first grade I ran smack bang into a brick wall after only a few days in school with the school authorities. I was a new immigrant to this country and the brick wall seemed intractable. What was so obvious to me was totally alien to the school authorities.

Yellow Ducks

Horror of horrors he was already reading above his grade level the first day of school .But after just a few days in school he had had enough. School was a huge letdown. As far as he was concerned it was not what it was cracked up to be. This coming from a child who couldn’t wait for the day when he could go to school like his older siblings.

So imagine my surprise when he refused, just plain out refused to go to school. “All we do is color yellow ducks” He had had it with yellow ducks. School he decided was not for him.

Don’t Be Intimated

Being new to the ways of my adopted country I didn’t know any better. I immediately went head to head with, first the school, then with the whole school board. I couldn’t, for the life of me understand why, my simple suggestion to put him up a grade  met with such surprise and resistance, even hostility.

The reasons they gave made no sense, at least to me. He couldn’t tie his shoes laces, he was slow buttoning his jacket; was unable to blow his noise properly etc. etc. And further more because he was only six years old he needed to remain with his own age group.

By now we were at our wits end with a child refusing to go to school and a school refusing to let him go at his own pace. So we demanded a meeting with the school board – one of many – and off we went to do battle – still not knowing any better.

After five meetings over a course of several weeks and a lot of back and forth between board members and us, they decided to put him up a grade for a few months to see how he would do with a proviso that he would be sent back to first grade if he did not keep up in second grade.

Keep At It To Succeed

But my son was still bored and school was still a disappointment. We knew what the problem was. He just wasn’t challenged enough. Second grade was too easy and school was too miserable so why go to school at all. Why not just stay home and read what ever he wanted to.

Back to the school board – this was before Gifted Programs and Magnet Schools were even imagined. I asked to address the board and after a lot of arguing back and forth I posed one question

Why did the school board insist on pigeon holing my child and holding him back? Why did they come down on a certain age in a certain grade mantra? We don’t dress all six year olds in the same size cloths, I argued, or fit them in the same size shoes, feed them the same amount of food or insist they be a certain height or weight?

We all know not every six year old is the same height or weight. Don’t eat the same amount of food or wear the exact same size cloths. So why do try so hard to fit their brains in a pre determined pigeon hole and not allow for individual differences as we do in all other areas of a child’s development. I wanted some logical answer to this insanity.

The answer was the same as before.The best they could suggest was to enroll him in a private school some 30 miles from our home.

Apart from the fact that I could not afford to send my child to a private some school 30 miles from home the more important point to me was I was paying any number of taxes and felt entitled to have my child attend his local school.

More over I reminded them I had three older kids enrolled in grades above their age level. Then why the fuss with my youngest?

Persistent Pays

Cut a long story short he was put up another grade with a stern prediction and a warning. I was told my son would have serious problems down the road socially as well as physically. As a passing thought I was reminded again of all the things he was unable to do, like tie his shoe laces, button his shirt etc and that he was still behind in his motor skills,

My answer was to assure them that – tongue in cheek – he would be able to tie his shoe laces and button his shirt by the time he entered college. My concern was more to nurture his love for learning and inquiring than to worry about what he was able to do or not do at his age.

At nine he had read “The Rise And Fall Of Adolf Hitler,” But he still had not learnt to ride a bike. It would be a couple of years more before he showed any interest in learning to ride a bike or to throw a ball.

This is over thirty years ago. Today that same six year old is a Civil Rights Attorney with enormous gifts. He is a musician, a writer, a poet, a wrapper, an organizer and a speaker in demand in academia across the country. And yes! He can tie his shoes laces and button his shirt.

I shiver to think what would have happened if he had switched off mentally through pure boredom in the early years of schooling.

The moral of my personal story is this. Sometimes you have to fight and advocate for your children. You can see what others can’t. They are to busy enforcing rules that some times make no sense, Education was an area we just could not compromise on.

Loss To Society

As my husband told the school board members at one of those contentious board meetings that it was his firm belief, our over croweded prisons were full of highly intelligent people who sadly were never challenged or stimulated enough at the right stage in their mental development at home or at school. They had to know how to tie a shoe lace or button a shirts above all else. Their intellectual development be damned. Or so it seemed to us.

They were lost to boredom and society was lost to them. Who knows what human talent went undiscovered unrealized because they had to fit a predetermined mold that had little to do with the bigger picture of their life.

Mistakes We Make

• We pigeonhole our kids putting them in straitjackets stunting their growth
• We insist all children fit a mold, a certain age in a certain grade, no deviating from them
• We make assumptions about a child’s ability to learn to read before a certain time and age
• We fail to capitalize on their rapidly developing brain, their natural curiosity and high energy
• For the most part we are still stuck in the early 20^Th century mind set about how, when and where children learn best
• We fail to think for ourselves and give too much power to so called experts who spew statistics without knowing how it effects the individual child

   “We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world.” Buddha”

Know Your Own Power

Though things have changed from thirty years ago parents are still unaware and unsure of their own power to influence appropriate out comes. They should be bold and confident in calling the shots where their children are concerned. They should resist allowing – armed with the knowledge of their own child – of them being pigeon holed or forced to follow some arbitrary guideline, to fit a certain mould.

For the most part, parents are  aware – often vaguely – of problems their kids might face down the road, but what they might not be aware of is, how easy it is to wake up one morning and wonder what happened. Suddenly he hates school and begins to fall behind and by the time you get to the bottom of the problem he has already fallen far enough behind to make it that much harder to catch up.

The world is moving and changing much too fast …just read Thomas Friedman’s book ”The World Is Flat”…it’s an eye opener to the challenges the kids will face in the decades ahead.

If you have a toddler, a preschool child or a child with learning difficulties and want to learn how to ensure your child is READING before first grade – biggest head start you can give him – then enter your name and email and get the pdf “Why Johnny Still Can’t Read. It’s FREE!

My very best, till the next time,