I am sorry but this is going to be quite long as I guess, I need to vent this out… I do apologise ahead.
My daughter has a speech/language disorder and thus has been attending her nursery as a special needs child. This is not compulsory schooling yet and the children are generally let to explore things through free play during fairly unstructured sessions. Recently the nursery decided to focus a little more on reading and math which is something normally introduced later, in reception classes (UK equivalent of kindergarten, if I am not mistaken). For the past few weeks they started gently introducing letters and numbers to the nursery kids for short 10-15-minute sessions a day.
Despite her disorder, my daughter is way past letter and number recognition stage, and, in terms of reading, she has successfully tackled a few first readers which are at her level in terms of comprehension. While, in terms of math, she can now complete simple addition and subtraction worksheets quite independently.
What I did not know until today, that the kids were divided into two groups, called “higher†and “lower†groups. Both groups are taught letters and numbers, but for the “lower†level it is more “gentle†as the kids are perceived “less readyâ€. What came as a surprise to me that my daughter was automatically placed in the “lower†group and it was not until today, when during a different unrelated activity, she read the names of her peers (sounding out letters and then blending them) to the astonishment of the teaching staff that the staff started to consider moving her to the “higher†group.
Have you experienced a lot of situations like this with automatic low expectations of your kids? How do you deal with that?
How frustrating!!! Obviously they made assumptions without doing any unbiased assessments. I haven’t had the joy of my special needs child exceeding anyone’s expectations yet. But when he does, I will be totally annoyed if others did not recognize it and encourage him to reach his potential. I love it whenever a SN kids surpasses typical kids. It gives me hope.
Thank you for your kind words, Lori. It is quite frustrating that she was not even given a chance in the “more advanced” group (although even in this group she would be learning something she already knows) and was automatically placed in the lower group with younger kids (which would not be at all beneficial for her). I would not even be aware of the fact, had she not accidentally demostrated her skills.
I guess fighting bias is yet another job on our job descritions as mums of special children…
My daughter is not SN but in my personal opinion I think that no matter what the SN is that a child or person can do absolutely anything they want, no matter what it is. They may have a harder time at certain things but if they want to do it and they put their mind to it they can accomplish it. Especially with the right support. I think it is wrong that your child was judged without an unbiased assessment. It happens a lot whether a child is SN esp. in the US (don’t get me started on that but people from the US on here should watch Waiting for Superman and see what is going on in our education system, and it isn’t only in Public Schools, I went to a Private Catholic School as a child and they did not do a good job, I had some bad teachers who were not teaching for the children) Anyway that is off topic, I am just writing because I believe that SN or not your child can do anything and to never give up hope on them or let anyone else devalue them. I feel sad that, that happened to you and your child. I may sound ridiculous because I don’t have a SN child so I don’t necessarily know what I am talking about I just don’t believe in limiting our children, and they shouldn’t learn to limit themselves in the sense of growth and knowledge and experiences. So your school shouldn’t limit your child especially without any reason except for a diagnosis. An unbiased assessment of what your child is capable of like everyother typical child is what should have been done instead of just assuming that a certain label means your child is less than another. Which is how I would feel and results in me being very angry over the whole situation. It was very wrong of them.
Thank you, Christine! I absolutely agree with you! The system may just as well fail non-SN children not letting them have the right opportunities. This is one of the reasons I would do “full-time” homeschooling if I could.
How frustrating! This happens all the time with my dd. She has Down syndrome & many people have preconceived notions about it. At about age 3.5 yrs. my dd was able to read books, yet people often don’t think she can understand the simplest of things. I am so grateful that the teacher she will have in kindergarten is understanding & is supplying us with early readers. I know most people have no idea of her abilities, but at least the teacher she will have to start out knows what she is capable of & will teach her according to her abilities. I also expect that I will always supplement her education at home to make sure that she is catching on & in case the teachers aren’t expecting enough of her.
The other thing people do is to comment on how well my dd is doing when she really isn’t doing anything amazing at all. For example, once when my dd was about 2 or 2.5 years old, I bumped into an acquaintance that I hadn’t seen in over a year. K was standing in a shopping cart & as we came up to the lady she took one look & said " Wow, she is doing so well" I wanted to say: “Really? Can you tell that by how well she stands up in a shopping cart?” I really wonder what she expected. I also wanted to say " Actually, she is reading a few hundred sight words already. I bet your typical grandson who is the same age can’t read at all can he? It’s too bad that he isn’t as smart as my dd." It’s too bad that I can’t actually be that sarcastic in real life. Instead, I just politely educated her a little about DS & shared some stories about K.
If your dd is speech delayed & can’t prove herself as easily, do you find that people don’t really believe you that she is doing all those things sometimes? Many people have seen my dd read now, but I really don’t think that the majority of them reallly understand how many words, how well, or how quickly my dd can read or that she has learned so many conceptes such as colors, shapes etc. from reading.
Thank you for your support, waterdreamer and kmum!
I had a giggle at what you felt like saying to your acquiantance, kmum, as it is exactly what I felt like saying to an acquaintance of mine who I met a month or so ago. She has a daughter who is slightly older than LM. Since she is Russian too, I asked her if she was taking her daughter to a Russian school where I take LM once a week and where early academics are given certain priority. This acquiantance has not seen LM for the past three years or so, she is not aware of her disorder and would not recognise her. She replied to my question that she would not take her daughter there, since she had been to the school and had not been impressed with the level of kids there, as many of them could not even talk properly and were clearly disordered. “What could my daughter possibly learn in a classrom with such kids?!” she said. When I asked her what it was that her five-year-old daughter could do so much better than the “disordered kids”, it turned out that she was “beginning to learn the alphabet”.
How awful! I don’t understand why they see the need to separate the children at that age anyway! Thank goodness your little one decided to show off her true abilities.