To get you up to speed, our son is 7 years old and he is currently at the tail end of 1st grade in public school. Throughout our son's public school journey (2 years of preschool starting at the age of 3, kindergarten, and 1st grade) we have had his teachers tell us he wasn't ready to move on in the grades.
The second year of preschool:
His teacher told us he wasn't ready for kindergarten because he couldn't sit down to focus and do his work. My husband and I both knew he was ready for the next level of learning so we took the next steps and found him a new school.
Kindergarten:
We had moved to a new city right after the school year which gave us the opportunity to pick a new school. We chose a charter school. It was a very nice school, the teachers were nice, the staff was nice, and the curriculum seemed like it would be challenging for him. Our son passed the kindergarten entrance assessment with flying colors.
We didn't have too many problems in this grade. We did have the same issues with him not sitting down to do his work. During that school year at his parent teacher conferences we heard "He is a very bright boy, I just need to be very strict with him to make sure he does his work." We loved that teacher because she seemed to "get" our son's learning style. He is very hands on, gets bored and distracted very easily and most importantly he needs encouragement often or he shuts down and gets very upset and angry and we hear things like, " I just can't do it! I don't want to do it! I hate school!
First Grade:
This is where things start to lead us to our ultimate decision to home school our son. At the beginning of the school year things start off well. Our son pays attention, follows rules and does his homework. Somewhere in the middle of the school year we start to notice that our son is refusing to do his homework at home, comes home super grouchy, and is not interested in things related to school. At the parent teacher conference my husband and I mentioned our concerns to the teacher where she told us that our son is not only a distraction to others but to himself as well so during school she has him sitting off in a desk by himself. I can understand that during tests and individual activities but all day? Our son already feels like no one likes him at school and this concerns us. The year progresses and we hear more from the teacher. She tells us that our son doesn't want to do the coursework when the whole class is working on it so now she doesn't have our son participating with coursework. This started to make us very angry because our son is going to school to learn and this teacher isn't doing anything to help him learn. I thought schools were supposed to have structure and discipline but maybe I am wrong. At the last conference we went to she told us that our son emotionally and behaviorally was not ready for 2nd grade and possibly academically even, because our son hasn't show her that he knows the material. We hear often from our son that he is sick of doing the same stuff all the time, which to me tells me he is ready to move on to new things. There has been a few incidents where our son has come home completely embarrassed and upset because the teacher singled him out for something he didn't do. Our son is learning to hate school and I am so upset by this.
After the struggles we have went through with public schools my husband and I talked for weeks about what to do for school for our son. We weighed the pros and the cons to both types of schools and we came out with home school being on top. We are starting our 2nd grade home school curriculum very soon and we all are very excited about learning.
