Developmentally slow

Well I am back I sure no one remembers me but that is okay. I have been talking with my family this week and I have been informed that my nephew “J.” has to redo kindergarten. Just to give you a little background on my nephew, J. has had a hearing problem his entire life, he had his Eustachian tube replaced when he was 4 years old. Last I heard he still had trouble with many letter sounds and was unable to distinguish between certain ones. He has had many other problems. In my opinion, his parents would rather spend time on the internet than interacting with their child. My sister, J’s mother, seemed proactive during his first years; she bought all the books and games to help him learn and develop faster then other children. As it turns out, she was only showing ‘face’, apparently being online was more important to her. Having people enjoy the music she was playing held more appeal then being a mom I digress.

My nephew is being held back due to the fact that he is not able to read a list of words. This list is small, about 30 little words. Right now his father is watching him for the summer and will have reevaluated at the end of July to see if hold him back is the right thing to do. I think that he is doing a good thing and at the same time you should not force a child to struggle their entire life to make yourself feel better about yourself and to prove how well of a parent you are.

I was put into a pre-first do to the fact that I would not talk. I grow up in a house were my two older sister would talk for me. I was also terrified of my kindergarten teacher. She was a nice lady but my sisters had made many jokes about her eating the kids in her class. I assumed that my sisters would not lie to me and since I did not speak that much at home my parents could never set the record straight. So I remained quiet and was held back. I do not blame my sister I enjoyed being smarter then the other kids in my class and I also enjoyed being older I had a car before most of the kids in my grade.

I would not say that my nephew is stupid or slow. He is being held back in school by the result of parenting and a physical condition that could have been caught earlier if both parents had chosen to spend time and help develop their child. It is too bad that the internet and computer games where to great of a calling to his parents to even let them see that there child was falling behind at the start. I am not saying that there is someone else to blame in all hold backs but in some cases a little one on one time with each child may do wonders even in my case. If my mother had pulled me to the side and asked me how school was in a place where my sister could not answer for me she may have heard about my cannibal teacher, but my mother was busy trying to raise 4 kids for the most part by herself my father was TDY a lot so she had a lot to do I would never ask why she did not do more. Of my sister I ask why she did not do something anything at all to help her son her only child at the time.

The call to spend so much time on the internet is too great for some people. I can not see how some one could abandon their child for a cold machine even if that machine can be used to transfer and store large amounts of information. Is there no hope for the children of parents that need the approval of people that they will never know or see? Shouldn’t parents be more interested in what their children think about them? Shouldn’t we care that as a society we keep falling behind the curve, are standards are far shorter then many other country’s standards. We are unwilling and or unable to see that we are destroying ourselves in pure vanity. We sit and we preach how the world should be better. How we as a county should be more understanding. When the children, the future of this nation, are falling behind at the beginning of their lives because we are to busy playing on the internet to busy trying to improve our own life and we can let this go how sad have we become. At least 22 years ago the reason a child was held back was valid. What will be the reason you will accept C’s or D’s or just plain failing? Where will you let the failure lay on the child, the parent, or the teacher? Maybe there is no one to place the failure on? Maybe we ask too much from our children? Maybe we ask too much of parents?

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