I sat there and thought about writing this blog post and then it hit me that there will probably be a few families that are going through exactly the same thing.
We have decided to hold Cleo back. We are deferring her for up to a year when it comes to starting school. This wasn’t an easy decision and part of me feels awful that she isn’t starting this September but I think it is what is best for her. There are a few reasons why we have come to this.
Firstly, she is an end of July baby. She has only just turned 4. She would be the youngest in her year. A year is a long time when it comes to children and development and the thought that we are putting in to school too early scares me.
The pandemic. This might be the same for other families but the pandemic has definitely made it harder to get children ready for school. Cleo hasn’t been in Nursery long and we want to get her settled properly. We don’t want to rush things.
Her autism diagnosis. This is a hard one but Cleo has been diagnosed with Global Developmental Delay and ASD. She has alot of hospital appointments so putting her in to school would be hard at the moment. We are trying to get her an EHCP to support her at school. We don’t yet know the full extent of her ASD but we know enough to know that she isn’t ready to go to school.
This isn’t an easy thing for us to do and I feel bad that I am leaving her out from friends her age and that I am going to hold her back. As it stands, she should be starting Easter 2022 but it is looking more like September 2022 so a whole year of being deferred.
It is sad to not be buying her uniform and getting her excited to start. I want to be getting her ready to going to big school.
If you deferred your child, how did you cope and did it help?
The Coastal Mummy 