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Need some input from parents with more experience

post #1 of 4
10/6/06 at 2:24pm
Thread Starter 
Ok, this might be weird, but it concerns me.

As you know, my boys are 19 month apart. Jerome started Kindergarten last year as the youngest in his class, and Cedric will start next year. While Jerome did fine is Kindergarten, we are (ok, mainly I am) somewhat concerned about his speech. It's just not quite as good as others. He is in first grade now, and doing pretty good, even though he does have some problems (see earlier post), but I am sure they will be fixed, soon.

Now here is my dilemma. Cedric is too smart for his own good. He picks up pretty fast on a lot of things. Like when we practice the spelling with Jerome, Cedric picks up on it and at some point answers faster than Jerome.
It's really good that he can do that, but it really hurts Jerome's feelings to know his little brother can do something he is struggling with.

We kinda don't practice things with Cedric that Jerome can't do, because I don't want the little one to be ahead of the older one, but that's not really fair to Cedric, either, is it?

How can I let Cedric "bloom" to his full potential while at the same time allowing Jerome to be the best that he can be, even if in some areas it means his little brother is better than he is? Jerome loves to be the big brother, and in his eyes it means being able to teach Cedric, not the other way around.
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post #2 of 4
10/6/06 at 2:33pm
Ahh! We have the exact same dilemna! Cody and TJ are about 20 months apart. Cody is in 1st grade now, really struggling. TJ won't be able to go to kindy until next year because of his birthday.

Last year, when we were working hard with Cody to learn his alphabet, phonics, etc, TJ would hang out in the kitchen with us and he picked up on everything that Cody was struggling with. It will frustrate Cody even more that TJ would give the answers before he could even think about them.

We started printing out worksheets, etc for TJ to do, and I would separate them. I focused on Cody while Mike would work with TJ. There is no easy answer because as long as the two are learning on different levels, you're going to have this problem. One thing I did realize is that they have entirely different learning styles and TJ wasn't real interested in the way we worked with Cody. He eventually bored of it and left us alone.

If you're concerned about speech issues, call the school and speak with the speech pathologist. They can test him to be sure he is where he needs to be, and if not, they can get him set up for speech therapy to help him. They should have already screened him, but they completely ignored Jessica when she was in kindy and I didn't get her started in speech until 1/2 way through her 1st grade year.
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post #3 of 4
10/6/06 at 2:46pm
Thread Starter 
Thanks Dawn.
He got screened in Kindy, and was fine. I also asked his Kindy teacher, and she doesn't see a problem. I guess it's really just me...

I hope the transfer to the other school goes through. He will have the benefit that he knows the language many of the other kids are still kina learning, and I think, as good as my English is, it will be a little easier for me to help him with him homework in German.

I guess I really have to just give Cedric worksheets, too.
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post #4 of 4
10/6/06 at 3:18pm
I think Dawn has some really good ideas. Also, I am sure there are many things that Jermone can do that Cedric can't or is better at than his brother. My dh was a gifted child with average older brothers. I don't think it caused a whole lot of problems because after all they were older and that was the big important thing to them. He still had to go to bed earlier and didn't have all the priviledges that came along with being older. Good luck with this.
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