I feel like I messed up, big time. My son turned 5 this summer and is in kindergarten. When I met…

I feel like I messed up, big time. My son turned 5 this summer and is in kindergarten. When I met with his preschool teacher this past school year she said w him being on the young side and his attention span and the way kindergarten is much harder these days we might want to consider holding him back a year before kindergarten. I was so upset and felt that my son is super smart and was sure he’ll adapt just fine to kindergarten. I talked to my family and husband and we all agreed he should go to kindergarten on time and he’ll be fine. Flash forward to now. He’s not fine. We just had his parent teacher conference. The school district were in has high expectations, and he doesn’t know all the letter sounds and doesn’t know the sight words at the rate of the other kids and he takes the longest than all of the kids to start his work and he takes the longest to finish. I feel like I failed, I should have held him back. The teacher says his very smart and sweet and definitely doesn’t have a learning disability but it’s a maturity thing. I work with my son a lot every day to read and do homework and review sight words but she says that not what it is, its maturity. So now we have to look at holding him back to do kindergarten again. But we have to put him in a private school because our district has a “zero retention rate” policy. So he won’t be on the bus w his friends. He won’t be in first grade w everyone else. Everyone will know he got held back and kids are cruel and might judge him and be mean to him because of it. When he goes back to the district for first grade everyone him was in class with will be a grade ahead. And now getting held back will be a part of his life story and I feel absolutely horrible