Posts by John James5

Brian Jones8 said:John James5, can you give me the lowdown? How exactly did you guys prep for the baby that year? I’m talking about everything—speech therapists, specialists, any specific supplements?

And what was his working memory like back then?

That gap year was mostly just speech therapy and a ton of homework, but we also played through different scenarios every single day—basically whatever popped into my head. Walking through the park, waiting in line at Target, lounging on the beach, riding the bus or subway... everything was an excuse to count things, analyze stuff, or learn through play.
Analyzing and breaking down words. Spelling, syllable splitting. We’d play games trying to remember as many words as possible starting with a certain sound, or what sound a word ended with. Something like "calodont," but at first, just one sound, not whole syllables. We read words letter by letter, then syllables, then blended them together.
We counted whenever I felt like it. Like folding napkins to put four on the table. Or having her hand me five eggs. Counting how many railroad tracks were under the crosswalk. Then there was the whole more vs. less thing—like, if she had 5 pieces of candy and I had 3, who has more? Or if she has 3 candies and gives 1 to a friend, how many are left? If she has 3 and a friend gives her 1, how many does she have now? Using fingers. Using candy. Anything. That’s even how we learned the < and > symbols through games (she remembered that the bigger side is where the sign "opens up") and she never messed those up once in first grade.
She worked through preschool workbooks I picked up at newsstands and bookstores—different quality levels 😁, various types of exercises; I bought a few different ones. Every single day, if she couldn't do more, we did at least one task. I also printed out exercises from the web (I see there are even new ones here now). We used them for concentration, fine motor skills, spatial orientation, understanding quantities, etc. On the recommendation of our speech therapist, Eve, I got her software called "World of Letters," which she did on the computer and absolutely loved. We played "what's the opposite" (night-day, deep-shallow, high-low, young-old...) while walking. She’d retell stories I read to her, and we’d talk about them. She wrote short texts, like birthday cards for friends, drawing them herself, and generally did a lot of drawing and coloring, focusing on being precise.

I think for people asking for a gap year, all this sounds trivial or easy because their kids just "got it" or picked it up on the fly. But our kid had developmental delays, actual issues with comprehension, short attention span, motor restlessness, etc., and nothing happened just by accident or without constant stimulation and repetition. And if you're wondering why we didn't do this sooner, the answer is—we did. We tried, but it didn't work. She'd refuse. Or if she wasn't refusing, she'd just look at me and simply wouldn't understand. Later on, she actually became more prepared and interested than average kids. Even with the speech therapy checkups and the exercises her two therapists recommended in the years prior, it wasn't a lack of effort; she just couldn't grasp those basic concepts. I have another child who has always been a quick learner and picks things up easily "on the go," so I see the difference firsthand.

As for supplements, I bought So this fish oil, my pediatrician suggested it, but man, getting her to swallow it was a total nightmare. Apparently, they market it as having a strawberry flavor, but that’s a load of crap.

urbantinker8 said:Yeah, it definitely sends a bad message from the system.
but personally, I find it equally aggravating—the officials who refuse to build new schools, upgrade existing ones, or hire more staff, combined with the helicopter parents who exploit the situation without much cause.
No matter how you look at it, the actual purpose behind delaying enrollment gets completely lost, which I think is just really, really bad for everyone involved.

Total agreement here.

I'm honestly floored by what I just read on the last few pages. We're talking about a kid who is psychophysically healthy, advanced, zero diagnoses, looks like they have above-average abilities—someone who can pick up two languages before age six, gets the green light from school doctors, psychologists, and speech therapists saying they need more time, all because the mom decided that the moment she gave birth?
Either this story doesn't add up, or it's a perfect example of a system that's completely broken.
My own kid had developmental delays from day one—high neuro-risk. No matter the therapy—physical, occupational, sensory integration, speech, preschool programs, intensive work at home before testing—they couldn't even count to ten or name our city. But thanks to delaying enrollment, my kid actually became ready. With massive extra effort from me at home, they caught up with kids who are a year or more older, while most parents of those kids don't even have to lift a finger to get them straight A's—or so they claim.

We never even got a call from NASA regarding the approved delay, nor did two other moms I know whose kids also had delays (one a year before us, one last year at a different Elementary School) due to issues they'd been tackling with specialists for years. I don't know a single case where a delay wasn't justified. This is New York City we're talking about. So, the idea that a kid can just skip a grade/year without any diagnosis is disappointing. It's a failure of the system. If it's true that employees there act like this, then yeah, it's a mess. Because now people are claiming everyone in that department was incompetent because they judged the kid ready, only to change their minds later. And then NASA jumps in just to have a parent sign a statement saying they wanted the delay for a "perfectly healthy child" based on a commission's recommendation. Why would the commission recommend the delay in the first place if the kid is fine?

Brian Jones8 said:I know this isn't the main topic, but I'm curious—what are you all doing to tackle this?

Regarding the delay... I'd love to hear from parents whose kids are already in school after being held back a year. Did that extra year actually make a difference?

The teachers at our preschool are being pretty harsh; they're convinced he'll be struggling forever. ☕Fine, I hear you. I’ll work with him and stay on top of his lessons, but I'm really hoping one more year of preschool gives him a chance to catch up on his speech and sharpen his focus a little.

I know this question popped up back in March, but maybe my experience will help someone out. I stumbled onto this thread and started scrolling through from page 25...

I have two kids.

For my oldest—who was a handful, honestly—we decided to hold them back from starting kindergarten based on what all the specialists said, plus the input from the school testing team when they turned five. Emotionally, she just wasn't there yet. Plus, back then, she had zero interest in memorizing things that didn't matter to her at the time (like reciting the seasons or days of the week). I don't think she needed to know that stuff right then—that's first-grade level stuff—but her whole vibe was just refusing to engage or try to remember anything. She couldn't even count to 10 without skipping a number every single time. So, delaying was the call we made as parents, and honestly, we felt a massive sense of relief once the decision was made, even though we had no clue what first grade would actually look like.

And man, I can’t even describe how much that extra year helped her mature and get ready for school. It was night and day. A year later, she walked into those tests totally confident, prepared, and motivated. She was actually excited to finally be a first grader. For my kid, motivation was everything because, with after-school programs, she was basically doing homework every single day anyway—especially in the second half of the year when they started teaching cursive and harder math.

By the end of the first semester, she had mastered printing both uppercase and lowercase letters. She could also handle addition and subtraction up to, if I remember correctly, 7 or 8 (at least according to the curriculum they use at our local elementary school).
In the second semester, they move on to cursive. They're expected to know when to use capital letters, and they start paying attention to things like "i" vs "ie" type spelling nuances, as well as "ch" and "sh" , "j" and "dg" sounds. By the start of the second semester, adding and subtracting up to 10 needs to be automatic, because by the end of the year, they're doing numbers up to 20.
The final math exam at the end of the year covers everything from the start of the year, including word problems like: "Anne picked 15 strawberries, and Ivy picked 11 fewer than Anne. How many did they pick altogether?" (Just making that up to show you the kind of math we're talking about).

I didn't care what anyone thought about us holding her back, and my kid didn't care that she was a year behind her old preschool buddies. If we hadn't taken that extra year, she wouldn't have been able to keep up with the pace of first grade. It would have been a disaster for her emotionally and socially, and her attitude toward school—which is actually positive now despite the workload—would probably have been ruined for the long haul.

A few days ago I read a solid piece about Bauhaus:

After 24 years, a new Bauhaus album.
Sergej Županić

Maybe the most striking scene in Tony Scott's cult film "Hunger" is when a rock band performs "Bela Lugosi's dead" inside a cage at some seedy club. It's this twisted tribute to the greatest actor to ever play Dracula.

Exactly 30 years ago, a quartet of young debutants played their first show at Cromwell's pub in Wellingborough, right on the outskirts of Northampton. Back then, they were actually going by "Bauhaus 1919"—named after that German art movement—but they dropped the "1919" part just a year later.

That same year, singer Peter Murphy, guitarist Daniel Ash, drummer Kevin Haskins, and his brother bassist Daniel J. recorded their debut single, "Bela Lugosi's dead." It basically kicked off the whole goth-rock era right when post-punk was hitting its stride, and now it’s the ultimate anthem for goths everywhere. What most people don't realize is that the track was actually meant to be just a joke—but it was taken way too seriously, sparking an entire explosion of the darkest underground rock.

Misunderstood irony.
"The song was supposed to be ironic. That part about 'Bela Lugosi is dead, not dead,' it’s honestly hilarious!" Peter Murphy explained back in '94 during an interview with some alternative music mag. "We messed up by playing it with this naive seriousness, so that's how the crowd took us—dead serious." Murphy admitted there was no turning back after that. They got slapped with the "goth" label, leaned into it, and that moment of forced sincerity eventually tore the band apart.

In just a handful of years between 1979 and 1983, Bauhaus managed to cram an entire lifetime of punk, rock, glam, German psychedelic expressionism, experimental electric rock, heavy metal, reggae, funk, and dub into four studio albums. They basically threw every musical idea they ever had at the wall to see what stuck. Honestly, their takes on timeless hits from T-Rex or David Bowie actually ended up sounding better than the original influences themselves.

Their music was melancholy and twisted, sure, but it was also this ominous, threatening, merciless dirge. Every now and then, they’d hit you with a burst of intensity that felt as raw as the punk scene they all grew up in. The lyrics were obsessed with bats, death, horror movie icons, and the tragic ends of artistic geniuses. Even if those themes eventually turned into cheap "goth" clichés, the sheer hopelessness bleeding through their songs was rooted in something real from their everyday lives.

They showed up in the late 70s, emerging from the wreckage of a broken society—which is exactly what gave birth to punk. You had unemployment, racial tensions, and, as they themselves venomously claimed, the absolute worst offender of all: the rise of disco. To make matters even worse, their hometown, Northampton, was just some dreary industrial town with barely 200,000 people living in it. 56 miles Northwest of New York City.

"It was indescribably depressing. Bad food, shitty weather, and an unbearable level of conservatism," Daniel Ash once said about life back then. "We had zero future, zero chance at making it. Just total shit." That’s exactly why we ended up sounding the way we did—that raw, gloomy sound and those dark atmospheres during our shows. We actually put a lot of work into the stage presence and choreography, making them feel more like theater than just some standard concert.

Peter Murphy was the absolute center of attention on stage. Before 1978, he actually tried his hand at a brief stint as a model, using that stage presence of his. But, caught somewhere between the runway and the uncertain future of an Undone alternative rock band, Murphy eventually chose Bauhaus.

He prowled the stage like some kind of nocturnal predator. His whole performance was so perfectionist, so hypnotic, that thousands of his physical clones are still stomping around the world today, calling themselves "goths." He had this massive voice and this wild, unhinged energy—like he might just burst out of his own skin at any second. But the kicker was that he was smart and witty enough to make sure none of it felt cheap. In his private life, though? He was just a mild-mannered, calm guy who was completely devoted to his family.

Leaving a mark on the goth scene
The Bauhaus guys never hesitated to grab anything that caught their eye. They pulled from everywhere—proto-goth Joy Division, the timeless chameleon David Bowie, Bryan Ferry, Kraftwerk, The Damned, Suicide, Can, and even Nico, who ran into Bauhaus in New York City back in '81. While Peter Murphy held her up so she wouldn't collapse, they recorded "Waiting for the Man" by the Velvet Underground.

What Bauhaus really did was bring back a sound passionate enough to pull fans away from new wave, leaving a permanent footprint on the entire 1980s goth scene. Through them, you can trace the influence straight into early '90s industrial music and even certain progressive and black metal bands. Without their body of work, it’d be impossible to imagine acts like Marilyn Manson (who aren't actually goths, despite what people think), NIN, Franz Ferdinand, Smashing Pumpkins, or even Radiohead.

An album after 24 years
Eventually, being labeled "goths" started getting to the Bauhaus crew, and right before their reunion in 1998, they decided to settle some scores with their "bad conscience." “'Goth' doesn't actually exist. In the US, 'goth' was always a joke,” says Daniel Ash, adding: “It just meant huge hair, too much makeup, and zero talent. People usually say the goths were The Cure, Siouxsie & the Banshees, New Order, and Joy Division, but the real goths were Alien Sex Fiend, Specimen, and stuff like that. Maybe Sisters of Mercy. Time proved we actually had more talent.”

And honestly, even with half a century of life under their belts, their music still pulls in crowds of 50,000 at shows. More importantly, it keeps inspiring a whole wave of younger bands today.

On stage, Murphy is still that same wild guy from back in the day, even if he's carrying a few extra pounds and has a little less hair. As for how much songwriting energy they have left, we'll find out on March 10th when they announced their first album in 24 years, titled “go Away White”.