Why are you allowing this teacher to deflect this guilt onto you?
Humans have been having successive children since time began! In the past it was common for women to have a baby every year. That means that all the children in front of the age of the baby previous to them would have been flunking school. Did this happen? Does this sound logical to you?
Do you know that a current "well schooled" graduate of today is graduating at a grade level that is equivalent to a 5th grader from 100 years ago?
The problem is not in the child or the parent as it is in the entire American public school system. It has become a den of social engineering and brainwashing. The three R's of the past have been replaced with socialist ideas and moral decay. Instead of focusing on proper letter formation or the constitiution, they are learning where to properly dispose of a aluminum can, how to go to family planning for an unwanted pregnancy, and in CA, some schools are teaching the meaning of sexually transmitted diseases to KINDERGARTENERS. Meawhile instead of learning about the wonders of bugs and bees, the teacher is reading a book called, "Johnny Has Two Daddies". Proven methods of phonemic awareness for reading instruction has been replaced with sight word learning, and then they wonder why the 4th grader can't read. He can't decode a word if he was never taught HOW to decode. School bugets are non existent, class sizes are doubled, half the class is on Ritalin, and the other half can't speak English.
Math becomes increasingly impossible when the child isn't taught using symantics, the math language. College professors state that half of all math failures in entry level college kids is due to the lack of understanding symantics...something that should have been taught and built upon from grade K!
The progressive movement that started in the 30's, picked up steam in the 60's and is all encompassing today , is the reason for the absolute failure of the schools. The business model can't help but churn out mentally "malnourished" children. We are the top nation in the world industrially, but at the bottom for education.
The motus operandi of the schools is to blame the child (ADD, depression, too young , too old, too skinny, too fat, too many siblings, not enough toys, no middle name ) and the parent....
too attentive, too inattentive, to many kids, not enough kids, the family car is the wrong color, not enough vacations, etc.)
You must open your eyes to the truth of what is going on here. Research the web for the "progressive school movement". Research the data from homeschooled children and compare the test scores to the public schools. People who homeschool have just as many kids, if not more, that the families in the public schools. In fact, the mother is trying to teach a child many times while having an infant at the breast and a toddler at the hip. Yet her children would still have better test scores than the public schools.
So having younger siblings is not detrimental to education. Public schools are detrimental to education.