Wednesday, July 28, 2010

One of my less controversial posts, but it may be useful anyway. :-)

The following text is what I sent to a journalist for a parenting magazine doing an article on “How to Tell if Your Child is Ready for Preschool”. Since only a few sentences will probably make it into the final article, I thought I’d post the full responses for you voracious readers. I believe it is consistent with my previous post, although that one was written from a more personal perspective. This piece was definitely about “preschool for preschool’s sake” and not about preschool also serving the purpose of child care.


Signs of preschool readiness?

In short, parents should not be too concerned about a child not being ready for preschool. The whole idea of preschool is to build certain skills, provide experiences that a child may not get as easily at home (e.g., mommies and daddies are too concerned about their floors to provide daily access to a sand table), and to nurture a love of exploration and learning. If you feel like your child needs support in any of these areas, preschool is a great place to send them, not a place they should avoid. Preschool does not have prerequisites.

Parents should think about what benefits a high-quality preschool experience might offer, and whether or not their particular child could use those benefits right now, could wait a while, or will get those skills some other way prior to kindergarten. I think parents are mostly concerned about whether their child will be at a disadvantage if they DO NOT send them to preschool. The answer is yes and no. For children that have a stay-at-home parent, for which preschool is not a necessity for child care reasons, there may still be some benefit to preschool that they cannot get at home, for example, peer interactions. (Siblings can provide some of this, but not all of it.) Thus, a child who has no preschool experience may be at SOME disadvantage in this area when kindergarten starts, but the likelihood is that this will be very short-lived. Kindergarten, which remember means “a garden for children”, is also meant to be a largely preparatory experience, and I often see things “click” very quickly at the beginning of a kindergarten year. In sum, parents should not feel pressure to send their children to preschool for fear they will not be able to catch up to their peers. On the other hand, if you want some of the benefits of preschool for your child now, and you have access to a high-quality program, it can definitely help make the transition to school easier.


Do they need to be used to separating from parents?

Once again, for children who have not had too much time away from their parents, a preschool experience can be a great way to learn some independent skills and adjust to longer days away by kindergarten. It is true that for some children who have always been with Mom or Dad, the initial good-byes at preschool can be very difficult. Cliché as it may sound, this transition is usually harder for the parents than it is for a child. And in a high-quality preschool, the teachers will be keenly aware of this potential and will help facilitate the process. While it isn’t necessary to provide extensive non-parental time prior to preschool, providing some of it after your enroll your child but, say, in the month prior to actually starting, is not a bad idea. Even a few play dates during which you don’t stay can help your child get used to the idea of good-byes, playing with other children without your assistance, and that you will return. Whenever you decide to start the separation process (whether prior to preschool, at preschool, or kindergarten), make sure to not drag it out when it happens. Tell your child good bye and that you will be back, say that you need a great big hug to help YOU get through your day, and ask for the teacher’s assistance in case your child clings to you. For what it’s worth, my daughter was in extensive day care AND preschool, and had to be peeled off me for the first week of kindergarten anyway. The bottom line is, all children are different and even prior experiences do not guarantee a “no tears” transition to preschool. Just know your child will be fine in just a few minutes after you leave.

What specific skills to look for?

Being potty trained prior to preschool is certainly helpful, but is not necessary, and you should be wary of a preschool that requires it. The fact is, children have accidents long after being potty-trained and teachers of children this age need to be prepared for that and not create a “hyper focus” on potty training just because accidents are inconvenient. Both of my daughters went through a stage of what felt like all-day-long accidents, and both of our preschool programs helped us through it and provided helpful advice along the way.

As far as the rest of the skills you mention (e.g., getting dressed, sitting and concentrating, eating independently, following simple directions, cleaning up), and sorry to sound like a broken record, but these are all skills that would make a transition to preschool easier, but can also be learned IN preschool, and should not be thought of as a prerequisite. I’m not suggesting that if you have plans to send your child to preschool you should ignore your child’s readiness for new skills and simply say “let them deal with it in preschool”. Whatever self-help skills (e.g., dressing feeding) can be learned at home should be, and are a great way for a child to gain independence and confidence.

My daughter went to an educational child care center where the youngest classroom ranged from 12 months to 3 years, which is a huge range developmentally speaking. I remember learning that the children ate at tables and had to learn to scrape their plates into a bin. I thought, “Good luck with that with my one-year old baby!” And I did feel pressure to expose her to some of these things before she started for fear she would be so behind. But the pressure was self-imposed. It was a long time before she could do some of those things and it wasn’t a problem. Peer influence is really helpful in these situations – children will learn to do things a lot faster when they see other children doing them.

I really like the list of “starter skills” you came up with. If you plan to have a list in your article I would simply call it “Preschool Skills” rather than “skills you need before preschool”. The list can be discussed as things the child will likely learn in preschool, but also ones to look for at home prior to the first day. That way, you can expose your child to a few of them first if fits naturally enough in your routine (e.g., have your child sit at the table for some meals rather than a high chair), but more importantly, you will know your child’s skills really well to help the preschool teachers know your child better.
To your list I would add:
- transitions well from activity to activity
-separates well from parent and can soothe self at departure and naptime with “security” object such as stuffed animal or blanket
-gradually learns the rules of turn-taking and sharing (but do not expect a lack of tears or tantrums here)
-demonstrates curiosity, willingness to explore, and tries to “solve problems” that are interesting to him/her (e.g., sticking legos together, figuring out how to make the two paint colors make another color)
-asks for help when needed

A quick word about “attention span”: It is age-appropriate for children 4 and under to want to expend a lot of motor energy and not be able to sit for the full length of activities. Think about if your child EVER sits for a full book with you – not about if they often can’t. If your child CAN sit for a book, even if it doesn’t happen often, chances are their attention level is just fine for preschool and in general.

Nap schedule?

For classes with 2-year-olds and under, napping should be “on demand” – that is, children sleep when tired, and thus there is no need to have a particular nap schedule beforehand. However, for preschool classes in the 1-2 years prior to kindergarten, generally there is one nap in the middle of the day and it is a good idea to help adjust your child to that routine if they are not doing so already.

Should children start preschool at age 2, 3, or 4?

Research shows that for children from families with severe socioeconomic disadvantage, longer experience in high-quality preschool programs brings more benefits. This makes sense as much as “practice makes perfect”. Generally, the more you do something, the better you are at it. However, this finding likely does not hold true for you if you know that your child is getting plenty of the experiences and skills we have been talking about.

My personal opinion is that if it is not needed for child care purposes, there is no particular need to start preschool classes prior to 3. Two or even one year of pre-kindergarten experience is plenty of time to get used to school routines and practice these skills.


How to know if a child may NOT be ready for preschool?

If your child is painfully shy, hypersensitive to new experiences, or can’t follow a simple direction by 18 months, it is a good idea to get a professional developmental assessment to explore whether there might be an underlying issue. Whether it is a delay, a serious developmental disorder, or just a unique but normal characteristic, preschool teachers can be an important part of the support that will help your child thrive.

The only issue that can keep a child out of preschool or potentially get them “expelled” is extreme aggressive behavior such as biting or kicking. Preschools and other licensed child care facilities have “safety first” regulations, and cannot accept the risk that overly aggressive children present to the other children. Once again, if your child is experiencing this kind of challenge, professional help is definitely needed. Sometimes a brief time in therapy, or a quick identification of problems that were “setting him off” that parents and teachers may have missed, help a child in this situation be safe around others. Those of us in the world of early childhood research are simultaneously working on ways to help early childhood teachers deal more effectively with challenging behavior and reduce the need for expulsions.


Attend 2, 3 or all 5 days? Attend part-day or full-day?

Again, assuming that child care or scheduling issues don’t make these decisions for you, I recommend that if you want to get to a reasonable threshold of benefits out of preschool, your child should attend at least 3 days, and those days should be full days if your child is in the last year prior to kindergarten. Preschool teachers tend to find that “2-day-a-week-ers” have a brand new adjustment to make each day and each week they return to school, so more time is spent adjusting and less time is spent enjoying and gaining new skills.

Half-day programs can sometimes be as brief as two hours (e.g., 9:00-11:00am) and sometimes parents and teachers find that this is like taking a really short plane ride – you don’t really have enough time to get all the way up before you have to come back down. Assuming the program is a more reasonable length (3-4 hours), half days are fine, but going to full days the year before kindergarten is still beneficial for obvious reasons – it can help your child learn to adjust to longer times away from you, as well as the rhythms of the day including lunch, outside time, snacks, small and large-group learning, etc..


What about parents’ own motivation to send their child to preschool?

I would want to make sure that parents neither feel A) obligated to send their child to preschool for purposes of gaining a competitive edge; nor B) guilty for sending their child to preschool because “someone else is raising their child”.

Preschool does provide some benefits that are not usually achievable in an average US home (e.g., learning to respect a community of non-family members, interacting with large numbers of age-mates), and even things that can be learned at home (e.g., self-help and problem-solving skills) can be enhanced in preschool because when children apply the same skill to more than one context or situation, they learn it better. And even if you want to send your child just to “get a break”, you can feel good about the fact that preschool is providing you the gift of sanity which helps you be a better parent, and as a bonus, your child is gaining new skills and probably enjoying himself to boot.

Be a calm mom too.

Welcome to my blog. This is an essay that I contributed to NPR’s "This I Believe" series back in 2007. It sums up my inspiration for helping my friends, and parents everywhere, to throw the parenting books out the window. I realize the hypocrisy involved in giving people advice to not follow advice, but stay with me – I really think there is something to this. Where modern parenting is concerned, people seem to need permission to do what their gut knows is right. I have seen people’s parenting self-efficacy (the fancy term for a parent’s belief that they know how to be a good parent) steamrolled by conventional wisdom, stupid Facebook posts of well-meaning friends, and ulterior economic motives (selling books, cribs, videos, drinking formula, magic formulas of all kinds) more times than I can count. Join me in bucking the system and getting back to common sense. Let’s discuss all the parenting techniques you have used that you wouldn’t tell your mother about, and why they worked for you. Permission granted.

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