A Baby Ready For Kindergarten, College, and Life
A parent recently asked my advice about choosing a preschool for her son. I responded with my belief that the purpose of preschool is socialization, and that a developmental ‘learn through play’ program is best. She agreed in theory, but admitted she worries about kindergarten readiness. Will a school that does not teach academics provide enough preparation for Kindergarten?
This made me think — what do children really need to succeed in Kindergarten? Yes, there are some simple skills that can give a child a leg-up. But parents are inclined to make the mistake of sacrificing the long view of a child’s needs for the peace of mind they get when the child has mastered letters, numbers and scissors.
A successful school experience (or, for that matter, a successful life) is not the result of skills taught in preschool. It is sown from the seeds of a parent’s trust. When an infant, toddler or preschooler is ‘taught’ something he may not be ready to learn, he does not feel that trust.
My husband and I are planning an East Coast college tour for our eldest daughter, a high school junior. This is the girl whose babyhood brought me to my knees, to RIE Parent/Infant Guidance Classes, and finally to my life-changing mentorship with Magda Gerber. This child was my “guinea pig” for the approach to child-rearing that I not only parent with, but also teach, write about, live and breathe.
In spite of my daughter’s accepting, laid-back parents, she is shooting for the moon in her college search. She is self-confident, ambitious and deeply in tune with herself. The conviction she has in her choices, her effortless poise, and her no-nonsense maturity have a way of erasing any doubt in her capabilities. While I am often riddled with self-doubt, I have never doubted her.
What children need to succeed is our undying trust in them. Feeling trusted by parents, who are godlike beings to an infant and toddler (alas, much more mortal in the eyes of a teenager!), gives a child trust in his instincts and belief in himself.
Trusting a child means having faith in his capabilities from the very beginning, and wholeheartedly accepting our child for all he is…and isn’t. And that means allowing our baby to show us what he is learning, rather than the other way around. He doesn’t have to perform to grab our attention or approval. What he chooses to do while he plays is enough. (see this video on self-directed play.)
When we teach or stimulate our baby, he receives the message that his interests, the things he chooses to work on, are unimportant. His parents want him to do something else. He loses self-trust. Infant expert Magda Gerber went so far as to say, “How do adults dare to believe they know what an infant is ready to learn at any particular moment?”
Implicit trust means letting go of our lifelong desire – projected onto our child — to be a tennis ace, a violin virtuoso, or a valedictorian. It means allowing our child to fail, to struggle and flounder, to be (gasp!) average.
It means allowing our child to be a ‘quitter’ when he loses interest in the soccer team, in completing a puzzle, or in learning to tie his shoes. It is valid to quit something when one feels finished with it, and a trusted child knows when he is done, or when he needs a break.
Trusting in a child’s capabilities also means not encouraging him to quit by needlessly helping him. If a child is working on something, we must wait and respect his process. For instance, we should not take him down from the play structure he climbed on his own, but instead give him the opportunity for a successful descent by spotting him, calmly supporting him, allowing him to struggle. Children can be easily tricked into believing they are incapable by a caregiver’s well-intentioned help. Parents can solve a child’s problems in a jiffy, but doing so robs the child of a profitable learning experience.
Children build true self-confidence – not by being showered with praise, but when they have opportunities to solve their own problems and overcome the frustration that often precedes eventual success.
A secure and trusted child is any teacher’s dream. He has the self-confidence to raise his hand and say, “I don’t understand.” He doesn’t crumble when he makes mistakes. He is persistent in his struggle to grasp something challenging. He is his own person – an enthusiastic learner with a unique point of view that he is eager to share. Because he is secure, and likes who he is, he is kind to others. He is never afraid to be himself, a ‘self’ that has been honored and encouraged since he was born. And eventually, he’ll learn to use scissors like the best of them.
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18 Responses to “A Baby Ready For Kindergarten, College, and Life”
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wow… brilliant post. I absolutely wholeheartedly agree. I try to really let my daughter just ‘be’ with the thought that this way she will grow up to be who she wants to be and feel strength in herself. I believe that feeling secure in your family unit and feeling praised for who you are and what you want to do, provides the solid base from which a child grows into a confident adult.
Thanks Alice!
This is a great analysis, and I agree, but I also believe that alot of parents miss the cues from children when they actually need to be pushed. Preschool is not the time to push, and nor is elementary. but children do have to understand on the other side of this arguement, that they are NOT allowed to quit at whatever they choose to quit at. Allowing them to quit soccer is different than allowing them to quit at math because they decide they dont like it.
I recently read Ted Kennedy’s book. It is fascinating in that the mistakes of the parents and their offspring have all been immortalized in American history, but in reading this book, you can also see where Teds fathers absolute sticktoitiveness got the family through so much. The absolute demand not to quit for the sake of quittting.
My own oldest child would have dropped out of high school had I not demanded that he look at the bigger picture and do more for himself. And the reason, I believe, is because I did not express strongly enough my own interest in his education. I was too involved in my career. The upshot was that if I wasnt paying attention he didnt care. And it almost turned a straight A student into a drop out. The lesson for me was that my child did need to be pushed, and I did need to tell him I knew what was best…..
Angela,
Thanks for your insightful and articulate comment!
Yes, of course we must ask children to honor a commitment to go to school! Even preschool requires a commitment – the child can’t just attend when they feel like it – which is one of the reasons it’s so important to choose the right one, and then feel confidence in our choice. The child picks up any ambivalence we might have. Children do not always want to go to school or do homework, and we have to say, “I know you don’t want to go today, (or do your math homework, etc.), but life is sometimes doing things we don’t want to do.”
It’s always interesting, and sometimes illuminating to explore the reason behind the child’s resistance. Sometimes we’ve find out that our children’s feelings have been hurt by a peer or a teacher. Or maybe, as in your case, it is a call for attention. But, once the child begins school I think it’s even more important to trust her to direct her free time, and not coax her to do extra-curricular activities that we choose.
My focus is on the first years of life, because that’s when the relationship of basic trust is formed between the parent and child. A child that feels trusted, and not pushed, gains self-confidence that lasts a lifetime. When I told an acquaintance the other day about my daughter’s ambitions for college, she said, “Great. You don’t have to push her, because she pushes herself. ” I thought to myself, “She pushes herself because we don’t push her.”
Angela, thanks again for sharing your experience.
I really enjoyed this post. My 3 children are all very different and all under 6 right now. Education is key for us, but so is social skills, I fear that in many respects American schools do not focus enough on nurturing social skills from an early age. We are moving from London to Arizona this year and I will be interested to see the US system first hand. However, I think that as parents the best thing we can do for our children is to support them, give them wings and encourage them to fly regardless of where they go to school.
Wow! London to Arizona will be a big change. I haven’t heard about that particular difference in the British and US school systems. Please keep me informed, and…welcome! I hope you like it here in the US. Thanks for commenting!
This is a wonderful, insightful blog post, Janet, that I hope many people see. I agree that we need to allow children to try things out & end when their interest ends – especially when they are young. Learning to attend to task is an important skill for successful learning. I know from my own experiences as a child & as a parent there are times that words of encouragement to stick with something just a little longer is all it takes to allow for mastery of a new skill. The wisdom comes in knowing the signs of whether stopping or continuing a little longer is best – something I am still developing.
Part of that wisdom is awareness of where our child is developmentally and what skills require nurturing. For example, as a musician I have seen many children quit after a year or two of beginning band. Those students quit just when they had developed the skills for making “real” music that impacts us mentally & emotionally. With our daughter, she chose to participate in both band (on clarinet) and orchestra (on cello) rather than our encouraging her to give instruments a try. With clarinet as she initiated this long before it was offered at school, it was encouraging 15 minutes of practicing 5 days a week before she was “hooked”. As she took part in orchestra at her elementary school, we requested she play a full year and try various venues for playing before making a decision to continue.
Again, thank you for sharing your thoughts and allowing us to comment!
JoAnn,
Thanks so much for adding your wisdom! I totally agree with you that in certain situations (especially with music lessons) older children might need our encouragement to “get over the hump” and hang in longer. In those instances we have to wrestle with whether to push or not. Sometimes we have to dig deeper to know why children want to quit. I have never experienced this situation with my 2 daughters, but my 8 year old son recently wanted to quit a soccer team he had been extremely excited about for weeks. We were baffled, but wary of putting any pressure on him to continue since it is a big commitment for someone his age. We wanted him to know we trusted him and we didn’t want to “ruin” soccer for him. We asked all kinds of questions, but got nowhere until my husband had the wonderful instinct to ask if another boy had said something to hurt his feelings. That was exactly what had happened. Then we were able, with the coach’s help, to encourage our son to continue doing what he loves.
JoAnn, thanks again for your comment!
So true. I find at preschool that the motivation behind a lot of parental concern about our play-based curriculum without the more formalised literacy learning and structure is fear. Fear that their children will be behind when they arrive at school on the first day, fear that they are not giving their child the best start in life. Behind that fear is societal pressure (you have to do well, you have to succeed, you have to keep up) as well as a lack of information about how children learn and develop in the early years.
If we as early childhood teachers can articulate the reasons WHY we offer the program that we do and provide parents with the information they need to feel confident that they are doing the best for their child by giving the opportunity to experience a play based early childhood program then we are also giving them the tools to trust in themselves.
Jenny, thanks, very well said! I totally agree. When we lack confidence in our children’s abilities and parent out of fear we project those feelings onto our children, and sometimes create what we fear, a child who not as able as he could be (because parents don’t believe in him!) I see this happening beginning in infancy.
Learning about our child’s true developmental needs is the key to trusting our children and ourselves.
I was chatting with one of the teachers from the 4/5 room at my daughter’s preschool. I asked her what they do differently at that age. She said, we don’t worry about letters or numbers per se in terms of kindergarten readiness. We want our kids to learn listening skills. She said that is what they need for kindergarten. She also said they do teach letters and numbers as well as art, music etc… but the goal in the older class is to get the kids to listen… the other stuff will come easily then.
your thoughts?
I agree that good listening skills are vital. And, unfortunately, exposure to TV, videos, computer games, etc., interferes with the natural development of healthy listening skills (according to Jane Healy in a compelling book that I highly recommend: Endangered Minds). The visuals are so engaging that “listening” is unimportant. The developing mind is trained to NOT listen. So, the ability to listen has a become an issue beginning in Kindergarten for a while now, (and I imagine it’s becoming a bigger and bigger problem) and it sounds like your preschool is trying to help. That sounds positive to me depending on how they plan to do it.
This article speaks so much truth. I can instinctively feel that it is correct. Even watching my son grow, he changes his interests week by week. Not long ago he loved numbers and hated colouring in, now he is the opposite. I am allowing him to follow his interests and finding that he is learning and absorbing so much. With my second child I didn’t encourage him to do anything, even to walk. He has been the master of his destiny and is growing into an incredible intelligent little boy.
My baby just got accepted to Stanford University! Had to share it somewhere!
Slightly off-topic, but: if you’re looking into East Coast colleges, do check out St. Mary’s College of Maryland. It’s a wonderful liberal arts College in a stunning location, and with an excellent student-teacher ratio.
I spend 4 years there, and those were some of the best years of my life. And no, it wasn’t because of the parties
Ah well…I just saw that 1) this post is from March, and 2) that she got into Stanford – great news, congratulations!!
Jan, that sounds great…including the parties. We didn’t look at that school, but I have two more children, so I’m definitely open to hearing your recommendations!
I agree with all this, except I’m not sure that “A secure and trusted child is any teacher’s dream.” The school system is strongly slanted to obedient and conforming children! My kids, who were allowed to learn as they wanted in the early years, chafe at the restriction of school. The older one (age 11) lost much of his love of learning upon starting school. The younger one hasn’t, yet, but he’s only done preschool so far.