Is Your Child Emotionally Ready for Kindergarten? How to Know + What to Do (Week 19)

This week, we will have a social-emotional check-in, where I invite you to self-assess your child's social-emotional readiness for kindergarten.

I'm going to give you a few tips on how to chart your path based on your self-assessment and make some progress in that area.

Why emotional and social skills matter more than academics in kindergarten

Much of your child's readiness for kindergarten has nothing to do with academics. After all, we send them to school to learn academics. Instead, it is mostly just being able to navigate through their school day emotionally and socially. Fine motor skills are obviously important in this regard, but social-emotional skills are of critical importance when assessing whether your child is ready for kindergarten.

I invite you to review some of the objectives we've covered so far under the category of social-emotional readiness.

How to tell if your child is emotionally ready for kindergarten

Consider the types of things your child will need to be prepared for in kindergarten, and evaluate their current level of readiness to identify areas where they might benefit from additional focus.

Pay attention to things like:

• Do they transition easily from one place to another or from one task to another?
• Do they interact confidently and reasonably well for their age with their peers or is there any sort of anxiety over that? Is there any difficulty navigating social issues with other children?
• Do they have maybe too much anxiety when separating from you if they're dropped off somewhere with grandma or at a play date?

These are some of the areas that you want to look at and really ask yourself some honest questions about whether or not you think your child is ready for kindergarten or is approaching readiness. Whether you think that they're on track to be confident in these social-emotional areas when it's time for them to go to kindergarten, or not yet.

Pick 1–3 social-emotional skills to focus on first

Don't get overwhelmed by the variety of social-emotional skills. What you may want to do is pick three things, maximum. Three areas or specific points that you think could benefit from some additional work or additional assistance. And if you don't have three big ones, that's even better; one or two focus areas will be perfect.

The more you're focused on a shortlist of 1-3 at most, the more likely you are to have success in making progress in those areas and not overwhelming either yourself or your child. Once you have your list of social-emotional items that you think your child could benefit from some more progress in before they go off to kindergarten, then it's time to make a plan to approach those.

Prioritize social-emotional practice over academics (If needed)

Because of the importance of the social-emotional learning area to kindergarten readiness, if you need additional time to work on these three things on your list, feel free to back off on some of the other (more academic) activities that we have going on in the Ready for Kindergarten And Beyond preschool curriculum, because they will, after all, tackle these things in kindergarten as well.

How to prepare your child for kindergarten socially and emotionally

1. Choose the activities for social-emotional development in the curriculum

One way to address the shortlisted skills that need improvement is to revisit activities that focus on these areas from this course. Review the objectives from the previous 18 weeks of the curriculum.

You've got your top one, two, or three things.

Go back and revisit some of the activities that address those issues in this course, or find time to explore ones that you didn't have a chance to cover before.

2. Find trusted resources that match your parenting style

Another great thing to do is to look online or at the library for parenting books that also address this topic. This falls under the category of seeking help, and you want to ensure that the sources and experts you consult align with your parenting philosophy. It's only going to cause more problems and angst if you're taking advice and getting help from experts who don't align with your philosophy on how you want to raise your child.

Make sure the expert’s views align with what you believe is the best approach to parenting, discipline, and things of that nature.

3. Create a kindergarten-like environment at home

Another effective way to address a significant amount of social-emotional learning in one setting is to create a kindergarten-like environment on a slightly more informal level.

You might consider joining a mom's stay-out group, a playgroup, or another kind of interactive experience. You could start with a “mommy and me” class, where your children can interact with other children, with a teacher or instructor they're supposed to listen to, but where you're still present.

And then you may work up to a playgroup that's more of a drop-off experience, where you drop them off there to play for a short amount of time. So you really assess where your child is at. They can gain a great deal from environments where they have the opportunity to be in a new location, have some structure, participate in activities, follow directions from a teacher they need to pay attention to, and interact with other children.

And that will really help to replicate this kindergarten-like structure on a more informal and approachable level. And they can get a lot of the skills that they're going to need worked in that way.

If nothing else, it will give you a more easily accessible environment to really observe your child. Perhaps this is a helpful tool for diagnosing your child's kindergarten readiness in general. 

Why starting emotional prep early makes a big difference

Once you have made your plan to work on one or two social-emotional areas, feel free to skip other activities. Especially if your preschooler is starting kindergarten soon, you want to make sure to give that extra time and attention it needs to be ready, even at the expense of some of the more academic subjects.

Remember that small and incremental practice in this is really the best route. It's why you want to start tackling these issues early, so that you have plenty of time. Your child is far less likely to backtrack or to regress if they're making small steps in incremental progress on these things than if they're making giant leaps forward.

So even though you might have a very first play date drop-off that goes fantastic, and there are no issues, that doesn't mean it's going to be fantastic every time for your child. They may need that experience many times over the course of a few months of having some play dates that go fantastic. And then there are others where they're really not ready for you to leave them. And that's why it's essential to start early and allow them to take their time with it. 

Should you delay kindergarten? Pros, cons, and timing tips

And speaking of time, sometimes that's all you need to do. Sometimes, this is simply a readiness and maturity issue, and it is something that time will resolve on its own. That's often the best route to take if you have the luxury of doing that.

If you sense that your child is having a lot of anxiety over leaving you, or there's another social-emotional objective that they really are struggling with, for example, getting along with other children. And you don't feel like the readiness is there, and you have questions about whether they'll be ready in time? If you have the luxury of delaying kindergarten, you may sometimes be given the option of an early start date or a start date six months later; consider this. Consider continuing to work on academics at home and just let time take its course.

Give them lots of exposure to the playground, playing with other kids and being with them and directing their attention in the appropriate places and a lot of guidance and a lot of support on whatever those issues are that they need to work on and let nature take its course and let them develop that maturity in time to be ready to go to kindergarten.

Consider your options, perhaps homeschooling kindergarten could suit your family

It might also be a potentially viable option for your family to consider home education for kindergarten and send them to first grade instead. That might be something you want to consider as well. There are lots of different options. However, if you have a specific date for kindergarten and you really need them to be ready to start on that date, then I would go ahead and complete the self-assessment. Pick your top three things, at most, that you want to focus on and create a plan to devote extra time to those things.

However, also consider giving your child the benefit of a little more time to develop the maturity and be ready for kindergarten on the social-emotional level that is so critical to their success. To be able to go and feel at ease, confident, and then focus on the academic subjects at kindergarten.

So I hope this gives you some food for thought for this week, and we'll see you back next week.