Leading Your Child to Christ
Raising children to follow Christ requires your faith and trust in the Lord’s plan. Keep reading to learn how to promote your children’s spiritual growth.
Know when your child is ready for kindergarten and how to ease their fears
Estimated reading time: 10 minutes
Your child may express fear about going to kindergarten. While some children are excited and make the transition to kindergarten with amazing ease, others feel uneasy.
It is natural for students to wonder, “Will I make friends? Will I get lost?”
If your child expresses fears, listen, and then state back to him what you believe he is feeling. This will let your child know you understand, and he can trust you with his feelings. Try to boost his confidence by remaining positive yourself. Continue to talk about his apprehensions and fear about going to kindergarten as they arise.
Most kindergarten teachers plan special activities involving parents and children for the first week of school. Try to attend these events. They offer the perfect opportunity for your child to feel comfortable in his new setting, meet his classmates, and get to know his teacher.
Something else you can do to alleviate his fear about going to kindergarten is to read books together about kindergarten.
Assessing your child’s readiness for kindergarten can be tricky. Let’s face it: It is difficult to be objective about your own child. You may want to ask the opinion of other adults who have spent time with him. Ultimately, however, the decision rests with you, the parent.
One of the best ways to decide whether your child is ready is to think about his strengths and weaknesses. The following list contains behaviors that are potential barriers to learning. If items on this list apply to your child, however, don’t despair. Each child is an individual, so the profile of one child will be very different from another — even within the same family. Your child’s teacher has the background to diagnose such behaviors and the training to help each child learn and grow.
Whether to send your child to kindergarten now or wait until next year is not an easy decision, especially if he exhibits fear about going to kindergarten or many of the behaviors listed above. To help you make the best possible decision, talk to his preschool teacher, caregiver, or pediatrician. Consult beforehand with his new teacher and discuss his social and emotional maturity, unique personality, needs, strengths, and areas of concern as well as the school’s programs, expectations, and services. Consider how you, your child, and the school will work together.
Even though it is not your child’s decision to make, get a sense of how he feels about starting school. A child who throws a tantrum at the thought of school may well need an additional year rich in interaction with others before starting kindergarten.
Consider the big picture: If you have nagging doubts about your child’s ability to handle kindergarten, it may well be best to give him the gift of an additional year. During that time, make sure he has lots of play dates, story hours at the public library, an additional year in (or first exposure to) preschool, and plenty of opportunities to interact with a variety of children in a variety of situations.
There are so many enjoyable ways you can support your kindergartner as he acquires these new skills! You are, after all, his most important teacher.
Here are suggestions:
First and foremost, however, read to and with your child and have him read to you. Reading is the essential foundation upon which all other skills are built.
By the time children complete kindergarten, they should know the parts of a book and their functions. They should begin to distinguish various forms and purposes of print, from personal letters and signs to storybooks.
Children come to kindergarten with a variety of experiences, and the teacher accepts each child at his unique stage of development and helps him develop the essential building blocks of literacy so he will be successful in first grade.
One way to calm your child’s fear about going to kindergarten is to help him be reading ready.
Exposure to many different kinds of books will increase your child’s language skills. For example:
The best time for reading to and with your child, or for having him read to you, is when he is rested and content. A quiet environment will keep distractions to a minimum. Have him sit close to you so he can see the book. If he is wiggly, try reading to him while he is in the bathtub. Remember that he may want to hear a favorite book over and over again. He will begin to memorize the story, and that’s a stepping stone in the process of learning to read.
Remember, too, that he may well want to read to you, even before he can technically do so. Encourage this behavior, because telling the story while pointing to the pictures is an important pre-reading skill.
Avid readers acquire their love of reading at home, from their parents. No teacher can pass along a passion for books the way a loving parent can. Children remember cozy bedtime stories, sharing books with friends and siblings, and the freedom and encouragement to read lots of different kinds of books.
There are so many enjoyable activities you can do together to help grow his literacy skills:
Additional tips to help your child be comfortable with reading are:
Whether a child expresses fear about going to kindergarten or not, even before they enter school, most children take the first steps toward experimenting with print. Here’s how you can support your child’s earliest attempts at writing:
When your child seems ready for more complex tasks, encourage him to print his name beginning with a capital letter and using lowercase letters for the rest. Help him to memorize his address and phone number, his birthday, the days of the week, and months of the year. These skills represent major steps in learning language. Celebrate his progress.
Remember that praise for even small improvements in any of these areas reinforces his willingness to try harder. As he sees what he is learning to do, his confidence will grow and fears about going to kindergarten will ease.