🎓 Skills Your Child Will Develop

• 🏫 School Readiness — Activities that practice school-like expectations — sitting at a table, listening to instructions, transitioning between activities — directly prepare children for the structure of a kindergarten day.
• 🤝 Social Competence — The ability to join a group, initiate friendship, negotiate conflicts, and cooperate toward a shared goal are the social skills that determine whether kindergarten is a joyful or miserable experience.
• 🌈 Growth Mindset — Children who enter kindergarten believing that effort leads to improvement approach the inevitable challenges of learning new skills with the persistence that makes challenges productive rather than threatening.
• 😌 Emotional Self-Regulation — Learning to handle frustration, excitement, disappointment, and transitions without adult intervention is the kindergarten readiness skill that teachers consistently identify as most important — and hardest to teach quickly.

Parents with preschoolers entering kindergarten have some adjustments to make. If a parent struggles with their preschooler as they develop and grow more independent, their preschooler may sense this and struggle with the change as well. Here are three tips to make it through the transition. Understanding your preschooler's development, allowing the preschooler learning opportunities and finding additional adult support systems for themselves allow parents to make it through the kindergarten transition smoothly.

1. Understand child development. Parents need to know what a typical preschooler is capable of doing. Understanding the stages of development in general is helpful. Parents may find a particularly trying stage less difficult if they realize the behavior is typical of a preschooler.

If a parent feels they need to learn about typical child development, they have several places to seek knowledge. A good place to start is the preschooler's pediatrician or physician. Most health care providers should be providing developmental information at each well child check. Other places to seek information are the local public health department, early childhood education programs or simply the local library.

2. Accept that growing up is a messy business. Allow your preschooler the opportunity to learn the skills they will need in school. Now is the time to take a deep breath and allow your child to do "it" themselves. "It" might be dressing themselves, feeding themselves, or washing and drying their own hands.

Yes, activities will take longer and may need additional clean up, but your preschooler will benefit from the process. The best way to learn is to do. Preschoolers that are given the opportunity to be independent will have a much easier time in kindergarten. Be patient.

3. Give yourself a break, letting go is hard. It is okay to be a little sad when your preschooler moves on to kindergarten. Seek the support of other parents whose children have already started school. Parents may need a bit of support and understanding every bit as much as the preschooler. Talk about your feelings to work through them.

Sometimes talking to another adult is all that is needed. If you find yourself becoming excessively sad or irritable, consider talking to a professional counselor to work through these feelings. Remember your preschooler needs you right now and will continue to need you as they progress through school.

Practicing these three ideas will make it easier for parents to make it through that tough time when preschoolers spread their wings and enter kindergarten to fly a little. With a little effort, the transition from preschool to kindergarten will happen with few difficulties.