Holding Kids Back
As my son gets closer to kindergarten and preschool, I think about all the things he needs to be learning and read about some of the issues in early childhood education so that I can school myself on what’s ahead and what experts say we should be doing.
A recent New York Times story and the comments that go with it caught my eye.
It is headlined “The Littlest Redshirts Sit Out Kindergarten,” and at last check, it had generated more than 200 comments. Obviously, it’s an issue people are passionate about.
I will link to the story and the comments at the bottom of this blog post, so you can check them out yourself.
The basics of the story are that more and more parents are deciding to stop their age-eligible students from entering kindergarten, opting instead for an extra year of preschool.
The reasons parents give in the story vary, from the parent thinking the student will do better later in school if they are a little older and not the youngest of their peers, that the student is not mature enough to handle a full day of class work that many kindergartens provide, that the parents don’t want their child to be the youngest in their class, and others.
My son will be one of the youngest in his class if he goes to kindergarten at 5 years old because his birthday falls in the summer. That is a little concerning, especially since kindergarten is much different than it was when I attended it nearly 30 years ago. It’s not all recess, games, table activities, learning the alphabet, beginning reading, story time, and the like.
If you look at the Kansas standards for kindergarten, you’ll find that students are expected to recognize upper and lower case letters, punctuation like periods and question marks, recognize one-syllable words and sound out others, make predictions about a story, and those are just a few thing they’ll learn in reading. There are also standards in writing, math, social studies and other subjects that are more rigorous than they were when I was a child.
Still, children are like sponges and can learn very quickly, so I think holding back a child just because of age or because he will be the youngest in class is an arbitrary reason. Similarly, sending a child to school because it’s time – he’s the right age – also seems arbitrary.
There are things parents can do and look for to determine if their children are ready to start school.
- Pay attention to your child. How long does he sit and focus on one task? A couple of minutes? 20 minutes? What types of things does he choose to spend time doing? If you give him one-, two-, or three-step directions, is he able to follow them? How does he interact with other children? Can he share? Take a turn? Even if his favorite thing isn’t counting or reading, for example, will he do it with you or as part of a game, at least for a short time? Does he try to do things himself and not give up in frustration? And how long does he try something new before giving up? If you notice things like this, you’ll be able to draw conclusions about how well he will do in an educational setting and talk over his strengths and weaknesses with his teachers.
- Take advantage of experts available to you. In my school district, there are early childhood screenings for children age 3 to 5, and those are good places to find out how your child is doing in meeting developmentally appropriate benchmarks in areas like motor skills, problem-solving, language, etc., as well as to get hearing and vision screenings. There are also places that will screen your child even before age 3 if you suspect there is a problem. Contacting a school district or pediatrician in your area would be one way to find resources for this.
- Talk to your child about school, what it will be like and what he thinks and feels about it. That way you can involve him in preparing for school, which for a lot of kids, is something they look forward to, especially if they have older siblings or acquaintances who talk about school and their friends from school. And you can help work through fears about learning new things or not knowing how to do something. A child’s attitudes about school, taken with other factors, can be an additional way to determine if he is ready for school.
These are my suggestions, so if you want a more comprehensive checklist, an early childhood professional is probably your best bet.
Making a decision based on the attitudes and behaviors of the child on whether he or she is ready for school is a better option than holding a child back or starting a child to school because of age.
Links
New York Times: The Littlest Redshirts Sit Out Kindergarten
Comments to the New York Times story
Some of my earlier posts on early childhood education:
Investment in Early Childhood Education
Subscribe to the comments for this postA New Tweet Collection
So it’s time to come back to an occasional feature I’ve started. I sometimes look through my Twitter feed for funny tweets related to parenting. Just search the hashtag #parenting or #toddler, and you’ll find a treasure trove of experiences you can relate to or that give you a chuckle.
These have been collected over the last week or so. Here is my latest Tweet collection:
@dudetodad: My daughter’s “no” and “nooooo” are hard to distinguish, but one means “yes.” #thingsididntlearnincollege
@kpellegr: first law of parenting: if you give a child a box of toys, it will play with the box… not with the toys #parenting
@jodyharvey: Trying to figure when I will be able to run today. I may end up having to run at 10PM #parenting #running
@aliciaedison: She’s growing up so fast, just yesterday she was my little girl and today she’s getting married to a prince. #parenting #kids #imagination
@Loa4Kids: Before I got married I had 6 theories about bringing up children; now I have 6 children & no theories.~John Wilmont #parenting #kids
@kurtgraser: @kathrynhawkins it’s funny how no one ever mentions that you won’t sleep for two years after having a child…. #Parenting
@kathrynhawkins: Study says new parents lose 6 months worth of sleep in first 2 years. Can I have it back please? http://ow.ly/2tDsE #parenting
@jtimberman: Me: “Why do we always put the seat down?” Son(4): “For the ladies! So they don’t fall in!” #parenting #fb
@MamaJoules: frustrated mother – dreams of warm sandy beaches – not soggy diapers #sigh #parenting #haiku
@Ihavemarfan: Olivia is now in “I DO” stage. Makes everything take twice as long! Good and bad. #sahd #parenting @fb
@DogwoodGirl: Up there in phrases dreaded by parents: “Mama, can you help me wipe?” #Parenting #TheGlamorousLife
@textmessagebaby: “The truth is that parents are not really interested in justice. They just want quiet.” ~@BillCosby #parenting
@thefootballwife: Y’all my #toddler just climbed out of her crib FOUR times & is refusing to nap. Is my life over? #parenting
@MommysPen: 3YO named her dolly “Doggy-poop” and her stuffed dog “Cat-poop.”. #icouldntmakethisupifitried
You can check out my last two Tweet collections here and here.
Yes, the Cost of Child Care is High
The National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies recently released the 2010 update called “Parents and The High Cost of Child Care.”
It affirms for parents something we already know, that child care is expensive. The report found the average cost parents paid for full-time care for a 4-year-old child in a center ranged from more than $4,050 in Mississippi to more than $13,150 a year in Massachusetts. And if you have two children in child care at one time, you’re going to end up spending more per month than you would on home or apartment rent and many times even more than a monthly house payment.
In Kansas, the picture is not as bad as in some states, but child care still is a huge portion of a budget if you have younger-than-school-age children.
To put the cost in perspective, the report found that in 40 states, the cost of sending an infant to center-based daycare for a year was more than the tuition and fees for a year at a four-year public college.
Costs reported in the NACCRRA study for Kansas include $5,955 per year for an infant in family child care or $8,579 per year for an infant in a child care center; $5,340 per year for a 4-year-old in family child care and $6,880 per year for a 4-year-old in a child care center; $3,135 per year for a school-age child in family child care and $4,343 per year for a school-age child in a child care center.
That means for a single mother making the Kansas median income of $24,586 per year, child care for an infant in a child care center costs about 35 percent of her income, or 28 percent if the child is 4 years old. For a two-parent family making the state median income of $74,236, child care in a center for an infant takes about 12 percent of their income and 9 percent for a 4-year-old. These costs put Kansas in about the middle of the pack among the states.
This cost is one reason why, when having children, parents agonize over whether or not one will stay home with their children or both will continue working.
I don’t know about other parents, but I don’t object to paying what I do for child care. I mean, the person I’m paying is with my child 40 to 45 hours a week, a big chunk of his waking hours, and is teaching him a ton, from how to act around other children to colors, numbers and alphabet. My husband and I also teach these things, but it’s possible that the daycare provider will see the first step or the first slide down the slide or hear the first recitation of the alphabet song and more.
At the same time, the high cost does make things more difficult for families of all types. Child care is just one of those things parents don’t have much control over — you need quality care so you find it and pay for it, or you stay at home with your child. Things are much more complicated if you can’t find or afford quality care.
Check out the report to see how Kansas compares to other states in cost, and to see what recommendations the NACCRRA makes to help make child care more affordable.
Woohoo, The Pressure is Off
I wrote a while back about how my husband and I are being asked when we’re going to have another child.
The answer: Maybe, maybe not. Some days we are in favor, and some days we are not. So, we’ll see.
But at least we don’t have to worry about scarring our only (that is, only child) for life, if we choose to keep him as an only rather than turning him into a sibling.
The pressure is off, because USA Today reports on research that finds being an only chid won’t hurt social skills. At least that’s something, right?
So now we can take our time deciding to have another or have an only.
ADHD and Youngest Children
Across the Twitterverse, people are linking to this story in today’s USA Today.
It’s about a couple of studies be being published in the Journal of Health Economics.
The studies say nearly 1 million children may have been misdiagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, known as ADHD, because they’re the youngest kids in their kindergarten classes.
According to the article:
Kids who are the youngest in their grades are 60% more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD than the oldest children, according to a study out today from Michigan State University, given exclusively to USA TODAY. A second study, by researchers at North Carolina State University and elsewhere, came to similar conclusions.
About 4.5 million children have been diagnosed with ADHD, according to the studies.
Misdiagnosing children can have long-lasting effects, says assistant professor of economics Todd Elder, author of the Michigan State study. In fifth and eighth grade, the youngest kids in a class were more than twice as likely to use Ritalin, a stimulant commonly prescribed for ADHD, compared with the oldest students, his study says.
While many parents say Ritalin has helped their kids, it also can have significant side effects, causing headaches, dizziness and even high blood pressure, according to the paper from North Carolina State.
I have a very active child, not yet kindergarten age, who will be the youngest or the oldest, depending on when we decide to send him to kindergarten.
The last thing I want to happen is for him to not be ready for the challenges of kindergarten and therefore run the risk of being labeled in some way, but at the same time, I don’t want to hold him back needlessly.
While these reports are scary, I think I will stick to the strategy I had in mind before hearing about this study.
It is this: We’ll be paying close attention to how he does in preschool next year to determine whether he’ll be ready for kindergarten at age 5. It may be somewhat of a guessing game, but I am confident that our observation, instinct and knowledge will lead us to the right decision.