More Ways to Prepare Your Child for Kindergarten - a Parent-Teacher's View in Hindsight

In Getting Ready For Kindergarten, we learn a lot of nice tips about how to prepare our child for the exciting first day of kindergarten. As a jittery parent sending my first child off to school, I did all those things and more, hoping to send my son off with every possible factor to his advantage. Yet, there are still a few things I wish I had done to better prepare him for the realities of school!

1. Prepare for routine - I am a teacher myself, but somehow I balk at anything that requires routine. I didn't send my son to preschool, instead teaching him through enriching experiences. We spent days at the aquarium, art museums, the zoo, the botanical garden, the library, the park. Of course, as you can imagine, my son was in for a shock when he realized that school was every day, that there was a certain amount of routine involved, and that, to do well, you needed to be a well-oiled cog in the machine! I felt a pang of guilt as the first week passed with his comments of school being a little boring. Did I ruin him with overstimulation during his early years? Silly, I know, but there may be a little truth to that.

So prepare your child for the routine. Maybe a semester or two of quality preschool is a good idea, if for no other reason than to expose your child to school routines and procedures. I may just do that the second time around.

2. Prepare for discipline - Okay, I really messed up there. I am not a good disciplinarian by any stretch of the imagination. My kids are reasonably well-behaved and very friendly, but I have a higher threshold for let-kids-be-kids behavior than is wise for the parent of a kindergartner. Despite many talks about good and proper school behavior, my son was terrified by the green-yellow-red card discipline technique that seems to be very popular among elementary school teachers across the country. The day he received his first yellow card for talking or making noises or something, he bawled to no end when he told me and I, of course, bawled too. I felt incredibly guilty. Why hadn't I used the incentive charts at home to reinforce good behavior? He would've been used to the occasional lapse and wouldn't have cried his heart out in front of his classmates. He still complains about this card business every night before going to sleep. Could I talk to the teacher, he asks. Sorry, that's another thing about school - you adapt to your teacher's expectations and, as a teacher, I get that, but, as a parent, it's hard!.

So prepare for discipline by using those little incentive charts and getting your child used to taking it well when he or she slips up now and then.

3. Prepare for the early morning rush - Since my son didn't go to preschool, we savored the mornings in our pajamas, playing and watching Dora or Thomas. I never made getting ready early a priority and we usually had a hard time even getting to our 9:30 gym class on time! I should have known that the morning routine would be hard one for him. So far, every day has been a struggle to get him out the door to meet the 7:25 bus! (too early, but that's another story!) He's happy once he gets to the busstop, but the half hour prior to this is not pleasant! No way to start the day!

So prepare for the morning rush by starting early getting your child used to getting dressed and cleaned up first thing in the morning. No lounging around in pajamas, at least not during the months prior to kindergarten!

4. Prepare for doing your best even when you aren't motivated - Let's face it, there is such a wide array of ability levels among any group of kindergartners that the curriculum has to teach to the average. That means that for many of the students, a lot of the work will be rather unchallenging. I wish I hadn't used so much advanced material with my son at home - puzzles for older kids, chapter books at bedtime instead of simple fairytales, complex mazes and card games - I sometimes wonder if, by exposing him too early to those things, I didn't make it more difficult to do well coloring pictures that start with the letter B. I don't know - you can argue this both ways, but somehow you have to convince your child to do their best on whatever is put before them, whether it is simple or complex, fun or boring. I'll keep on exposing my kids to what seems to interest and suit them, but I need to find a way to make them understand that all work needs to be done well, whether you like the activity or not. A good future job skill too!

So prepare your child for some small degree of boredom with parts of the curriculum. Try a little age-appropriate workbook activity at home each day to prepare your child for the many worksheets they will do. Do simple things like coloring, cutting, and pasting. Praise excellence for completing work neatly and for following directions - important skills for kindergarten. There are lots of fun things happening in kindergarten too, so they just have to get used to the balance of fun and routine.

So those are the tips I offer in hindsight. Kindergarten has been a great experience overall and my son really does enjoy it. He loves the doing learning centers, going outside, making new friends, singing with his fun music teacher - he's adapting well and has even gotten more used to trying to stay on "green" to receive his Friday reward. I wish I had tried that technique!

Those teachers know what they're doing - no matter what the child's background, elementary teachers have a remarkable ability to mold these fantastic little balls of energy into genuine, school-loving kindergartners. So don't stress too much, parents! No matter how you think you did or didn't do to prepare your child for the big day, things will work out and you'll be amazed by the transformation in just a few weeks' time!