Kindergarten is a big year. For some children, it could be their first time going to school. For others, it could be a big transition from half day preschool to full day kindergarten, sometimes even at a bigger school. With all of these changes, children soak in each new experience and begin to grow and develop at extensive rates. Sometimes these advances happen so quickly, it is hard to keep track of each accomplishment.
After home, children spend a lot of their formative years in school. Teachers are among the first significant influencers in their lives after parents. It is very important that the two biggest influencers – parents and teachers – interact regularly. Healthy parent-teacher engagement is absolutely essential for the growth of a child. Communication between parents and teachers should take place smoothly and effortless.
The stage between toddlers and school aged children is what we like to call the “preschool years”. These imperative years are marked by vast growth and development for the child. It is during this time when most children begin to get a sense of who they are as an individual, separate from their parents or care takers.
It is always exciting to learn about what’s coming next. In development, learning about areas of study such as milestones can help us get a good feel for what we can expect in terms of future behavior. For children, developmental milestones help organize and categorize behaviors so that those behaviors can be monitored and recorded for future reference.
Many parents that I speak with often tell me how much child development knowledge they lacked during their child’s first few years. At that time, most parents are too busy simply adapting to their new life style caring for a human other than themselves. This process takes time, as we all know, but what a lot of parents don’t know is the unrealistic expectations that are too commonly being put on these children at extremely young ages.