Who needs preschool? July 14, 2008

Does your child need to go to preschool before kindergarten?  Does every child need to go?  What do kids need to learn before kindergarten, anyway?

I think preschool is great, but it isn’t necessary for everyone.  If you are raising your child at home, and you’re reading to her, talking to her, playing with her, taking her interesting places, counting with her, doing art with her, and getting her together with other children regularly, then your child is probably fine skipping preschool and going straight to kindergarten when she’s five.

Here are some skills that will help your child be successful in K:

• speak in sentences
• recognize name
• write name (at least a few letters)
• count to 30 without mistakes
• count 10 objects accurately
• identify basic colors and shapes
• recognize at least 10 letters of the alphabet
• know at least 4 letter sounds
• draw a recognizable picture of something
• listen to a story attentively
• follow two-step directions
• know how to solve problems (he took my crayon, I forgot my lunch box, I can’t find my cubby, etc)
• be able to play cooperatively with other children

A child can get those things at home, or she can get them at preschool.  It depends on the parents and what they are able to give.  So if you’re a stay-at-home mom and you don’t want to send your child to preschool, then don’t.

If you’re a work-outside-the-home mom and your child goes to daycare, no worries.  As long as you’ve chosen a high-quality daycare center, your child will do very well.  My sons went to a wonderful Montessori daycare center, and they arrived at kindergarten way ahead academically.  Your child will pick up what she needs in the preschool room, and will be ready for K emotionally, socially, and academically.

As for universal preschool, I do think we need it.  Not to make all children go, but to provide it to the children who need it most, who otherwise will arrive at kindergarten already far, far behind.  Preschool is critical for those children. 

Some of them are my students, and it feels like an honor to be their teacher.

Talking to small children July 8, 2008

I am back from a long vacation, the first part of which was spent at the beach with my husband’s family, and the second part of which was in a big city with my sister and her family. 

I had the opportunity first to observe my sister-in-law talking with my one-year-old niece, and then later my sister talking with my one-year-old nephew, and it occurred to me again how lucky most middle- and upper-middle class children are, to be born into families where their parents just naturally talk to them. 

My niece doesn’t have a lot of words yet, but she is very expressive, and can usually make known her wishes and dislikes and feelings.  Her parents talk to her all day long, and they listen to her, too.  She hears a ton of vocabulary, and because she is treated as a person who can understand, eventually, she does understand.  Her older sister was counting to twenty accurately in both English and Spanish before she turned three, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the little one turns out to be just as smart.

My nephew is a few months older, and has more words, although this past weekend I had a conversation with him that mostly consisted of him pointing at various things and saying “eee, eee, eee” in many different intonations.  He clearly knew what he was talking about, even if I didn’t, and I enjoyed his confidence in communication.  One night at dinner he didn’t want to eat, so my sister and brother-in-law told him, “no dinner, no dessert.”  They had a little parental discussion about whether or not he understood this concept, and decided that while he understood many other “if, then” scenarios, he hadn’t figured out this one.  But they decided to stick to it anyway, since he will eventually understand this rule through experience. 

My younger son took it on himself to teach his little cousin new words, and succeeded.  He taught him silly words (“boopdee”) and useful words (“cookie”), and my nephew probably ended up adding 6 words to his vocabulary over the weekend.  He even said “airplane” for the first time (“eee-peen!”).

I kept thinking about my darling O., from this past year’s class, who arrived in November at the age of four with an almost shocking delay in his speaking ability.  He’s got a mother who loves him very much, and who is very attentive, positive, and caring in her interactions with him.  However, she is living in poverty (when he started in my class, he was being bused from the homeless shelter), she has two other little ones at home, and she has a whole family of older children who live in Chicago.  I would wager a guess that she did not grow up with college-educated parents, and that no one talked to her a whole lot when she was little, so she doesn’t talk a whole lot with O. and his siblings.

O. learned a lot of vocabulary and conversational skills over the year, but to me it never felt like enough.  I keep thinking about the Meaningful Differences study (which I wrote about here), and how vast the vocabulary gap is between children who grow up in poverty, and children who grow up in either working-class or professional families.

The question is, how do we get the word out to the parents in poverty, about how to talk to their children in the first five years of their lives?

What parents do May 30, 2008

I mentioned M. once before — it was her birthday and I forgot to check the calendar, and missed it.  And she is so non-verbal most of the time that she never mentioned it. 

M. is one of my special ed children, with developmental delays, speech difficulties, and possibly some sensory stuff going on.  Lately she seems to be worse than ever.  The special ed teacher, sp. ed. assistant teacher, and my assistant teacher and I have all noticed that she seems to be going backward.  This is unusual — I take pride in the fact that my special ed children thrive in my classroom and make huge strides.  Two of my students this year are moving into regular ed for kindergarten next year.  But somehow with M. we are not making progress.  Today we were doing insect math and she was unable to recognize the numbers 1, 2, and 3.  She could count to five, but if she counted to three and I asked, “what comes next?” she had no idea.

One problem is that maybe her needs are so great that my classroom is just too overstimulating for her.  My classroom might not be the right place for her at all.  Next year for K she’ll be in a small classroom with all developmentally-delayed children, and it should be perfect for her. 

The title of this post, though, is “what parents do,” and I wonder just what M.’s parents are doing for her.  Her parents are very young, and both M. and her baby brother were very premature.  Ali has been to the apartment and says that there have been many police calls there in the past year for drug dealing and other problems.  M.’s mom hasn’t come to any of her IEP meetings or her transition meeting, and she still hasn’t even registered her for kindergarten.  Usually when we call her the phone is disconnected, and when we send out the social worker, nobody answers the bell.

How would M.’s life be different if her parents were different?  If her mom had been able to carry her full-term?  If her parents talked to her more?  If they gave in to her less?  (M. cries a lot as her main method of problem-solving.  We are guessing that it gets her what she wants when she’s at home.)

Then I look at Miss L., who is perhaps our biggest challenge this year.  Miss. L.’s parents are older, college-educated professionals with financial stability.  They have an incredibly hard road to go down with their youngest, for whom every day is a struggle.  I cannot imagine what she’d be like if she had parents without resources, without parenting skills.

And I wonder what M. would be like if she DID.