Successfully Starting School
Episode 41
Common Challenges and Solutions For Children Starting School
Navigating schools
- Children who have been in preschool can have smoother transition because they have practice learning how to self regulate
- Will need to share attention with a large number of students
- Teacher’s perception of students can have a significant effect on child
- Social emotional learning important for school
- Can gain many skills from playing outside
- Give them practice waiting turn ex. when rolling ball, can wait a few extra seconds before passing back
- Give children unstructured play time
- Cooperative board games offer many benefits
Navigating schools
- Many parents have had traumatic prior school experiences and that can impact interactions
- Understand power structure the school
- Many teachers not trained in interacting with parents
- Parents should keep in mind that teachers are people and is important to be respectful and let them know they are appreciated
- Parent participation critical to student success
- Many different ways for parents to participate
- Talk to principal and teacher and see if you can volunteer
- Go in with open curiosity
- Don’t be afraid to speak up for the things you need
- David Souza “How the Brain Learns.”
- Something has to have sense and meaning for student learning to stick
- Toddlers are motivated to learn, but during school years changes to “will it be on the test.”
- Find out what they are learning about in school and see if there are activities you can do at home to make it more relevant to their lives
- Learning for the sake of learning
- Hard to develop at school because other people are telling them what to learn
- Most powerful thing you can do is to listen to what they are curious and connect them to resources that can help them find answers
- You do not need to be an expert on the topic they are interested in
- do not minimize feelings
- Teach strategies to overcome problems
- Check in with teachers to see what insight they have about your child
- Children benefit from working through issues if possible
- Your Parenting MoJo podcast
- Course on helping your child to transition to school. http://yourparentingmojo.com/courses/Discount for Preschool and Beyond listeners with code PAB
