The 6 Biggest Parent Worries About Kindergarten Milestones

Whether you’re waking up in the middle of the night or just feeling on edge, worries can eat at you - especially when you’re facing big new steps, like having your child start out in the world of "real" school.

Kids are usually pretty good at sharing their worries, such as where the bathroom is, what cubbies are for, and if the teacher is nice. Teachers and schools expect all these fears, and in fact spend the first few weeks of school addressing them. But just because your kid has conquered rookie jitters doesn’t mean you may not have some Major League anxieties of your own. After all, you’ve had decades of life experience, and plenty of information about what could go wrong. But parents have been worried over the same kindergarten questions for years. Here to help are some asnwers to six questions teachers hear a lot.

Reading: It’s November, and some kids are already reading. Is my child hopelessly behind?

Debra Redlo Wing, 30 year veteran teacher from Guilderland Central School District in upstate New York and coauthor of Welcome to Kindergarten: a Month by Month Guide for Teaching and Learning, has advice for you. “No parent,” she says, “should be nervous about reading in November!” While it is true that with today’s academic preschools, some children arrive in kindergarten already reading, teachers don’t require or even expect it.  In the early months of kindergarten, they will want kids to practice writing their own name, identify letters and start to match them to sounds, and especially to develop “concepts of print” like the fact that we read from left to right on a page and from front to back in a book, and that every spoken word has a written version, too. With today’s precocious readers, teachers worry about “reading robots”— kids who can “read” but don’t really understand, and who fall behind later.

What should you do? Go ahead and have fun with all the letters and sounds, practice writing names, and most of all, enjoy those books! Read aloud, as often as possible. Savor the pictures, and talk, talk, talk. "Who is that character?" "What is she feeling?" "What do you think will happen next?" Independent reading is just around the corner for your child—what you’re doing now is ensuring that the encounter will be richly satisfying both now and for years to come.

Writing: My kid writes b for d and d for b all the time. Is this dyslexia?

Lots and lots of kindergarteners—and first graders—do this, and don’t be surprised if they mix p and q or write a backward s or two while they’re at it. That’s because in kindergarten they are just coming into the fine motor skills they need, as well as the visual and perceptual skills, to form consistent letters. Mixups are all part of the experimental process.

Is this dyslexia? Most likely not. According to Linda Selvin, Executive Director of the New York branch of the International Dyslexia Association, dyslexia is a “brain-based learning disability in which people have difficulty associating sounds with letters.” While some dyslexic people may reverse letters—even into adulthood—the real signs of the disorder are much broader. “I would look further [with professional experts]” explains longtime expert Eileen Marzola, PhD., Past Board President of the International Dyslexia Association and a practicing reading specialist, if, after a year of appropriate instruction, a child can’t do most or all of the following: