What should I teach my daughter before school?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I have a 3.5 year old, so I have to start picking out schools to send her to next September (way too young, IMO :frowning:). And some stuff I read on social media recently has got me thinking. Obviously I read to her, play with her and talk to her. But then I see people online saying parents are supposed to teach their kids to read before school. And another one saying some kids are taught maths by their parents before school, and so it seems easy for them, and they feel confident, and try harder and keep doing better. And I laughed, because no one teaches their kids maths before school… right?

But then I remembered how at university damn near everyone I met said they learned to read before school (I did not). And how I felt like I was behind the other kids when I started school, yet by high school I was ahead. And maths-before-school-guy apparently thinks it’s normal, and he’s more successful than me…

I’m more of a nature over nurture believer, but there’s still room for doubt, and obviously the latter makes some difference. And I think most posters here are the opposite, so I’d like to hear their opinion:

Is teaching reading and simple mathematics before school actually normal for upper middle class people? Or for parents who have successful kids? Is it helpful, unhelpful or a waste of time? Is it actively bad because then my daughter will be bored in school? (My parents did teach me to tell the time, and I still had to sit through all the telling-the-time lessons and fill in innumerable worksheets for something I was already competent in.)

2

My daughter could print her name, address, and phone number before school. She could do simple addition and subtraction, which I explained to her using beans. She could read a few simple books (Max & Ruby). She knew the alphabet and all about sharing.

My son had the same amount of “teaching” at home, but he wasn’t really interested. They were very different people. My daughter was actually hungry to learn, while my son wanted to go outside and play.

3

School is there to teach little children. Don’t give in to the pressure to try to give your preschooler a leg up before she gets there. I’m sure you’re doing the things you should be doing - getting her accustomed to books and reading, making sure she has ample time to play and experience the world around her, giving her healthy food and a regular sleep schedule, limiting screen time - and that’s teaching everything she needs to know before school.

My first child essentially taught herself how to read when she was in preschool, although the point of her preschool was to help her learn and practice social skills. Her little sister did not. They both were reading above grade level by the time they were in third grade, and they were both successful in school.

4

Kids like toys and other activities, but they also like stories, or at least if your kid does why would you deny her or him books and stuff? There does not have to be a master plan involved.

5

My understanding is that nothing is more developmentally important at your daughter’s age than play. Lots of reading is good but kids certainly shouldn’t be expected to read by that age, just make sure you read to her often, but really make sure she gets a lot of play time. It’s not idle time for kids, that is their “job”, it’s how they learn to solve problems and think about the world. Try to give her unsupervised play time too. (in safe places, I know she’s young). Lots of good advice upthread.

6

My parents taught me to read before I started school, and it gave me a tremendous head start. It was junior high before my schoolmates caught up with me.

But I enjoyed reading. My brother struggled. He was in college before he took an interest in literature.

Teach your kids everything you can. It won’t hurt, and might help.

It might also give you an early warning on problems like dyslexia or ADHD, and enable you to avoid trouble later.

7

Teach her how to be polite and make friends. Teach her how to talk to adults. Teach her to be kind and think of others.

8

Teach her the things that it’s hard for a teacher to teach, like taking turns. If she wants to learn to read or to do math (and she might) , you will know and you can teach her at that point.

9

Let your child lead! When you read to her, does she want to understand how to decipher those squiggles you’re looking at? Is she curious about the symbols on the alphabet blocks? Is she enthusiastic when you read stories or sing songs involving numbers? (I can’t think of specific names now, but there was a book we used to read our son about Pooh eating 5 jars of honey one by one, with plastic pots on a rod that you could slide over each time he ate one, showing how many were left; and there is that song about 10[?] bears on a bed that fall off one by one, leaving 9, 8, 7…)

Feed her curiosity and don’t force anything on her if she’s indifferent. She’ll be fine.

A nice thought, but unless parents are experts in early childhood development, or experienced teachers of young children, I doubt they’d be able to diagnose with any degree of accuracy. Completely normal little kids do all kinds of stuff that seems to be a bellwether of dyslexia, but is really just their brains figuring stuff out.

Also, don’t think that early precocity/struggling is destiny. As a little kid, my son was fantastically in love with reading, below average in writing, and slightly good at quantitative skills. By the time he graduated college, he maintained his reading skills but with little interest in literature; was a terrific writer fond of writing opinion pieces for his college paper; and had off-the-charts quantitative skills. So, not precisely what I’d have expected based on what he was like at age 6.

10

I think recognizing your kid’s nature and nurturing it is probably going to be your best bet. Chances are your kid is naturally good at and/or naturally interested in something. What does she like to do? And is there any way to base some kind of learning off of that?

I think it’s unlikely that anyone can nurture a child that age into being developmentally ahead of everyone else. Neglect would absolutely put a kid behind schedule, but I’m very skeptical that you can teach any given 3.5 year old to read. The kid has to be developmentally ready to read. And most kids are not developmentally ready to read until around age six.

You are going to get some skewed responses here probably because a lot of Dopers were early readers. I was too. This is not typical. But it does tend to run in families. It might comfort you to know that precocious reading may signal an interest or skill that will be advanced in the future, but that kid is not always going to outpace their peers at that level. You can have a very good writer who learned to read at three or an equally good writer who learned to read at six. So don’t think if your kid isn’t reading at three they have to abandon their ambitions to be a famous novelist.

I have a 3.5 year old too. My son is both advanced in some areas and significantly delayed in others. We are “nurturing” the hell out of this kid but some things are always going to be a struggle for him.

So yeah, I believe kids have natural limits. I think my kid’s strengths and challenges are both largely the product of genetics. But I try to nurture the raw genetic material. My son’s singular obsession is numbers. He loves learning so I just ran with it. He gets all the number videos on YouTube, I am always buying him things he can count (really doesn’t matter what toy I give him, he will only use it to count or form a number shape.) I bought him a bunch of number fridge magnets. I’ve gotten three buckets of 'em at this point. I guess I was just like, okay, this is his thing, right? Let’s go all in. The other day I just dumped all my cash and coins out on the kitchen table and we went to town learning about money.

He also showed an interest in the planets, so we’ve been learning about the solar system. I got him a space calendar (calendar = numbers), and a book about Earth and the Moon and Mars.

But the important thing is really that’s what he’s interested in and what he wants to learn. I’m just doing my best to parent the kid I got.

11

Preschool teacher here. The details might vary a lot, from place to place. Generally the kinds of ‘school readiness’ things we focus on are whether they can function independently. Fully dress and undress themselves. Find their bag, put something in it. Keep track of their belongings. Pick themselves up if they fall down and aren’t actually injured. Be away from their parents for hours at a time. That kind of thing.

Then group norms, which might also depend on your location, but things like, sit quietly in a group and focus on the teacher, stay and move in line, sit at a table and do an activity, wait their turn, share resources. Understand that they don’t always get to choose what happens next, what book to read, what colour scissors they get. But a little of this goes a long way, imo.

Social skills are another topic, but you seem to be more thinking about the academic side.

Academically, we do numbers from 1-10, or maybe 20, if they are interested. That’s just reciting them, not actual maths. Counting is more complicated than people realise, but we practice that too. The ABC song, and pointing out letters here and there. Being able to read and write their name, but not all children can manage this (also depends on their name!). Most academic things we teach, we teach in context, or as part of their play.

Most of the things they learn at this age are things that adults just take for granted, like some things are bigger than other things, and a bigger bucket holds more sand than a smaller bucket. The order in which you do things can make a difference to the outcome. Water flows downhill. The best way for them to find out how the world works is through play. They figure all that out for themselves, in a way that makes sense to them, which also gives them practice in figuring things out and making sense out of them.

Reading with your child has a lot of benefits, and a lot of them come from discussing the book together. That’s where you can see what they don’t understand, explain a word they don’t know, or help them connect what they read about to their life experience, give them a different perspective on the book, and so on. They don’t actually have to be able to read for you to do this.

12

Read, read, read. Read about numbers and math things. Counting books are plentiful.

And don’t worry til you have to. You’ll know soon enough if she’s having pre-K problems.

13

All things my kid struggles with. Sigh.

Thanks for your insight, though. It’s important to know what the ultimate goals are. My son is currently in ECSE and I have no doubt they are focusing on that stuff. We are trying at home. I’ve been trying for the better part of a year to teach him how to take off his own shirt. Many people meet my kid, and think because of his math skills and verbal skills he’s fine, but they don’t see allllll the adaptive skills he still needs support with, all the things we have to do at home to get him through the day. I was just reminded of them because I had to fill out a survey for insurance purposes and it was basically, “Can your kid do this?” “No.” “How about this?” “Nope.” “Not that either?” It’s always a little jarring.

14

He is only 3, though. So most of those things he would be ‘still learning’. Especially the ‘sit still’ type things.

And obviously, it’s great that you are on top of this, and open to seeing your child as he is, and doing what you can to help him. A lot of the time, parents will not accept that their child might be having difficulties with certain things, especially if they show a strong academic skill. I love that you are encouraging him in his interests, but also supporting him to learn the other skills he needs.

15

It’s the school’s job to teach your child, so, in order to get your money’s worth, you should make sure he learns absolutely nothing beforehand.

16

This. My daughter has a PhD in psychology, and she believes that pushing kids to read before they are ready can make it a chore, not a pleasure. She didn’t read well until she got to second grade, and then took off. Her eldest taught himself before kindergarten because he really wanted to read. Of course both of them got read to.
I went to handling Fun with Dick and Jane with some difficulty to reading complete Jules Verne books in the second half of first grade. When it clicks, it clicks. It is not a race.

17

My daughter teaches childhood music, and to hear her talk (pretty convincingly) music, singing, and body movement at an early age are pretty key for all manner of future development.

Isn’t pretty much everything you do with your kid some manner of “teaching”? I’m not sure I can remember a time that my 3.5 yr old granddaughter did not want to be read to. So why shouldn’t some of the books concern the alphabet, or numbers? And as you move about your house and the world, don’t you discuss everything around you? When jabbering on endlessly to fill the days, don’t you teach the colors, time, directions, etc? I was surprised the other day, when at my sister’s house, she had big US and world maps on the wall (my dad used to work for Rand McNally.). I asked grandkid where we lived, and she pointed right to Chicago on the US map, and generally towards the US on the world map. I’m sure my daughter didn’t drill her on geography, but where is the harm in exposing a pre-schooler to a map?

I guess all of the above can be summed up to encouraging curiosity, and a respect for the obtaining of knowledge (and those who have knowledge.) I am dismayed at the prevalence of people who apparently disdain education and value ignorance and prejudice.

But I think one of the most important things to teach a kid to prepare them for school are to realize that they are NOT always the center of the universe, to wait their turn, to share, to respect others, to behave themselves when in public, to follow instructions, etc. As with puppies, I’m often surprised when parents act as tho there is some minimum age below which they ought not at least expose their kid to societal expectations and obligations. Then they wonder why they have a self-centered teen and don’t know what to do about it…

18

Playing games where you have to count how many spaces to move your game piece helped with learning counting. I remember seeing improvement as it occurred over time.

19

Awesome post–thank you!

I work in K-5, so I don’t have experience with youngers except with my own two.

Kindergarten teachers (at least here in the US) know that many kids enter kindergarten with zero academic skills, so they’re ready to start from the ground up. Everything from “here’s how to open a book” to “did you know that numbers always go in the same order?” to “let’s learn how to hold a crayon.”

Totally! For folks who aren’t clear on why, think about the steps of counting:

  1. Memorize the order of numbers and be able to recite them in the same exact order every time, without repetition or omission.
  2. Identify the group to be counted.
  3. Identify individual members of the group to be counted.
  4. Point at (or touch, or otherwise focus on) one individual member of the group at a time.
  5. Say exactly one number each time you focus on an individual member of the group.
  6. Remember which members you’ve already focused on and which ones you haven’t.
  7. Focus on every member of the group exactly once.
  8. Realize that once you’ve focused on every member exactly once, and said exactly one number each time you focused, in exactly the correct order without omission or repetition, the final number you say is the number of members of the group.

Not exactly intuitive for everyone!

So, it’s not really something I think parents need to freak out about. THAT SAID, kids that get both soft/social skills and some familiarity with academic skills might find kindergarten more fulfilling and might progress faster. Focusing less on the “teaching” and more on the spending time together reading and exploring nature and singing and imagining.

20

I haven’t read the whole thread, but …

A foreign language.

There’s a kind of ‘linguistic plasticity’ in really young kids that fades quite quickly – AIUI, little kids raised in households with polyglots can ‘easily’ achieve fluency in a handful of languages.

IIRC, from my College Linguistics class, that’s really up to about age seven.

If you don’t speak a second language … software … a tutor … videos … something.

Enjoy the ride!