Kindergarten readiness

[Sandbox Sally]

This is meant with no disrespect toward the original poster whatsoever, but"

Wow. I never worried about "kindergarten readiness" with my children. To me, that just seems silly. Kindergarten is supposed to be used to prepare children for school, is it not?

Then again, I can imagine that there are some (not so good) parents out there that don't read to their children, or expose them to rudimentary concepts such as letters, shapes and colours.

So is this whole idea of "kindergarten readiness" the result of increasing amounts of parental apathy, or is it just another example of the escalating trend of overparenting?

[Spixie33]

This is meant with no disrespect toward the original poster whatsoever, but"

Wow. I never worried about "kindergarten readiness" with my children. To me, that just seems silly. Kindergarten is supposed to be used to prepare children for school, is it not?

Then again, I can imagine that there are some (not so good) parents out there that don't read to their children, or expose them to rudimentary concepts such as letters, shapes and colours.

So is this whole idea of "kindergarten readiness" the result of increasing amounts of parental apathy, or is it just another example of the escalating trend of overparenting?

I know - seems crazy - right?
As a parent I never thought there was anything I had to do to get my child ready for kindergarten....then I went to the registration and it was asking me 20 questions like
Does your child know how to correctly hold a pencil, can your child close their own zippers, snaps? How far can your child count? Can your child recognize the letter of the alphabet? Does your child know how to use scissors? can you child write one or two of their names?
I was floored.
Sure I did some learning with my kids like counting, ABCs, we read together etc but seeing that questionnaire I felt like a bad parent. I had concentrated on fun and quality time and just being a kid. I didn't know I should be letting them use scissors or teaching them to actually recognize a letter. I thought my child was doing great just being able to write their name, sing the ABCs and count to 10 and knew their colours. But the questionnaire was way more in depth than that.

Then...we went to the meeting for intro to kindergarten where they instructed parents all thing things we needed to do to prepare our child for Sept. teaching them there are words on the page, which way text goes, Being able to cut and paste, write two names, recognize the letters, recognize numbers, etc We were sent home with a bag of learning materials and suggested learning tools to start teaching letter sounds etc at home.

I was overwhelmed. When I started school or my younger siblings started school we went more or less to play, sing and have fun and reading did not start until grade 1 in any fashion but now parents /providers do have more pressure on them to be already 'pre-learning' with kids to get them ready for JK. Now you have JKs coming home with homework and it is totally different than what I remember as a kid

[mlc1982]

This is meant with no disrespect toward the original poster whatsoever, but"

Wow. I never worried about "kindergarten readiness" with my children. To me, that just seems silly. Kindergarten is supposed to be used to prepare children for school, is it not?

Then again, I can imagine that there are some (not so good) parents out there that don't read to their children, or expose them to rudimentary concepts such as letters, shapes and colours.

So is this whole idea of "kindergarten readiness" the result of increasing amounts of parental apathy, or is it just another example of the escalating trend of overparenting?

As the original poster, I totally get what you're saying. It's just that now-a-days, as others have mentioned, things seem to be different.

I don't have kids old enough to go to preschool or kindergarten yet but I hear of kids going to these programs knowing their letters and numbers and how to write and spell. To me it seems like a bit much but also as a day home provider who looks after these young kids, I somewhat feel like it's my job to have them 'ready' for whatever comes their way. I have a girl here now who should be starting kindergarten next September and from what I've heard, she's nowhere near ready for that. She's 4 and can barely hold a pencil properly. I don't think parents are working with their kids as much as they could be these days and if they are, it's in the wrong ways.