Mistakes To Avoid With Your Pre-Kindergartner

Parenting a pre-kindergarten age child can sometimes be challenging. You can often spend your time wondering if what you are doing with him or her is the right or wrong thing. To help ensure you and your child are on the right track, here are some parenting mistakes you can avoid.

Avoid Going Overboard With Getting Ready for School

As a parent, you want your child to be prepared to take on the challenges of starting pre-kindergarten. If your idea of getting him or her ready is forcing your child to spend hours each day drilling over the alphabet and numbers, you are off-base.

Although academics are important, your child's social and emotional development are most important right now. He or she also needs to work on skills and traits that will come in handy later, such as creativity. 

At this stage, you can still teach your child about the ABCs and numbers, but do it in a fun way that fosters the development of other traits and skills. You can also teach your child various concepts through play. 

For instance, you can use play-dough to not only teach colors, but also letters and numbers. You can have your child imitate creating numbers and letters out of the play-dough. Another activity is that you can take your child to the playground and let him or her enjoy unstructured play with other children. Your child can learn how to interact with others and also how to use his or her imagination.

Do Not Solve All of Your Child's Problems

When your child comes to you with a problem, it can sometimes be easier to just solve it for him or her. Unfortunately, this can interfere with your child's ability to develop problem-solving skills. 

Instead of automatically offering a solution to your child's problem, talk through it with him or her. For instance, if your child is expressing frustration about his or her relationship with a playmate, ask your child to detail the problem and then walk through the possible solutions. Encourage your child to offer input. 

You can even rely on examples from other sources that your child might be familiar with to help find solutions. For instance, you can refer to a problem a character faced on your child's favorite television show and relate it back to your child's issue. 

Helping your child to grow into an independent and well-balanced person can be challenging, but it is entirely possible. Talk to professionals, such as your child's pre-kindergarten program teacher, to find other mistakes to avoid with your child.