High Maintenance Mom

We had our parent-teacher conference with B's teachers today and I once again left thinking about how preschool development applied to adult interactions. When B started at GeoKids it was difficult to see how the Reggio Amelia (play-based) program was going to help our child when he entered school. Both the Pocket Physicist and I could be described as academic so I was fine with a play based program for the first few years but I wasn't sure how the program would compare with the local pre-K "academic" programs. Now that he's in preschool, I'm starting to get it...

B's teachers are helping him develop more tools for interacting with others. Listening to his teachers talk about preschool development was fascinating. They are spending the entire year working on social-emotional skills. Previously, I would have been unhappy to hear that they weren't focusing on letters or some big art project. But it turns out that he is picking up the cognitive skills on his own and educators are beginning to realize that social skills are also very important. So it was exciting to hear that he's in an environment where everyone in his class is receiving some sort of social guidance.

I don't want to portray the program as an etiquette class, because it's not, but it is teaching key social skills that I wish I had learned earlier. For example, we were told that B currently has one tool for entering play. He walks up to a group of kids and says, "Can I play with you?". This method used to work but he is now faced with many situations where the other kids say, "no". His teachers are helping him (and others) watch what their friends are doing and then come up with an alternative way to enter the play. He actually has one other tool, the walk up and roar loudly at others method, but that one really doesn't work.

It makes me think of all sorts of social and work situations from being on the playground to parties in college and conferences as an adult. I don't remember being taught tools for social situations but I know there are lots of us out here who could benefit from some of these basic skills. I guess that's why so much money was made on those "everything I needed to know I learned in kindergarten" posters.

Previous articles on GeoKids or development include.

• Early literacy - comments on the GeoKids workshop last night
• Letting kids play