T’was The Month Before Kindergarten: Supporting Children with Big Transitions and Big Behaviors

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T’was The Month Before Kindergarten: Supporting Children with Big Transitions and Big Behaviors

“…Over the next few years I started to see, every year around summertime, pre-kindergarten children just...got like that. The calmest, most predictable children would have moments of pure unadulterated push-back against their care-takers and friends, strange bouts of anxiety before school or during drop-off, or sometimes they’d have accidents again after being toilet-learned for years. I started to call this phenomenon kindergarten feelings…”

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Practice, Not Magic: Cleaning Up (Part Two)

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Practice, Not Magic: Cleaning Up (Part Two)

Practice, Not Magic is a series of posts about the practical aspects of living alongside young children.

…To a child under the age of about 6, stopping mid-game really can feel like it’s the end of that  play experience forever. Our goal as the adult, beyond just getting the space cleaned up and facilitating a transition, is to support the child to move from a mental place of scarcity (“I must do this now because I will never have what I want again”) to one of trust (“I know my ideas and my things are safe in my family/classroom and will be available again”)…

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Practice, Not Magic: Cleaning Up (Part One)

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Practice, Not Magic: Cleaning Up (Part One)

Practice, Not Magic is a series of posts about the practical aspects of living alongside young children. Focusing on one vignette, we can parse out the developmental from the situational and how to think through common dilemmas faced by parents, teachers, cool aunts, and chosen family, et al.

Children’s resistance to cleaning up can be about a few things. Here will will consider one possible problem and reflective solution….

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