An early childhood educator told me this story a week or so ago: parents wanted to enter their four-year-old into kindergarten before he was old enough to make the school district cutoff. To get him in, he had to pass some tests. But the child was rejected because he failed to walk up a set of stairs using alternating steps. Even the educator was puzzled. What does being able to walk up stairs using alternating feet have to do with kindergarten success?

Being ready for kindergarten has less to do with academic knowledge and more to do with maturity. While being able to go up and down stairs efficiently doesn’t indicate directly future school success, large muscle coordination is a handy indicator of overall development. Children who are “ready” for kindergarten are children whose bodies and brains have matured to a point where children can manage themselves in school. Self-management is more important than alphabet skills.

So kindergarten entrance assessments focus less on literacy and math and more on physical and emotional control. If your child will be starting kindergarten this fall, it’s not too late to encourage more growth in those areas. Here’s how:

1. Large muscle coordination. Get your child out and running around every day. Show your child how to skip and practice hopping on one foot, walking on a string, and jumping from stepping stone to stepping stone.
2. Fine muscle skill. Find excuses to practice drawing and writing letters. Use lined paper and show your child how to sit letters and numerals on the line. Make sure your child can recognize and write her own name. Practice turning pages in a book, manipulating small objects, and using scissors.
3. Following directions. The ability to listen and understand and then to do is a complicated skill that is at the heart of school success. Make a game of giving each other complex directions and executing them correctly.
4. Thinking through problems. Not everything is always clear. Help your child to learn to make educated guesses, to estimate time and number accurately, and to anticipate what might happen next in a particular situation. Avoid being ready with an answer to every question. Instead, at least sometimes answer a question with a question: “Hmm. What do you think?”
5. Persistence and conscientiousness. Doing “a good job” requires seeing a task through to the end and doing it well. Support your child’s desire to do well by setting her tasks that are challenging without being too difficult and by helping her to admire her own success.
6. Getting along. Kindergarten children must be able to wait their turn, share scarce materials, and be helpful to each other. They need to know how to avoid conflict and how to resolve conflict without fighting or tears. Make sure your child has opportunities to interact with other children and to grow in his ability to get along.

Every parent wants her child to have a happy kindergarten experience. Some parents think that being a reader is an indicator of kindergarten success. While early reading certainly is nice, it’s not all that important. Far more important is being mentally and physically ready for school.

© 2013, Patricia Nan Anderson. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Ask for Dr. Anderson’s new book, Developmentally Appropriate Parenting, at your favorite bookstore.

You know there are kids who learn to read on their own, even before kindergarten. How can you make that happen for your child? What’s the trick?

Here’s what we know about spontaneous reading: kids who learn to read on their own are not smarter than other kids; they have not been taught to read;  and their parents do not spend any money on fancy programs or classes.

This means that any child – including your child – might be able to teach himself to read before kindergarten without any special effort on your part. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have anything to do. Here are five easy steps to follow.

1. Making reading what your family does. If the adults in your household are “not readers” then you’ve got to change that. Kids do what their parents do, and reading is not just a “school skill.” So let your kids see you reading. Read to them at every opportunity during the day – just reading at bedtime is not enough. And always have books on hand. Get a library card. Making reading what your family does.
2. Talk with your child. The more words your child hears and the more words your child uses when she talks, the easier it will be for her to learn to read on her own. The biggest difference between kids who do well in kindergarten and kids who don’t is the number of words they know. The more you and your child talk together – about anything and everything – the bigger her vocabulary and the readier she’ll be to read.
3. Talk about words and letters. Notice signs for Target and McDonald’s and see if your child can “read” them. Point out the first letter of his name and hunt for that letter in other places. Read ABC books and let your child learn the alphabet. Point out interesting words in the books you read together. The idea that written words represent spoken words is an idea your child will pick up if you help to make the connection.
4. Play with letter sounds and words every day. Make a game thinking of things that start with the letter B or the letter S or whatever. Make a game thinking of words that rhyme. Play with language when you’re riding in the car or waiting for the bus or sitting in a restaurant waiting for your food. Start to build a reading vocabulary with the signs you see every day like “bus stop” and “no parking” and “stop.”
5. Let your child read in bed. Every child I’ve ever known who taught himself to read was allowed to take books to bed and had a reading light or flashlight to read by. In the quiet time before sleep, children repeat to themselves the stories they love and start to make the connection between the print on the page and the words in their heads. Kids who love reading read in bed.

Do these things and your child will either learn to read before kindergarten or will be ready to learn to read in kindergarten. You will be giving your child the best chance of loving to read.

But there is one thing you must not do:

Do not “teach” your child to read. The moment you make learning to read your project reading is no longer your child’s discovery. Reading becomes something to feel anxious about and something to fail. Don’t get flashcards. Don’t buy workbooks. Don’t sit down to teach. None of that. Don’t compare your child with the child next door, since every child will follow her own path.

Just strew that path with words and books. Make it easy to figure out how to unlock the code. Then step back and see what happens.