School Readiness: How to Help Your Young Kids Get Ready to Learn

School readiness for our 5-7 year olds is a big deal. Your baby is just starting out on a 12+ year adventure into formal schooling, and there’s no way to know what’s going to go well and what is going to be a struggle.

While many researchers agree that social and emotional readiness should be your main focus during this time, we find that a solid cognitive skill foundation is also absolutely critical for your child’s success.

You wouldn’t send your child into school without a backpack, pencils, and paper, so why would you want them to try to learn without the brain skills that make it possible?

Understanding Cognitive Skill Milestones

Along with fine or gross motor skills, communication skills, and social/emotional skills, understanding your child’s cognitive skill milestones can help you identify any skill weaknesses early on.

For younger kids who haven’t started to read or do work independently, it can be a little harder to find these early “red flags” that signal something is off. But some areas to pay attention to are:

• Can your child understand cause and effect?
• Are they able to plan and organize?
• Can they add new information to previously learned knowledge?
• Do they form and express opinions?
• Can they sit still and focus despite distractions going on around them?
• Are they asking good questions and seeking to understand the world around them?

Cognitive skills develop much like a house under construction. A strong foundation is critical to the integrity and success of the entire structure.

Kids grow and mature at a wide range of “normal” rates. But if you’re noticing some problems in any of these areas, it’s the best time to help them catch up before it gets to far away from them.

Will My Child Outgrow Cognitive Skill Weaknesses?

Research shows that kids don’t typically grow out of cognitive skill weaknesses. Instead, the longer you wait, the more that skill causes problems for learning and life skills.

For example, if your child has low working memory and logic & reasoning skills as a 5 year old, if that weakness is not addressed at age 5-6, by the time they hit 3rd grade they may present as having ADHD or other more significant learning struggles.

Addressing these skills early is really the best thing for your child’s brain and future schooling!

When Do School Struggles Start?

When your child is just starting out in school, teachers are more likely to excuse signs of cognitive skill issues because of their age, emotional maturity, or other factors. Learning disabilities typically aren’t diagnosed until kids have been in school for 3 years, but in a majority of cases, parents suspect much earlier. 

For many families, schools tend to let problems linger in the name of letting your child learn and grow. But just because the school isn’t taking action doesn’t mean you can’t!

You don’t have to let your child suffer through 3 years of school before official accommodations begin. Then beyond that, you don’t have to let “accommodations” become your family’s normal. These are not going to address the root cause of learning struggles. By supporting your young kids’ cognitive skills, you give them the tools they need to learn successfully from day 1.

Build a Solid School Readiness Foundation for Successful Learning

Cognitive skills are the foundation of learning. They are the gears that determine what happens to information that goes into your child’s brain: whether it’s filed away for easy retrieval later or lost in the shuffle. For all learners, cognitive ability should be a key point of determining school readiness.

Supporting skills like attention, processing speed, and logic & reasoning is critical for our young kids so they can become successful, engaged learners from day 1! You can prevent years of struggle by allowing your child to grow in these skills in a way that will make learning easier.

Our LiftOff program is designed for kids who are just starting out on their school journey, usually ages 5-7. This program lays the foundation for:

• Easier sound decoding
• Earlier reading fluency
• Math and number awareness
• Logic & reasoning strengthening
• Visualization strategies and visual processing
• Increasing processing speed
• And more!

Contact us today to learn more about this incredible opportunity to allow your child an easy and successful transition to school!