Why Understanding Your Preschooler’s Cognitive Skills Can Make School More Successful
Getting your child ready for kindergarten is a big deal. Your baby is about to start 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.
From all the social and emotional changes this transition requires to the academic challenges of starting school, there are lots of resources available to help you get your child ready. But as you complete your checklists, don’t overlook laying a solid cognitive skill foundation for your child.
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.
Ultimately, cognitive skills allow a child to understand the relationship between ideas and cause and effect and develop high-level thinking and analytical skills. They allow a child to turn information over in their brain, add new information to previously stored information, form opinions, reason and make sense of their world.
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, and if they are seeming delayed at a preschool or kindergarten age, it’s the best time to help them catch up.
Will My Child Outgrow Cognitive Skill Weaknesses?
Research shows that kids don’t necessarily grow out of these challenges. 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?
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. Many preschools and kindergarten classrooms will evaluate your child for all the various milestones and suggest early intervention where appropriate.
However, in the realm of cognitive differences, schools tend to let the problem linger in the name of letting your child mature and grow.
Just because the school isn’t doing anything to help your kid doesn’t mean there’s nothing YOU can do to be proactive!
Instead of letting your child suffer through 3 years of school before official accommodations begin (which also do not address the root cause of learning struggles but are just designed to get your kid through), building a solid learning foundation by supporting your child’s cognitive skills is critical!
Build a Solid 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.
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!
Whether your child is ahead of the curve, right on average, or lagging behind, laying a solid cognitive foundation can prevent YEARS of future stress and struggle related to their school experience.
We have a dedicated LiftOff program designed for kids who are just starting out on their school journey, usually age 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!
