When to tell

When should we tell our child about our decision regarding school? Sooner is not necessarily better here. Since we know that the processing will take some time, however, waiting until the last minute is not a good idea either.

You do not need to include your child in the conversation about a growing year until your decision has been made. For our family, the decision process about WJ spending an extra year in preschool began in November. In March we made a final decision. But we did not decide to talk to our son until June when school was winding down and children were beginning to talk about going to kindergarten.

If we had begun the conversation earlier it would not have been meaningful at all. Young children are generally incapable of having useful thoughts about things that are not concrete and going to kindergarten would have been a complete abstract at that point. Waiting until there is a natural prompt is a good idea. For us, school was coming to an end and the children naturally were beginning to wonder about what would happen next. Because our son had no real idea about what kindergarten was or where it was, hearing the news that he was going to be spending another year in his classroom with his beloved teachers was received with welcome ears.

Don’t let these natural windows of opportunity pass by and then spring the news on your child at the last minute. If we had been silent during these conversations near the end of the school year and throughout the summer, which was full of kindergarten references made by well-meaning friends and others who knew that WJ was soon to turn five, we would have been in an awkward place now. First, we would have essentially been lying to him in our omission. And we would have risked his settling into the idea of going on to the next grade and then been a position of denying him something he was looking forward to.

The news of a growing year is likely to be more troubling to you than it is to your child, especially if your child is very young, but your child does need time to process. If the news is met with disappointment, then time will allow for some changing of heart. If the news is too abstract to be completely understood, then time will allow for the child to build a concept and to comprehend the situation.

Not too soon. Not too late. Really, the end of the school year prior is an ideal time to begin to talk about your plans for the coming year.

What to say

As an educator, I have found myself sitting across the table from worried parents asking for advice about how to explain difficult decisions to their children. What should we tell him? How much should we say? What if she asks…? What if he wants to know…? I know that these conversations worry adults. I have helped other parents work through a plan for communicating with children about a wide range of difficult topics.

I felt, therefore, relatively prepared to have a nonchalant and factual conversation with our son about our decision for him to wait to go to kindergarten. I knew, of course, and my instinct here is being confirmed over and over again, that this initial conversation would not be the moment of realization for our child. Children tend not to be ready for processing the information we have decided to present to them as we put down our forks and clear our throats at the dinner table or as we smooth the sheets across them and sit nervously on the edge of their beds. Their minds are already busy doing other things. When we finish giving our talks and ask if the children have any questions, they do. They want to know if there is dance class tomorrow. Or why bats stay up all night. The real questions will come later. The initial conversation is really just the planting of the seed.

Nevertheless, if a family is making a decision about a child’s education that seems to go against the grain, one needs to begin the conversation somewhere and sometime.  My next several posts will include a series of tips for talking with your child about a growing year.