Parenting is the most important job for which we receive the least amount of training. I remember the morning after the birth of our son – we both slowly woke up, looked at each other questioning: “What do we do now?” Up to that point all our focus was to get through what seemed like the most challenging part – giving birth. Quickly we realized the magnitude of responsibility we were entrusted as parents: our child’s first and most significant teachers laying the foundation for lifelong success during the first six years.

We tested many parenting experiments on our children as we tried to understand what best to do. What was becoming clearer was that our son and then daughter, like all children, had their unique characteristics, routines, likes and dislikes and our job as parents was to recognize them and support their individual and significant capacity for learning and growing.

From research, we now know that during the years from birth to age six children develop the essential language and cognitive skills required to learn reading and arithmetic. They also develop the ability to manage their emotions, to handle stress and to cooperate with others. It is during this critical period that the base is built not only in five areas essential to do well at school but also for life long learning. These five areas of important basic development before children enter school are:

1. Physical well-being and appropriate motor skills
This term includes the ability to move freely, having adequate levels of energy to complete tasks and physical coordination to be able to learn to write.

2. Emotional health and a positive approach to new experiences
Children will require self-confidence to deal with many emotions from fear of failure to acting without thinking. The child will have to learn to find a middle route – encourage curiosity about the world, eagerness to try new things but also the ability to access risk before proceeding.

3. Social knowledge and competence
Children need to learn general standards of acceptable behaviour in a public place, the ability to control one’s own behaviour, the ability to cooperate with others, appropriate respect for adult authority and the skill to communicate feelings and wants in socially acceptable ways.

4. Language skills
By school entry, a child should understand adult’s and other children’s verbal communication and be able to describe experiences, ideas, wishes, and feelings in a way that can be understood by others.
This requires:

5. General knowledge and cognitive skills
Knowing that a story has a beginning, middle and an end, an understanding that language can be used symbolically to represent remote imaginary events or objects is important for reading readiness. Cognitive skills refer to the ways a child can perceive, organize, and analyze information provided by their social and physical environments.

A quote that summarizes my own experience and the latest research in early child development: “There are two lasting bequests we can give our children. One is roots. The other is wings.” - Hodding Carter, Jr.

(Source: Gillian Doherty: Zero to Six: The Basis for School Readiness)