by Gary Ezzo & Dr. Robert Bucknam
Synopsis: Who can understand the mind of a preschooler? You can! Know that above all else, a preschooler is a learner. His amazing powers of reasoning and discrimination are awakened through a world of play and imagination. Through home relation-ships, he learns about security, trust, and comfort; through friends he learns to measure himself against a world of peers; and through unconditional love of family, a child establishes his own unique self-hood.
The growth period between ages three and five years is all about learning, and On Becoming Preschoolwise is all about helping parents create the right oppor-tunities and best environment to optimize their child’s learning potential. Now influencing over three million homes world-wide, trusted parenting authors Gary Ezzo and Dr. Robert Bucknam once again bring their collective wisdom, experience, and insight to bear on this critical phase of preschool training. From teaching about the importance of play to learning how to prepare a preschooler for the first day of school, from organizing your child’s week to understanding childhood fears and calming parental anxiety, sound advice and practical application await the reader. You will find this resource as practical as it is informative, curative as much as it is encouraging.
Introduction: Preschoolers are just fun. They know enough about life to enjoy it with enthusiasm and gusto, but not enough to survive very long without supervision. They are an independent lot but would never want to be left home alone. They live on praise and encouragement, but a single stern look could bring them to tears. They can be shy and timid one moment, yet confidently insist “I can do it!” the next. They possess a ferocious appetite for play and order their lives according to the single principle that nothing is too difficult “for me”. Play is their world and play is their tutor taking them to the land of discovery that only ceases each night when they close their eyes in peaceful slumber.
Above all else, preschoolers are learners. Consider the amazing advancements in cognitive thought and physical adeptness achieved during the ages of three to four years. Think about the myriad of activities in which your preschooler can or does participate in right now.
If, by some strange mishap, a four year-old woke up in the morning to a home with no adult to assist him, and assuming he was not overly frightened, he could probably manage his morning activities. He would know where to look for his clothes and could manage to put on a pair of pants, pullover shirt and slip on some socks. While he may not be able to tie his shoes, he can manage Velcro. He could find his way to the kitchen and turn on the lights. If hungry, he would know where to look for bread, cereal, and peanut butter and crackers. It is more likely that a chocolate chip cookie, under such dire conditions, would be top priority on the list of food necessities! Pulling a chair to the counter, he could climb up to claim his favorite cup. While not masterfully, he could manage a butter knife and lift a quart of milk out of the refrigerator, although on the process of pouring it into his cup, he might find equal amounts spilling onto the floor as in the cup. Or he might have already figured out that a juice box would suffice rather nicely. Junior might even venture next door to explain, in a four year-old way, that Mommy was gone. Possibly, he’d shake his weary head and explain, “Hey, it may have been last night’s toilet paper incident that put the woman over the edge.”
While the contextual setting above is very unlikely, and of course everyone realizes that a three or four year-old cannot maintain himself very long without adult supervision; it is a fact that preschoolers have gained some elementary skills basic to their survival that were not present just twelve months earlier. As he moves through the next twenty-four months, he enters a learning phase unlike anything yet experienced.
Through learning of his home relationships, the preschooler comes to know trust, love, comfort, and security in a much more personal way then before. Through learning of friends, he is able to measure himself against a world of peers. Through learning in life, he acquires competency in play, thought, work, and deed. Through learning of unconditional love a child establishes his own unique selfhood. This growth period between ages three and five years is all about learning and On Becoming Preschoolwise is all about helping parents create the right opportunities and best environment in which your preschooler can learn.
Our casual and professional observations of 3 and 4 year-old children draw us to three points of interest. First, as mentioned above there is the matter of the developing imagination. At three years-of-age, make-believe and other imaginative activities begin to occupy an important place in the child’s mental world. Imagination for the preschooler will do what curiosity for the toddler could not. It will carry your child beyond the boundaries of time and space. It can take him to places he has never been before. He can move mountains with his imagination and test his own feelings without fear of reprisal. Through the imaginative process a child gives life to inanimate objects, while assuming a controlling role as chief operator of his own play.
Second, the emergence of the developing conscience opens the child to a world of moral awareness. While the study of the human conscience in preschoolers is less popular than the study of neural wiring or brain plasticity, it is a more important subject matter because the destiny of a child’s life is shaped by it. There are some hard facts about the developing conscience that every parent needs to know, starting with the single truth that parents are the primary architects of the family conscience and that of each child. The home environment is the primary classroom, and parents are the first teachers shaping beliefs and behaviors of right or wrong, good and evil.
The third point of interest is the preparatory phase of getting a preschooler ready for school. Long time friend of the Ezzos and chief architect of their philosophy of education, Robyn Vander Weide brings her many years of experience and insights as a professional educator, teacher, elementary school principle, and author to bare in Chapters Six: Getting Ready for Kindergarten-Now, and Chapter Seven: Developmental Placement: A Key to School Success. All the basics of school readiness are there for you. And what about the daily grind?
In Chapter Five: Structuring Your Preschooler’s Day, Carla Link offers a workable plan and strategy that creates the intellectual ambience necessary to facilitate our three points of interest above. The most effective way to provide continual supervision for a preschooler and at the same time consistently provide a plethora of opportunities for learning is by structuring your child’s day. The nuts and bolts and how-tos are clearly explained in Chapter five. We of course offer some guidelines for preschool correction and comment on topics pertinent to this age-group, from understanding childhood fears to teaching manners and mealtime etiquette; from using positive speech to quieting the wiggles of an active preschooler.
On the technical side of this book, it is our custom to use the masculine references of “he,” “his,” and “him” in most cases. The principles of this book will of course work just as well with raising daughters. Further, we do not claim nor insist that this is all the information you will need to raise a preschooler, or prepare your son or daughter for school. It would take volumes more knowledge than we possess. Therefore, parents guided by their own convictions have the ultimate responsibility to research parenting philosophies available today and make an informed decision as to what is best for the family. Thank you for letting us share in your unique adventure of preschool parenting.
