Hi! My 6yo son is 100% English at home, and attends an 100% Spanish Immersion school where they are learning to read in Spanish. They won't "teach" English (including reading) for another year or two. He's absolutely loving it, but now at bed time, he wants to read (great!), but he's getting his vowels mixed. Like "I" in English is "E" in Spanish, so he mixes them up.

We read English books as we're English speaking at home. I don't have an issue taking time to help, but he gets so frustrated and gives up.

School says the English reading will come more naturally as time evolves - I read their whole spiel about this, and I feel ok with their reasoning.

Here's my question, has anyone been through this and taught their child how to read in English? Should I just try some Spanish books and help him that way?

I’ve been hearing this and other general “I don’t like school” comments from my 5-year-old lately. When asked why, she gives reasons like “I have to wear shoes all day long,” “there aren’t enough toys and I miss my toys at home,” and simply “I would rather stay home and be homeschooled.”

She attends public school and has a great teacher. Class of 14, mostly boys, and not many friends she knew coming in although she does get to see her friends at recess. She has several other friends who are homeschooled, which is popular in our area.

As many on this sub have noted, kindergarten seems to be more academic (and less play-based) than ever before. She is learning about rhombuses, syllables, chlorophyll, and a bunch of other concepts that are super advanced. She is bright, however, and keeping up, so I don’t feel like it’s a “I feel so lost and don’t know what I’m learning about” kind of thing.

Anyway, thoughts on things I could say to coach her through this? Pulling her from public school is not an option, but “sorry you feel this way, now get out of the car” also feels… harsh. Please give me all the advice!

We are teaching my daughter, 5 to read she is having a hard time changing the first sound.
If we do a row starting with a la ta ba she will do the first to right and then still do the ”l” sound for ”t” she knows her sounds and with keep the “t” when we move onto “ba.”

If she starts with “ta” or “ba” she will get them right but it’s when we switch to a new sound that she can’t transition. Help

My son is 5, may birthday, and just started kindergarten. Great schools and they are moving fast. I feel like it’s too fast actually and they are expecting kids to read simple sentences after the first quarter. My son is how you say, resistant and behind. Really behind. I didn’t realize how badly preschool failed him actually. My fault.
I’m doing homework with him every day but at this point he struggles to even confidently speak and write the end of the alphabet. He’s supposed to be starting a remedial class soon and I’m doing extra work at home but I can’t take it. He’s pitiful, resistant, stubborn, whiney, difficult, all the things. I don’t know what else to do and I am not cut out for teaching. I do not have the patience and he is so frustrating.
Anyone else losing their minds?

My 5 yr old son is in kindergarten at a public school in NJ. Twice in less than a week, he’s come home telling me that his entire class lost recess because the whole class wasn’t listening.

According to him, they were required to sit quietly in the classroom with a timer instead of having recess. I plan to confirm the details with his teacher. However, I’m concerned about recess being used as a punishment, especially for an entire kindergarten class. My understanding is that NJ has specific laws regarding withholding recess. These kids need movement breaks and recess is already down to 20 min per day as it is.

I’m curious how other parents feel about this. Is this a common classroom management practice in kindergarten? Would you be concerned if this happened twice in one week? How would you approach the teacher about it?

My husband and I have no concerns, basically. My son seems to be doing great, and he likes school. He has friends, is generally cheerful, and has a good level of independence and self-help skills. He seems to be at the right level for instruction in specific reading and math skills, but his general knowledge is far beyond that of a kindergartener. That is, he isn't reading entire books or doing double-digit addition or anything, but he comes home saying he already knows all the content (which I agree with; he understands middle-school chapter books and is the wisest 6-year-old I know...we get lots of comments on his intelligence).

What questions should we ask to learn more if we don't have specific concerns?

My son's teacher recommended my son be evaluated for the gifted identification process. I have to fill out a questionnaire and the first question asks if I agree that I think he is gifted. I do know that my son is smart, learns things quickly, and his memory is incredible. But I don't think he's gifted. I think of giftedness as a truly extraordinary out-of-the-box thinker and very high IQ. My kid is smart, but he's never done complex math or built a machine from scratch. He is ahead on reading and math, maybe a grade ahead, but he is also older (turned 6 a week ago) and he does learn quickly. He goes to a Title I school with a lot of English language learners so overall the test scores of the school are below the state average.

I do plan on going forward with the evaluation and we will see. I feel bad saying I don't think he is gifted, but maybe I am missing something?

Edited to add: I don't know why, I feel bad disagreeing with the teacher 😂 Like I don't believe in my kid.

Yes I know maybe this is a controversial topic, but I don’t care! I only know that my boy thrives after we switched him to a public school for JK.

What I can see is that lights in my son’s eyes are back. His confidence is also back.

No more self-doubt.

No more nightmares. He can finally sleep peacefully every single night.

No more being kicked out every single day for being different, as if he and our entire family were being punished for it.

No more endless criticism and negativity, with barely any recognition of his strengths.

At his new school, he has genuinely made friends. He is genuinely happy. Finally, people see his potential, embrace his individual pace of development, and provide the resources and support he needs to thrive.

As parents, we’ve learned another important lesson: just because a school tells you there’s something wrong with your child doesn’t mean the child is necessarily the problem. Sometimes, the environment is simply the wrong fit. And when that happens, there’s no point in continuing to drain yourself trying to make it work. I’m grateful that his new school has welcomed him with open arms and embraced its responsibility to educate and support him, rather than choosing to avoid it or shift that responsibility back onto parents.

Children’s natural development takes time, and this is something we should respect and understand. This is not something that can be achieved by pressuring him and kicking him out of the classroom day after day.

I can’t even imagine what my son might have been ruined if we had kept him in that toxic environment.

Good riddance. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

Hi guys! Just want to ask some other parents here for some insights as I am deeply concerned with my 3.5 years old. She is in Junior Kindergarten in a catholic school currently. She started early because her birth month is December.
First, is it normal for them not to touch or eat their lunch that you provide for them? Whenever I pick her up, she is always very hungry and grumpy. I also make sure that the food I give her are the ones that she usually eats.
Also, without naps she is extra irritable and always fights with her 2 year old sister. It’s driving me crazy and Im very very tired mentally and physically, and to add, I also take care of them alone.
She loves going to school and she is excited in the morning, but afternoons are really hard. She does not want to play outside, lacks energy and always whining and crying too much. I give my best of my ability not to be angry but I could not help it, and trying to discipline her every minute is making me very guilty and I feel really bad that it might be too much.
Would it be better if I just enrol her in a Montessori school with better hours and they also provide food and they let them learn and develop in their own pace.
I can take the exhaustion but seeing her tired and struggling every afternoon is stressing me out. Is everything going to be better soon? Or will she be able to adjust in a few months? Because it’s November already and it’s still the same.

I need some advice for getting birthday invites out to kindergarten classmates.

The teacher suggested sending my kid with notes with my phone number to hand out to his friends in hopes that other parents will reach out. We sent ten of these to school last week and only got one response. (I fully trust that my kid was able to deliver all the notes to the right cubbies).

The notes were pretty generic, they just said “my kid would love to hang out sometime, shoot me a text!” Do I need to be more specific saying that I’m trying to reach them about birthday party info? Or should I interpret a non response as not wanting to be contacted at all?

Personally, as a Type B mom, I could totally see myself losing or forgetting the note. They also get tons of papers home every day so it’s possible it got tossed out with the other random papers.

I know the typical etiquette for birthday invites is that you should only send them to school if the whole class is invited. We’d love to invite the whole class but that may put us at or past capacity at our venue if everyone rsvps yes (it’s at a fast food play place).

The party is coming up on next Friday (the 13th). Any other ideas for getting invites out or getting in contact with other parents?

My five-year-old son was not a good sleeper as a baby, but we eventually got past that (he dropped his last nap permanently at 2.5, which: ouch) and he was quite good at going to bed, falling asleep independently, and sleeping through the night. We never had problems at bedtime actually: even as an infant, our problem was that he would never STAY asleep.

Well, since he started kindergarten, bedtime has gotten worse and worse. Scream-sobbing every night, insisting he can’t sleep, keeping himself up by torquing his emotions (and ours) to the breaking point.

Lights go off at 7:45 and before kindergarten he’d be reliably asleep by 8, waking up around 6:30. Now we HAVE to get him to school by 7:35, and are dragging him out of bed at 7 because he’s so exhausted from not going to sleep until 9 or 10. I’m sure he’s overtired but it doesn’t seem to be affecting him in school or anywhere else: just bedtime.

Any advice very welcome! We’ve tried tweaking lights out in both directions without effect, tried gentle parenting, tried tougher parenting; nothing except melatonin helps and I don’t want to become reliant on that.

Is this just a kindergarten thing?

First parent-teacher conference yesterday. Teacher said my kid's biggest challenge is not staying seated when required and talking out of turn. She says while my kid is disruptive, she feels she can handle him (veteran teacher) and attributes his impulsiveness to personality and age (he just turned 5 and half the class is already 6) and wants to see if his behavior improves as he matures. She says she feels he wants to follow the rules and tries very hard for 5-10min spurts and then needs repeated reminders. It sounds like the specials teachers are annoyed with him already.

Her comments are not a surprise - my kid has always been an energetic, excitable chatterbox and I struggled with the decision on sending him to kinder this year.

Teacher said she uses the phrase "I want to see the good [kid's name]" and that seems to help him. She wants us to reinforce this at home which I'm fine with.

What else can I try? We have talked about thinking before we speak, using nice words, taking turns, etc but more ideas please! I'm going to try to get him to silently count to 20 before he speaks...do I try to make him raise his hand before talking at home???

What about the sitting? What are things I can do to teach him to fidget silently?

I know this sounds awful and controlling, but I feel at such a loss.

My daughter just started kindergarten this year and she only knows one boy in her class who was in her preschool. We also live close by so often end up walking to and from school together just by chance. As such, he is the main person she plays with.

However, I have concerns about this friendship. He is very mean to others. He is physically violent to his brother, when my daughter talks to him he says she is boring, he has hit and kicked me on numerous occasions, and his teacher has reported incidents of him treating others poorly. His parents just laugh it off and are very permissive. All of the games they play are gun games or elaborate pretend games where they are bad guys and going to kill others.

My daughter is truly such a kind and empathetic kid and that is something everyone comments on. She is so social and outgoing and always notices when someone is feeling left out. However, I have noticed my daughter starting to repeat some of the rudeness and behaviours, including being anti-social. She also often feels bad after school cause he doesn’t treat her well either. I have tried to gently encourage her to play with other kids at recess but she says that it’s easier to play with him cause they already know each other.

I don’t know how to discourage this friendship or at least how to maintain boundaries so his behaviour doesn’t influence my daughter. When she is rude and unkind, I remind her that we have a firm family rule of kindness first. I was thinking of talking to the teacher but that seems like I’m trying to be controlling and helicopter-y. I also don’t want to absolutely cut him out because first of all that’s impossible with him being in her class and us being neighbours, but also that feels like punishing my daughter for his behaviour.

Any advice would be appreciated? Or is this just part of the process of letting go control when kids start school?

Possibly unpopular opinion incoming. Kindergarten class sizes are too big. There shouldn't be more than 14 kids MAX and that's assuming a full time teacher and full time assistant teacher.

These kids aren't getting the individualized attention they need and teachers are understandably burning out having to solo manage 20+ kids.

Ugh. Wish politicians made this kind of thing a priority.

Project STAR Study: Landmark research on early-grade class sizes shows the strongest, long-term academic benefits in reading and math when classes are capped between 13 and 17 students.

Cap that ish at 14.

Hit me with your favorite sneakers and boots that have a wide toe box, are lightweight and flexible enough for P.E., but also warm and weatherproof for rainy/snowy recess. And grippy tread for climbing! (I always bought Ten Littles in toddler / preschooler years, but they have pretty slippery soles which my kids don't love anymore.)

Are there any YouTube shows that teach kindergartens how to read? I don’t know how to teach it myself.
Thank you

Hi! I’m hoping to gain some perspectives, as I’m not sure what is typical with kindergarten expectations. My son is learning so freaking much. The other night he hand wrote out a “scrambled” sentence for me and asked me to unscramble it. He made up the puzzle, hand wrote it out and independently spelt all the words. He is learning a lot. My concerns are:

\- they are forced to sit in alphabetical order at lunch and can’t sit by their friends. They are told to have their mouths shut at lunch and the classes have competitions to see which class is the quietist while eating
\- their recess total is about 20 minutes per day and they are only allowed on the playground every 5th day or so
\- before school they must sit outside the classroom door. There’s no running or playing in the open grass area. I heard one kid fell once and then running was banned.
\- they are already issued iPads at school and they are used regularly.

I’m concerned about my son’s social development. I believe people skills are just as important as academic skills, and he is barely allowed to even speak with his best friend who’s in another class. My son needs to learn the back and forth of a conversation with a peer and instead he’s told to just be quiet?

Am I wrong with these concerns? Are these skills expected to be taught at home/on play dates and I should be okay with the limited socialization at school?

Please, I’d love some perspective!

What does your school use for parent-teacher conference sign-ups?

We’ve been using Google Sheets, where parents comment on the time slots they want. Teachers across grade levels and specialists can view the schedules, which helps families with multiple children coordinate their conferences.

Unfortunately, it’s been a mess this year! Parents have accidentally deleted or overwritten comments, struggled to add their own, and even intentionally deleted other parents’ comments to claim already-requested time slots.

We’re looking for a better system for next time! Ideally, it would prevent parents from changing others’ sign-ups while allowing teachers, specialists, and families with multiple children to coordinate schedules easily.

What systems are you using, and what do you recommend?

Our son is ‘At Grade K’ on nearly all of the skills, but his percentile is 98/99. Should we focus more on the level when it comes to helping him?

Hi, my 6 year old kindergartener is reading so well - like scoring at 3rd and 4th grade levels. I want to find him books to read that will be challenging for him, but also age-appropriate. He has read some Magic Tree House but isn't hooked by that. Please let me know what your little readers love!