So Long Sippy Cups: Transitions to Support Development

Development and growth in children is a remarkable thing. Unlike adults, where we usually have to want to change in order to “grow”, our children are changing and growing all the time. Childhood is a period of constant growth, change and adaptation. Teachers and parents are often surprised by the growth that can occur seemingly overnight. Unfortunately, the certainty of growth doesn’t always mean it is easy. In fact some things are actually quite a lot of work: think back to how hard it was for them to master walking. And, while it may seem that our facilitation isn’t needed, loving adults helping guide, teach and support a child as they conquer these automatic, but not always simple acts of growth helps create resilient, confident children that are willing to try new things.

Along the developmental road to adulthood there are critical moments when a simple change in the way we parent can ease the burden of learning on our children, or even give them a leg up. While there are lots of examples of this, for today I am going to focus on speech and language development. Speech is an area where we may not even realize that our feeding choices have an impact on how smoothly our child will develop the muscles needed for good oral motor development. For example, when a child is still suckling on a bottle or a pacifier, they are using their tongue and muscles in a different way than they will need to use it when they start eating solid foods and drinking from cups and straws. Interestingly, making the transition to a cup or straw and cup not only helps develop oral motor skills needed for adult eating habits, but it also helps strengthen the muscles and mouth movements needed to make ALL the sounds we use in language. That is why there is a distinct “baby talk” you hear in young children that are still using bottles vs. older children that have firmly moved on to cups and solid food. Here is an article that highlights this transitioning to Straw Cups for good oral motor/speech development.

This is an example of a simple change we do in our parenting that gives our children a leg up in their oral motor development. Changing your child’s cup or allowing them to self-feed, or giving them the extra time it takes for them to dress themselves may be mildly inconvenient at times (feeding themselves can be disastrously messy, sippy cups don’t spill, and you can certainly dress your child faster), however, these are small changes you can make that pay large dividends in helping your child grow. The trick is finding the optimal time to make these transitions. You can always check online to find information about developmental milestones and what typical development might look like (e.g., this site for oral motor development). Keep in mind, however, that each child’s growth is unique and your pediatrician and teachers can often help guide you to what might be right for your child specifically.

Don't Create Battles you Can't Win

Children have very little control of their life in their earliest years. Starting around 2, they are desperate to expand their autonomy, to learn new skills, and to become less and less dependent on others for getting things done! You will see this when your child says “I do it”, or cries loudly to do something just after you finished doing it for them, or suddenly does something on their own that you didn’t realize they could do (or perhaps you didn’t want them to).

However, there are a few things they (or their bodies) are the boss of from birth, and I highly recommend avoiding power struggles in these areas. They control, if they eat, if they poop/pee, and if they sleep. You can put them to bed, but you can’t make them sleep. You can sit them on the potty, but you can’t make them poop. You can offer them food, but you can’t make them eat. These are battles you will loose. And if children sense you are putting a lot of attention in these areas, these are places they will challenge you, and they will win!

You’re going to have many parenting challenges/battles in these early years. Your child should lose most of them—I always joke that the joy of arguing with a preschooler is that I usually win. However, a successful strategy for not losing an argument with a preschooler is to not fight the battles you can’t win. If a child wants to gain a sense of or assert their independence from you and they sense you are trying to regulate one of these three areas, that they have control over, they will get into a power struggle with you and they will win. When this happens, it can undo any forward progress you made in these areas. Healthy eating can unravel with stealthy stolen treats, potty accidents can become a sign of resistance, and sleep battles can rage through the night (or, sigh, early morning).

For these three areas: eating, sleeping and bathroom, acknowledge and accept that your child is the boss of these things. Give them the tools they need for success in these areas, tell them what your expectations are for them, and then let them feel in control. Giving them control of these areas, means fewer power struggles, and gives your child the assurance that you know they will be successful, these things aren’t hard, you know they will figure them out.

Despite not being able to control the final acts in this area, you have a great amount of influence to help them be successful. You pick which foods they have on offer in the house, even if you can’t force them to put the carrot in their mouth, you can offer it. You can ask them to sit on the potty or stop buying diapers, even if we can’t make them ultimately go on the potty on demand, you can create a routine and time to head to the bedroom even if we can’t make them sleep. You can set the expectation and give them the supplies for success! Just try to avoid the battles you can’t win!

What's the hurry?

You may have noticed an article from The Atlantic about why all boys should be redshirted, i.e., held back a year or given an extra year of preschool so they enter elementary school older.

This practice is not new. Even before we began pushing academic curriculum meant for 6 and 7 year-olds into our kindergarten classrooms, parents of children with summer and early Fall birthdays considered giving their child “the gift of time” by delaying their entry into Kindergarten until they were 6. While parents were making these same choices a generation ago, several things have changed in education that I think make considering this gift of time even more relevant today.

(1) Kindergarten looks more and more like 1st grade now. Especially as Kindergartens and PK classrooms get attached to elementary schools, the curriculum/schedule/routines AND expectations for behavior get pushed down into these earlier grades. There is more structure, less play, and academic demands often meant for children with more developed motor control. On good example of typical development not meeting demands of the classroom is reading. The binocular vision required for reading is developed between the ages of 5-8…imagine the stress of the 6 year old being asked to read smaller and smaller text. What we often see are frustrated children that are unable to move from the lower reading levels until the enter 2nd or 3rd grade. We’re lucky if they aren’t already frustrated, bored, or suffering from low self-esteem by the time they begin to take off on the skill. This same things occurs with other classroom skills that develop in our early elementary years (such as attention, inhibition, executive functioning).

(2) We know more about development of the brain and body now. The developmental arc is much wider in the preschool years. Typical developmental spans are broader, and skills, particularly motor skills, build on each other in a way that makes rushing them sub-optimal. We also know that these early years are when we learn how we learn! Giving your child a chance to try new things, make lots of mistakes, take their time, doing all those things in a low-risk environment like preschool, gives the child and the parents more time to learn what elementary schools will be best fits for the child moving forward. Once they enter elementary school, the demands of what they need to learn move much faster. It’s much harder to recognize learning differences as children get older. They get better at compensating and by the time we realize their struggling they may already be frustrated, bored, or suffering from low self-esteem. In preschool, they wear their frustration on their sleeves, and the skills they need to learn are almost always observable…teachers have the time to watch where they are struggling and puzzle through what is happening, that way they and the parents enter elementary school with more knowledge about their child as a learner.

(3) Play is the way children learn and preschools simply have more time for play. While not true across the board, most preschools make play their primary mode for teaching. Games, songs, silliness, laughing, child-driven play! And time…if you think you can’t spend weeks on end talking about how their world changes in Fall, then you should revisit a preschool classroom!

(4) The social skills children need in life, are taught and learned in preschool. Supervised play is when teachers can listen for conflicts, talk children through them, teach alternative strategies. In elementary school time for free play disappears, recess turns into 30 minutes of mostly unsupervised play so teachers can get a break, and the academic demands of the curriculum preclude time for teaching social and emotional skills that are the brad and butter of a good preschool education.

For all these reasons, I fall firmly in the “what’s the hurry” category. For boys and girls, if they need extra time. Some children are ready at 4 and 5 for those additional demands of an elementary school classroom, but some aren’t, and no one is ever hurt by having extra time. The reverse is not true, I have seen children struggle and hate school, simply because they feel stupid, or get in trouble a lot because they aren’t mature enough to meet the demands of the classroom. These children may still be told they should be held back, later in their academic career. The redshirt year in preschool is much more fun. You will never regret doing it, even if you end up wondering whether it was necessary. My own son was given two PK years. He was so tiny and had a summer birthday. I didn’t know at the time, but he also turned into a late reader (both of my children didn’t take off in reading until the 2nd and 3rd grades). But, once he took off, he flew. He moved ahead in math, he excelled through middle and high school. And in elementary school, at each parent teacher conference when I was told he was in the lower reading group, I was also told what a wonderful and mature leader in the classroom he was. Teachers loved him, he felt that, and he has always thought he was a valued student. When he began getting ahead in subjects, it was easy enough in middle and high school to move him ahead as needed. If you met him now you may ask, did he really need that extra year? I know he did, but I’ll also never regret it, even if he didn’t!

Your teachers will talk with you in the Fall. and Spring conferences about your child and plans for next school year and the years ahead. If you have questions about timeline or your child’s readiness, make sure to talk to them during conferences!