My daughter has been waiting patiently for weeks for her loose bottom tooth to come out.  For almost two weeks she has been wiggling it, testing it, and pulling at it in hopes of expediting the process.  And finally, it came out while she was in school.

She was so excited.

She showed it to everyone, taking it out of the zippered silk pouch I gave her to take to school for just such a possibility.  She revealed her tooth-less grin for anyone willing to watch and showed people how she could now sip on a straw with her teeth tightly clenched.

This was exciting indeed.

But the most exciting part was getting ready for the tooth fairy.  We talked all evening about the optimum location for tooth placement and the tooth fairy’s going “rate” for a small front bottom tooth.

At bedtime she positioned the whiteness of the teeny tiny chicklet right on top of a pink flower design of her sheet so it was easier for the fairy to see and then she went to bed with high hopes.

Then I went to bed…exhausted and didn’t wake up till 7:30am the next morning when Livi was standing at the foot of my bed with a very displeased pout.

“The tooth fairy didn’t come.”

I panicked. “Um…really?  She didn’t??”

“No…(beat…angry stare)…She didn’t.”

“That’s so weird honey.” I said searching the corners of my dusty mind for a way to fix the problem this stupid fairy had caused me.  “I wonder why?” and I vamped “OOoooooh…you know what? I heard that LOTS of kids lost their teeth yesterday.  She must have been really backed-up with work.  Wow.  That’s such a shame, but I totally bet she’ll come tonight if we try again.”

She wasn’t completely convinced of my reasoning, but she was on board with the revised plan.

The next night we tried again.  Tiny tooth placed prominently against the flower pattern.  Livi must have checked it four times before going to sleep.

“Do you think she’ll come tonight?”

“Yes, honey…for sure.  She was just REALLY busy.”

She seemed satisfied and went to sleep.

The next morning I woke up with a small hand tugging at my toe which was sticking out from under my comforter.

I was still in the throes of REM sleep, but I still had enough guilt and neuroses inside of me to instantly snap-to and know what exactly what I was about to hear…

“Moooooom!  She didn’t come again!”  Livi said holding the teeny, tiny tooth in the middle of her teeny tiny outstretched hand for me to see.  She looked like she was on the verge of tears.

I couldn’t BELIEVE I forgot AGAIN!  Two nights in a row!  What kind of mother was I?  How do you forget to be the tooth fairy two NIGHTS IN A ROW???!  How hard was it to remember to take a tooth and put a dollar in it’s place before I go to bed??!  I was definitely going to be stripped of my fairy wings for this.   I felt horrible – and so sad for my little girl.

I called upon my improvisational skills to come up with ever increasingly more satisfying answer as to how the Tooth fairy might miss two nights in a row.  “Maybe the tooth fairy was confused by the bunk beds and didn’t know where to look?” or “Maybe the tooth fairy was still too overwhelmed from all of the teeth that fell out over the past day or two…” and my favorite lame excuse “You know what?  I think I read on-line that our neighborhood got a new Tooth Fairy because ours was relocated somewhere else.  Maybe she’s just trying to get used to her new job and catch up.”  Surprisingly, that excuse seemed acceptable to her.

So that night, we placed the tooth even nearer to the edge of the pillow, again set against the bright pink design of one of her flower patterns and we wrote a big note and put it on the wall “Dear Tooth Fairy – My tooth is right here!” and we put a big arrow pointing to Livi’s head.  I kissed her and told her FOR SURE the tooth fairy wouldn’t be confused tonight and would get around to taking her tooth.

I spent the whole evening working really hard to keep my mind on the fact that I had a job to do.  “Don’t forget the tooth.  Don’t forget the tooth…” I thought about it while I was clearing the table “Don’t forget the tooth.  Don’t forget the tooth…”; I thought about it when I was cleaning the kitchen “Don’t forget the tooth…”; and I thought about it while I was folding laundry in front of the TV “Don’t forget the tooth.  Don’t forget the tooth,  Don’t forget the tooth…”

When I was about to crawl into bed, I went into my wallet and couldn’t find a $1 bill.

But I did have a Ten.  It was a ridiculous amount for a lower, front tooth, but I decided that the Tooth Fairy had to pay a late fee.  A big one.

The next morning Livi was at the foot of my bed jumping up and down and waving a $10 bill.

“Mommy!  The Tooth Fairy came and I got $10!!!!!!”

“WOW, Livi!  That’s GREAT!

I breathed a HUGE sigh of relief.  I had finally gotten the job done.

“And Mom!  Feel this!” She grabbed my hand and put my finger in her mouth to test the wiggliness of another loose bottom tooth.

This girl’s gonna be rich.

My daughter has been in a daycare program since she was three months old. She begins the pre-school room this fall. Unlike other programs around, they really do believe in letting kids be kids. They will have a lot of free time, mixed with structured circle time. Being educators ourselves, we do feel that we will want to supplement her pre-school experience a little bit. In hearing accounts from other friends with kids in kindergarten, we know that she will have to go through a screening interview for kindergarten. They will ask her basic questions, have her write, and engage in physical activities like hopping on one foot.

With that in mind, what do we do as parents to prepare our kids for the world ahead of them?

The preparation can start early and build in appropriate ways. I recently had a conversation with someone about the infomercial Teach Your Baby to Read. This soon-to-be parent was about to drop hundreds of dollars on this system. I can’t critique the system, but I will say that as a working parent that system seems like it requires a lot of 1-1 time. Again, having a baby read early might be cool for you, but does that really give the child a measurable advantage in school? There are a lot of activities out there that don’t necessarily require the parent to feel like a tutor. Warning this list may be very LeapFrog-centric. The truth is their products are fantastic and superior in many ways.

12 Months

LeapFrog LeapPad

Our daughter received this as a holiday present from one of the grandparents. It’s a good way to have them start to hear stories on their own and it requires them to touch and follow along basic instructions. At this point, they may be too young for it, but it’s a good educational toy to start with.

LeapFrog Fridge Phonics

This may not be the formal name for this, but it’s taking refrigerator letter magnets to the next level. A child can put the letter on the magnet main console and hear what sound the letter makes.

2 Years Old

Letter Factory, Talking Word Factory

The LeapFrog phonics DVD’s are awesome. A friend of ours turned us onto them, when our daughter was two. She watched the DVD for a week and was able to identify letters and sounds. It’s amazing.

Leapster

This hand-held video game for kids has a lot of different cartridges that are fun and educational. To be honest, our daughter had this way too early. She’s four and really enjoys it now.

Coloring

Yes, good old-fashioned coloring helps with fine motor skills.

Puzzles

Melissa and Doug puzzles are great. Sometimes they are a little more expensive than other puzzles, but they are definitely of a higher quality.

Fisher Price Fun2Learn Laptop

A mom friend recommended this one to me. She said this model teaches numbers, letters, and vocabulary. A lot of the laptops that they have in the toy stores are pretty good. You definitely want to find some version of this that has easy buttons to push, buttons that are colorful, and that they make the sounds clearly for your child to mimic.

3 Years Old

Beads

Picking up beads and threading them onto a string helps kids develop fine motor skills. The pinching helps develop the muscles they need to eventually write. For girls especially, there are the necklace making kits. Melissa and Doug have a few variations with beads and number beads that are big enough and easy enough for kids to work with.

Clothesline Activity

Get a line and a bunch of clothespins. The pinching motion also helps develop fine motor skills and can be a fun activity to do across the house. The best place to get this would be a Lakeshore Learning, or Educational Warehouse.

Activity Books

BrainQuest is one of the better activity workbooks that I have encountered. You can usually get them at Costco for less than the book store. They have pre-school level books and older. Costco also sells a lot of other activity books designed for kids three and older that are really wonderful. They sell I Can Color, I Can Fold, etc.

TagReader

Another great holiday present that my daughter received! This comes with a pen that you place in the book and it either reads the whole story to you, or it sounds out the story word by word. This is a great activity for the car, or at home.

4 Years Old

Innovative Kids Now I’m Reading Box Sets

This set really helps kids learn how to read by building on basic vowel sounds and getting progressively more difficult. It tells parents how to space out each book and what questions to ask your child, when they have finished reading the book.

Swizzers

You can buy your child a kid friendly pair of scissors with a cutting book. Hide them after use to prevent Barbie from looking like Ken.

Sentence Strips

A friend of mine took index cards, or sentence strips (Lakeshore Learning) and wrote the names of objects around the house and taped them to the objects. This way kids are learning to identify words in context.

There’s probably a ton of products out there that we all use and love and don’t realize how they are actually helping to prepare our kids for the world in front of them. In the end, we may not like feeling that our kids are losing their kid time. However, we can make their “kid time” worthwhile by buying smart products.

The term redshirting originated with a college athlete’s one year postponement in regular season games to enable further practice and growth with the team. Delaying young children’s entrance into kindergarten is now referred to as “academic redshirting” and while it is more common in wealthy communities and within private schools, it can occur anywhere. This postponement can be due to a child’s birthday falling close to the cut-off date for entrance into kindergarten, and also as a means of allowing further growth in a child’s physical, intellectual and social abilities. With school systems demanding more and more out of children at increasingly younger ages it is understandable why redshirting occurs.

There are several reasons why a parent might chose to redshirt their child. If their child attended nursery/preschool and did not advance as quickly as the other children, a parent might choose to keep them in preschool another year so they can catch up. It should be noted though that holding a child back has disadvantages as well. If delayed a year, the child will not be in the same kindergarten class as the friends he or she has made during their time in preschool. They will also be among the older students in their class but at such a young age, children are not usually concerned that a classmate is just a bit older than them. If a parent fears their child is too shy to enter what promises to be a rather large class then they can delay that child in the hopes that the following year’s class size will be reduced. Establishing social relations are important for young children and their deficiency or proficiency in them should be taken into consideration before any education decisions are made.

The parents of school-age children today were not required to know as much by kindergarten age as kids now are. To further aid their child’s education more parents are enrolling their three and four year old children in nursery school or preschool. Nursery schools used to be less curriculum-oriented institutions where children learned actual nursery rhymes, still took naps and “indulged” in fun activities. Now the name “nursery school” is being replaced by preschool as children start preparing for the demands of school at a younger age. Some parents might place their three-year-old in preschool without a second thought because they feel their child will benefit. Other parents may chose to wait and keep their “babies” innocent and carefree for as long as possible.

Studies have been done on academic redshirting and the results have been inconclusive. In the short term such a practice may increase a child’s math, reading and general knowledge achievements as well as bolster a child’s confidence when interacting with their peers. Even such benefits though can be seen as detrimental by some who believe an older classmate might possess an unfair advantage over younger classmates in both size and social skills. Older children in the classroom might also make it more difficult for a teacher to manage and control her students. There is also speculation that a redshirted child might have been held back because of a misdiagnosed immaturity that was in fact a sign that the child required special education services prior to entering kindergarten. Nonetheless, the practice of redshirting has existed long enough to prove that it can benefit some children and that they grow into teenagers who excel academically and are well-liked among classmates they might have once towered over.

Whatever the reason, the ultimate decision to hold a child back a year from entering kindergarten is the parent’s to make. Few school districts specifically prohibit academic redshirting, as they do not have the proper understanding of a child who has yet to enter their system. A parent should be informed of their school district’s kindergarten readiness screening tests and be willing help their child in whatever areas they may be weak in. “Redshirting” is not always the answer. The most important thing for a parent to understand is that, no matter when their child enters kindergarten, with the same love, support, and understanding they are bound to succeed.