I Can Do It, Please Let Me Try….

    As young children begin to mature, we adults need reminders to let them take risks and try new and more challenging things.   Often our instincts as caregivers tell us to help them with struggles and challenges.  Won’t that help them learn?  Unfortunately, while this well-intentioned support makes us feel helpful and essential, children learn best when they have to rise to a challenge.  Of course this challenge needs to be meaningful and attainable.  If a child takes on a slight challenge and has success, he or she can feel not only victorious, but also competent and self-assured. Small challenges teach children that they can manage larger challenges.  

    What should young children be able to do?  While there is no definitive list, some ideas include;
• Putting on and taking off their coats, hats and mittens
• Carrying their backpacks or bookbags into school and hanging them up
• Undressing themselves
• Beginning to dress themselves  ( be nearby for buttons, zippers)
• Clearing the table after meals
• CLEANING UP after they play ( they will need help and guidance- “Can you find all the markers and put them in this box?”)
• Putting dirty clothes in the clothes hamper
• Setting the table for dinner ( great for one to one correspondence)
• Putting pieces into and taking them out of his/her lunchbox

      As you let your child take on very small challenges, you will watch them blossom into a more confident problem solver.  The ability to solve novel problems is one of the hallmarks of intelligence, we owe it to our children to let them try.

        Make this your New Years’ Resolution- your child will thank you for it..

Liz Billings-Fouhy
Supervisor of Early Childhood Special Education
 Lexington Public Schools