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Learn school readiness for your kids with principal Kate Highland and Newcastle chiropractor, Dr. Dorte Bladt.

Assistant principal Kate Highland shares with us how we can help our kids feel comfortable and confident as they enter a new and exciting phase of their lives: Big school.

Intro: Flourishing Families with Dr. Dorte Bladt, the Switched-On Kids chiropractor and her passionate friends sharing the secret of inspiring wellness to help your families thrive.

Dorte Bladt: I’d like to welcome Kate Highland today. Kate Highland is the Assistant Principal at Charlestown East School. I’m really excited to have you on and share with us about school readiness.

Kate Highland: Okay, thank you, Dorte. Yes, my job here at Charlestown East – which is a government school, a public school in New South Wales – is I look after all of the children in kindergarten Year 1 and Year 2. A lot of what I do is bring them into the school. So all of those processes to do with orientation and easing their transition into school here. I give a lot of advice to a lot of parents about that and I run the Whitebridge Community of Schools Readiness Night. That happens around May every year where we invite parents to come along. They can ask questions and it’s a big information-sharing session.

Some of the things I say there, at that session, are to do with having strong links with your preschool and taking advice from preschool teachers because they know your child and they know what they’re up to, they know their readiness levels and they’re the best person to give advice about readiness. We, of course, haven’t seen your child yet at that stage of the year. We look forward to getting to know them.

But your preschool teacher will give you advice about things like how they’re holding a pencil, for instance, and the areas that they need correction. It’s also a good place to start making playdates with friends so that your children start to socialise and kindergarten, believe it or not, a lot of it is about socialisation and getting along with friends rather than academics.

Dorte Bladt: That’s the most important thing, isn’t it?

Kate Highland: Well, you would think so and that, obviously, is something that is vital and it is our main focus, but we also believe that for your child to be an independent, functioning human being later on in life, they need to be able to relate and communicate with each other and learn all of those things that are vitally important.

A lot of times, skipping to the end of school, when children leave and we ask what it was that they really enjoyed about school, they’ll talk about kindergarten. They’ll talk about their friends. They don’t remember learning how to read. They don’t remember learning how to count. They remember their buddy, the person that helped them in the playground open their lunchbox. They remember creative arts performances. They remember being in a play.  They remember those sorts of things. So those human aspects are vital as well as the academics.

Dorte Bladt: Well, preschool, when you think of it from preschool to kindergarten, it’s a great transition then of being, like you say, learning how to grab that pencil and how to make friends. So you’re building on that.

Kate Highland: You’re building on those things, yes. So we look for lots of things in the children coming in. We look for people who can share, children who don’t demand to be first, who know that they’ve got to wait their turn. Something that parents can do – I know it sounds a bit funny, but parents can get children to put their hand up. I know that sounds strange but in that sort of playing schools and playing at being at school when you’re at home and it’s safe and secure and it’s environment that they’re familiar with, but having that play-acting time of let’s play schools, they’ll read a book together and reading a book together is so vital. I’ve known people who’ve read to their babies before they were born. They’ve read to them when they were an hour old in the hospital and I think they’re lovely stories about people who just value communication with their children.

Dorte Bladt: I used to do that with my daughter. I used to when she was hours old, like you say. I used to read to her in Danish.  I had read someplace that that was a really good thing to do and I always like checked around, is anyone coming.

Kate Highland: I’m fairly safe.

Dorte Bladt: Yeah.

Kate Highland: I think children just like that connection. They want that eye contact. They want that connection and if that involves something else to look at, to focus on, a picture of the Three Little Pigs in a book or whatever, that’s what they love to do. So your children maybe they can, after you’ve read the story, maybe they can read it back to you and reading it can be pointing to the pictures and talking about them. It doesn’t need to involve text at that really early stage. It can be they can read a picture and then they can talk about it and use their memory. So there are a whole lot of things that parents can do literacy-wise but it involves playing at being at school.

Dorte Bladt: So do you feel it’s important for parents to prepare their children for school that way? As in, should we, as parents, look into doing this, doing that? This is what we’re preparing for… or is it more of a sitting back and waiting for teachers to sort of guide the way?

Kate Highland: Before they come to school, the parent is the most important teacher, and actually most of their life. Of course, the parent is the most important teacher, but I think – especially if they’re just about to start school or just about to return to school – to alleviate any anxiety is to talk about what might happen “if”. That might involve perhaps walking through a school, playing on the equipment – seek permission first – but ask if you can.

“Do you mind in the holidays if my child comes and plays on the equipment” or peeks in the windows or just becomes a little bit familiar with the environment. They know where the toilets are, for instance. They might not exactly know their room but they know where the playground is and the boundaries of the playground. All of those things just alleviate anxiety because it’s information.

It also imparts a sense of, well, this is where the parent wants the child to be and that they know that the experience will be positive. One thing I’d like to ask parents and probably grandparents and older people not to do is not to relate scary stories from the past.  “When I was at school, I got the cane,” or “when I was at school…” Those sorts of things that parents like to talk about those experiences but they’re not always positive. So sometimes children walk in and they’re scared. I’ll ask, “But what are you scared of?”

“Do you have a cane?”

“Well, no,” and so this unnecessary anxiety that I think we can probably do without.

Dorte Bladt: Most definitely!

Kate Highland: I know that it’s not 100% positive all of the time. Classrooms are very busy places. They’re very noisy. It can be a little overwhelming, but we don’t need the fear factor in there as well.

Dorte Bladt: No. So is it a good idea to share the positive stories? How much fun, like you were just saying, “oh, when I went to kindergarten I had a fun time doing visual arts,” or whatever.

Kate Highland: Yes, definitely, and even emphasising friends that you’ve kept. I used to tell my children about that I still have friends that I made in kindergarten or in high school or whatever, friends that I’ve kept through the years because then they can see the whole spectrum of the point of socialisation, and I guess when we’re on socialisation, for people to realise that if they can limit the amount of screen time that their children have, because what children do, I find, when they’re watching a screen is they’re disengaging. They’re shutting down from…

Dortee Bladt: Social contact.

Kate Highland: Yes, from that contact with real life. They’re not hearing the birds singing. They’re not hearing their brother singing off-tune in the car sitting next to them. So I’ve always thought that car trips were about singing songs and chants and chatting and telling stories.

There’s one thing we did – we drove to Queensland years and years ago. We were in the car for 13 hours on and off, and we made up this game where you know how you go across a bridge and it will have something like Dead Man’s Crossing or, I don’t know, Bill’s Hill or Bill’s Crossing or something, and we would make up a story – how did that place get its name? Then we would take it in turns and so everybody in the car had to tell a story that was bigger and brighter or scarier or funnier. It took us hours and it was so much fun because we just spent that time communicating and bonding and interacting. There was no, “put a DVD on,” and, “I don’t want to hear from you” sort of thing.

Dorte Bladt: That’s right. It’s hard because it takes a little bit of input from the parents. I think sometimes we hop in the car and we just want to, oh, shut down for a moment, but if we put in that little bit of extra input and that little bit of energy in to start a positive experience then time will go faster and everyone would have a good time.

Kate Highland: Yeah and everybody loves a story. Children love hearing stories about what their parents’ life was like in the past, just try and make it a bit positive! But yes, so all of those sorts of things are really important. I do think, back to playing at schools, take them places like a park. If you’re going to buy them something, buy them a skipping rope because there’s a whole lot of skills that are important and skipping helps – it eventually helps reading with your hand-eye coordination or foot-eye coordination, and things like using paint and scissors and glue, crayons and that sort of thing.

Occasionally, I have parents who say, “oh, no, my child doesn’t use crayons because they might draw on the walls,” which I’m always surprised about because I think, well, you’re there with them. Do these things with them. Don’t just provide them.

Dorte Bladt: And walk away.

Kate Highland: Put them on the table and walk away. Draw with them. Colour with them. Show them nice things.  Try not to teach them too much. Leave the academics to people at school. So a little bit of writing their name, for instance. Children often like to do that.

Dorte Bladt: Why would you think… you’re the teacher, of course, but what is the matter with the parents, if the kids are really excited, to teach them stuff?

Kate Highland: There’s ways and means to teach things. When my daughter was three, she learned to read the word ‘exit’ because we drove down the freeway and she said, “what’s that,” pointing to the exit sign, and I said, “it says exit.” And so all of the way, up and down the freeway for the next three or four years I got, “exit, Mummy! Exit, Mummy.”

These environmental print things are great. If they’re in the supermarket and they can recognise the peaches and know that the picture is a peach, and that’s what the label says, that’s great to encourage that sort of thing, but I wouldn’t sit your child down and try and teach them how to write or too much of how to form the letters of the alphabet. Preschool will do a lot of that anyway, so I wouldn’t try to do those formal things. I’d try and enjoy your child more than try and teach them a whole lot.

Dorte Bladt: So there’s a division between school and that home academic setting. So home is safe, it’s fun.  It’s not a place we necessarily do anything other than homework when the set time comes.

Kate Highland: Yes and when that’s homework, you’ll find that these days teachers set for a practical homework. My homework sheet will say things like, “count the forks in the drawer,” or, “how many steps does it take to get to the letterbox?”  You know, these practical things that we put in there so that it’s a little bit more interesting. It’s not always sit down with a pencil on a piece of paper. So teachers are very used to thinking outside the square now, finding things that kids want to do.

Dorte Bladt: So more play-based type.

Kate Highland: It’s far more play-based and physical-based. I’ll say, “set a timer and how many times can you do star jumps? How many can you do in a minute?” That sort of thing.

Dorte Bladt: What a great way to exercise.

Kate Highland: Yes. Well, it’s just a bit different and they’re tired when they get home in the afternoon. You’ll find they’ll sleep a great deal. It’s a big deal to come to school and teachers are exhausted. The kids are exhausted, too.

Dorte Bladt: Absolutely and when you’re talking about the physical side of things, how about, like for example, food? You as a teacher, what provides the best brain capacity for learning food to take?

Kate Highland: Okay, food choice is really important. A lot of schools, including us, ask that parents provide what we call the ‘nude lunch’, which is a lunch that’s in a box that doesn’t have wrappings and papers because we’re all into recycling and producing less rubbish, that sort of thing. So things that are wholesome and nutritious. Certainly, a lot of places have what’s called Fruit Break or Crunch Break where we get them to bring… so we eat three times a day. One is morning tea and that might be fruit or it might be a snack of some sort, but even half a sandwich can be fine.

Fruit Break or Crunch Break, which is fruit and vegetable or water,  so small manageable pieces. If they walk in with a big green apple, I know they’re not going to get through it. In a few minutes, it will land up in the bin.  Whereas half a mandarin or beans or a carrot, they can get through it.

Dr. Dorte Bladt: Or the apple cut up, I suppose.

Kate Highland: Yes, as long as it’s cut up. So Fruit Break works really well. Strawberries, whatever is in season. Then lunch needs to be, again, probably a sandwich, but people sometimes – I’m out there in the playground and I’ll see people have provided sushi for their children, or they’ve been really fabulous at being very inventive of what their children will like.

We do like to minimise packet food, packaged, processed-type things not just because of the litter part but because filling yourself with the sugar and the salt and those sorts of things aren’t so good. Please make sure that your children have breakfast. I think breakfast everyone says it’s the most important meal of the day. I can tell a difference between children who walk in who’ve had breakfast and those who haven’t.

Sometimes I’ll say, “why didn’t you have breakfast?”

And the child’s response is, “oh, we had to get to school on time,” which just tells me, well, you’re not getting up early enough.

Dorte Bladt: Yes, that’s fairly simple.

Kate Highland: I would think fairly simple. So try setting routines with your child so that they know where their shoes are at, where their uniform is, packing their own bag or their lunch, water bottles, those sorts of things so that you can streamline that whole getting out the door and getting to school on time.

Dorte Bladt: That would be a really good thing. When we’re talking about school readiness that would be a good routine to start maybe before school starts.

Kate Highland: Before school, yes, but by the time they’re 4 ½ or 5, they’re old enough to know where the bowl and the spoon is – the Weet-Bix and the milk. I mean, it can just be that. At least if they’ve got something decent in their stomach, I find they can then concentrate, and those few hours to start the day are the peak learning times.

You’ll find that teachers will do more creative things in the afternoon because we’re all a bit slower and all a bit more tired, but peak literacy and numeracy time happens first thing in the morning, especially in the younger grades. So if they come to school and they’re already exhausted, it’s really hard to concentrate. So food choice is very important. Look, I think fruit and sandwiches just will get you through the day. Good quality bread and fillings that are just a bit different, a bit unusual. I often see things that I think, “gee, I haven’t thought about that.”

Yoghurt is one, but if you’re putting milk products, they certainly need one of those little freezer block things that will keep it cool, and I always prefer to see children drink water rather than anything else. Everything else – fruit juice and cordials full of sugar, so water is fabulous, and if they can’t then we’ve got bubblers here.

Dorte Bladt: So I guess what you’re saying is there’s nothing really new and exciting. We all know what basic good food is, but, again, remembering that it’s not just for health and for lack of weight gain. That’s not the only thing.  It is also so they can actually concentrate.

Kate Highland: It is for concentration, yes.

Dorte Bladt: All through the school day.

Kate Highland: Yeah and I find children now want to eat fruit because of Fruit Break. I’ve only got to look at my class and say, “oh, yeah, your strawberries look nice,” and four more children have got strawberries the next day because they… and they like that community sharing of food that all human beings like to do. We all like to sit and eat together.  So doing that in the classroom… I know at my school the teachers read, the primiers reading challenge books. So we’re reading picture books to them. So they have this really relaxing time.

And I say to them at the end of the year, “what did you really enjoy doing?”

And it is, “we like Fruit Break. We like Fruit Break because you read to us and we’re just a bit relaxed.”

But we’re together and it’s 10 or 15 minutes of eating healthy food, drinking water.

Dorte Bladt: Healthy food together.

Kate Highland: Yes, eating it together so it’s a really fabulous thing to do. Often, when they’re in the playground, if it’s lunchtime, we always supervise lunch, and we’ll say, “where’s your lunch?”

“Oh, I’ve eaten it.”

“Okay. Show me your lunchbox.”

And they often haven’t eaten it because they want to play. So things that are appealing to them, although children will say to me, “oh, but I don’t like Vegemite.”

And I’ll say, “well, I don’t make your sandwich. Make sure you tell your Mum. Make sure you tell your Dad that you would prefer something different.”

So ask them! Ask them what they want because if they don’t like Vegemite, what’s the point of giving them one every day? Or whatever it is, if they don’t like ham and salad or something. So I guess try and find something that they want to eat, then monitor it so that if they bring you home a full lunchbox, you’re giving too much, or an empty lunchbox, maybe it’s too little.

Dorte Bladt: Yes. I suppose the other thing is also we know how sick we get of the same sandwich every day. I suppose that it’s also a little bit of variety that might be good for a kindergartener or a school-age child.

Kate Highland: Yes and think about just cooking a bit of extra something at night time so that you’ve got that leftover to put on a sandwich. I think that’s a great way to use that up and it teaches really good skills for the future as well about food.

Nobody at school shares food. Most schools request that there’s no nuts, peanuts in particular because of allergies. I know it’s really important that you communicate with your school if your child has anything, any issue. Any hearing issue, vision, fine motor, which is things to do with scissors in the hands, really, like cutting and pasting and colouring in, or any problems with big movements. If they’re wriggling around or having trouble crossing their legs. One thing I know I always do is stop children from doing what I call a W-sit, which I know would be something that you would talk about because of what that does to their spine and their whole sitting, and I can tell the children that purposely choose a W-sit often will have trouble with tasks.

Dorte Bladt: Yes. There’s a chicken and the egg in that.

Kate Highland: Yes, I’m sure there is. So that’s a really important one to do too. So there’s a lot of things that people can do, but I guess the whole idea about talking about school, playing at being at school, even talking about things, having little things like there might be a spot on the fridge where you can put their work. I know that when I was at school, someone complimented a piece of art I did and my mother put it in a frame and stuck it on the wall, and it stayed there for years. When she passed away and we were at her house, I found it, and it was so touching it was still in the frame. I have it up in my house now.

A couple of days after I put it up, it’s just in my study, at the back, my husband looked at it and he said, “what’s that?”

“Well, you know what? I painted that when I was in Year 4,” and I remember it. Those things are really… making memories is really important.

Dorte Bladt: Yes and it also seems for the time that that is valuable. It was time well spent and it’s not just wasting… as if you could waste your time in school, but it is valuable time.

Kate Highland: It is. That’s exactly right. They feel very safe and secure and after I’ll say, “you know, this is where your Mum and Dad want you to be today. Do they want you to be doing this?”

And they’ll go, “oh, no.”

That becomes a bit of a reminder of what your behaviour looks like. So it is very important that they know that they’re in place and that they feel safe and secure.

Dorte Bladt: So are there anything, any suggestions for parents, like going into, let’s just say, the last week before school? Making sure that this is going to be a great new year. Anything that you could suggest just for that short week or two or however long that you think is the right sort of timeframe.

Kate Highland: Look, advertising-wise, it starts as soon as Christmas finishes. It’s the “back-to-school, back-to-school,” which freaks all the teachers out, I have to say. It’s December and January, but so you’ve got the whole build up with buy the school shoes, make sure you’ve got the uniforms, that sort of thing, but I’d start having the conversations about “what was good about last year? What are you looking forward to?”

I really think they’ll say, “Oh, well, I will see my friends,” or “I will see so-and-so.”

Try not to talk too much about who the teachers will be because often staff change. They move or they seek other positions or whatever, so you can’t guarantee who our staff member will be. We tend not to tell children you’ll be in so-and-so classroom of whatever in case it changes because you don’t want anxiety about that at all.

So it’s about “you will be back there”. You might change and some schools it’s really difficult to organise because of new enrolments, so a lot of schools the children will return and they’ll stay in their class for a day or two from last year so that we can get the organisation correct or as good as we can get it. So that happens that you just go back into the same class for a day or two with the same teacher until we can move on and sort things out, because with new developments in building and that sort of thing, it’s very tricky to sort that out, but certainly have those conversations and just talk to them about, “is there anything that you would like me to talk to the teachers about or not?”

Often children will say, “no, no, no. Don’t go talk to them.”

But just about what the expectation is. I expect that you’ll go to school. I expect you’ll listen to the teachers. I’m sure you’ll do as you’re told. I’m sure that you’ll have a lot of fun. Some days will be tricky. Some days will be a little bit hard, but know that you’ll come home and you’ll talk to us about that. I know, certainly, in my house, it was soon as they walked in the door of an afternoon, “now, what did you do?”

“Nothing.”

“You didn’t do anything?”

“No, I played.”

And you think, “they don’t do much there.”

Then we’d sit down to have dinner and then it would come out. They just needed that couple of hours of downtime before dinner to sort of maybe process it or think it through and then I think the questions at dinner were different. It wasn’t “did you have fun today” or whatever. It became “who did you play with” and “what did you do in maths.” Something that had an answer to it.

Dorte Bladt: Open-ended.

Kate Highland: Yeah, open-ended. Not just yes and no type things. Once you start telling stories about your day, you’ll find that they’ll open up then.

Dorte Bladt  I think I read this study on that. They were saying… I can’t remember where I read it but it was something about Mum or Dad starting dinner with the story of their day and then, like you were saying, the stories will be light so it ends up becoming that whole conversation and everyone likes to contribute, but it’s not that we necessarily want to be the one that has the monologue. I think often it becomes almost an interrogations, “so what did you do today, who did you play with today?” Whereas if we come home and say, “you wouldn’t believe it, so-and-so did such-and-such with birthday cake and we had”… whatever. The story that you can come up with, they like to share their side too.

Kate Highland: I think the other thing that parents can do is I’m sure there are things in their day that don’t go right. Certainly, you edit what you say, but let them know that you’re a human being and that you do have days that aren’t all sunshine and roses and rainbows, and that it’s tricky  Some days you’re very tired or you might have had something go wrong that was difficult and you’re worried about it, and what you’re going to do about it.

“Well, I’m going to talk about it”, “I’m going to have a good think”, “I’m going to make a decision”, “I’ll seek advice”.

But those sort of life skills that everybody needs, you know, how to make a decision, those sorts of things we all need to know about. Let them see you as an example of how to make that and the example of, “of, let’s finish now and I’m moving on. I’m letting it go.” I think they’re things that parents can do that teach their child. We try to do that as well but, obviously, teachers don’t have the same rapport.

Dorte Bladt: The circumspect, like you were saying earlier, that parents are a child’s first teacher.

Kate Highland: Yes, that’s right.

Dorte Bladt: And second teacher and third teacher.

Kate Highland: The most important person and because the parents are imparting their values and their beliefs onto their children and so you want to do that, but you want to give them skills in resilience. You want to give them skills in organisations and getting along with other people.

Sometimes at school, children will get upset because somebody doesn’t like them and I’ll say to them, “well, you don’t have to play with everybody. You don’t have to like everybody.”

And kids are really surprised when I say to them, “well, you know, you can choose who you play with. As long as you’re being polite to people and being pleasant, you don’t have to be best friends with everybody. Nobody is.”

And it doesn’t happen in adult life, why should it happen in children’s lives?

Dorte Bladt: It’s that confidence, though, isn’t it? If you’re always being told that you have to be nice and you think you have to play with everyone because that’s easier for us adults.

Kate Highland: Yes, it is. But we’ll say to children, “to resolve your conflict with other children, what you should do…”

We teach them how to do it, how to stand up to someone that they might think is bullying them, and to use words.  Or to put their hand up and say, “please stop. I don’t like…” then say what it is the person is doing. Most of the time, everybody else respects that. Occasionally, you’ll get someone who’ll be annoying, and that happens a little bit where “they’re singing in my ear. I’ve told them not to sing in my ear.” You know? A bit of cooperation here would be good. But we do train them to do that, to be able to verbalise and say what it is that’s upsetting you.  As well as go and tell the teacher, and that’s very important, but trying to solve those little things yourself.

A lot of that happens at home. I mean, brothers and sisters playing. The situation is different at home. You can have kids wrestling on the floor and that’s all good, hopefully, but at school, that’s not. So there is a disparity, really, between what could happen at home and what could happen at school.

So sometimes the rules are different and I guess that’s another thing to talk to your kids about is the difference in rules. There are different rules when you go to a swimming pool. There are different rules when you go to a shopping centre or whatever. There are different rules for every facet of life that we all have to learn because sometimes kids will say, “oh, but you know, my Dad said I can thump him.” Sorry, that’s not going to work at school. Won’t do with that one. I’m sure Dad didn’t or if Dad did, maybe he needs to talk to me but we don’t… that retaliation thing is gone, hopefully, in most kids but that’s something you need to learn about school is that the rules are different.

Dorte Bladt  Excellent. Well, I’m sure lots of parents could get some good take-homes from that. I really appreciate your time, Kate.

Kate Highland: Thank you.

Dorte Bladt: And good luck with your holiday!

Kate Highland: Thank you very much!

Outro:  The opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the guest and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Family Chiropractic or the host.