Child Shows No Interest in Preschool/Kindergarten

All right, so let's talk about why children are not interested or they do their own thing during kindergarten or preschool. And this applies to speech delay children, children on the spectrum and so on. So usually what happens is that you get a call from the school and they're like, hey, look, mom, your child isn't performing at school. He's in his own world. He's doing his own thing. He's not following in circle time, carpet time, whatever they call it. And they're concerned. And sometimes they say, oh, do you have a diagnosis of some sort? And obviously, most of the time, we don't really want to look at a child this way in order to justify why he's having this kind of behavior or she's having that behavior. So what should we do in this place? So I want to tell you first is that the work starts at home. Yeah. So I'm not pushing the blame or the. The stuff, the responsibility onto you. But just thinking about how a child develops in terms of play is that they start playing with parents and adults first. Okay. They start there. Okay. And a lot of times there's a lot of solo play. And then as they develop, they become better at cooperative play with adults, and then they start learning well with peers. Okay. The real quick reason why a child is doing that is because they don't think that's fun to mingle with other children. Okay. And that is stressful. And a group setting, especially a child who's already language delayed will actually know themselves that they're incapable of following. Right. So you see, sometimes when there's a lot of songs and dancing, the child will follow on. But when it's a group activity as a storytelling time, they will run off because it's. It's outside of the comprehension. It's difficult. They rather just do their own thing. Right. And there is social disconnect because the child's delayed. They don't understand playing with other peers following them is actually fun. So that's the problem. There's no solution. Right. So let's talk about some solutions. The first thing is always to tell the. Tell the schools that, oh, look, my child is delayed. I'm sure you know this by now. And my therapist says that it could be me, it could be anyone who says that. Or it will take some time. It'll take some time for them to. To. To settle down. Right. And understand the social context of school. Right. So that's the first thing. Second of all is that you tell the teachers at school that you are trying your best to help him get to that level so that you can still be inside the school. It's very practical matter, right? The thing is, the school will try their best to either get more help or get you out. Just that's just the nature of stuff, right? Because you have other children, you cannot blame the school because they have to run, they can have to keep on running. And if your child is, so to speak, quote unquote, don't get offended, all right? It's a problem maker in their books. Then obviously they want to alleviate that problem immediately because it's destructive to the classroom setting. And if you have, have seen a preschool teacher or kindergarten teacher, you know how hard it is their job, their job is, then they're not equipped with the skills to help with what some countries call special needs, individual needs, this kind of children. So if your child is on the spectrum and delayed, then obviously they will need a little more help. Right? So how can we help them a little more? So if your child is already doing a lot of homework with you and they're actually very interested in playing you at home, or all they need to do is to bridge that towards school. And that you can do in two ways. Number one is that you can have some sort of group therapy. All right? If you're going to speech therapy already, you can ask your therapist, hey, is there a group therapy that I can help my child to get better at a group setting? And you see this in a lot of speech therapy, ABA therapy. We do have classes that get children ready for school. All right, Whether it's lining up, group activities, story time, circle time, arts and crafts, get them desensitized to the noise, to the clutter, to everything that's happening. This is super important. Okay, so group therapy, okay, Group therapy, very important. Get them into like three or five children and mimic what's happening at school. Maybe you have that, maybe you don't have that. Okay? If you don't have that, it's really on the parent to try and find other parents or other, other children who can come in and do some sort of play date in a group. But it's really difficult for a parent to know how to host group games. It takes a long time. Okay. I've taught a few parents how to do it in my lifetime. Not a few. In fact, it's quite, quite, quite a handful of parents who, who have been holding group therapy with me. Right, so that's one. Number two is using a shadow teacher. Using a shadow teacher is quite common nowadays. It's very expensive. Right. Because you need one on one time, you need someone who has training and special education, so on and so forth. And it's something that would, would help the school a lot if they allow it. Because then that problem is away from the main teacher and you won't have those sort of complaints anymore. Right? So we're always thinking about how to keep the kid in school. We're not thinking about changing the environment. Even if, you know, like you get bad news from the, from the school, they're like, oh, dude, have you thought about going to a special needs school? Or oh, have you thought about that? Our school doesn't have resources to cater your kid. You know, these things hit you like a brick, you know, like you like a big truck, boom. And you're like, oh no, what should I do? Usually I would suggest to try and find a shadow teacher that would alleviate that pain from the preschool teacher who's trying to juggle like 16 toddlers, which is remarkably difficult. Difficult, right. So you think in their shoes in order to help them. So a shadow teacher, it could be someone who has been working in aba, like Applied Behavioral Analysis. Right. Or just in general, a special childcare worker who has some experience with dealing with children who need a little more help. So I would say to have that shadow teacher to shadow that kid. Okay. And it depends on whether the school allows it or not and whether they actually have one themselves. That'd be excellent. Right? And sometimes in countries like in Asia, the mother will become the shadow teacher. And now I know you might have more than one kid at home and it's really difficult. So it really depends on what your resources, what your time is. And to be very honest with you, you either pay with money or with your, your own time. And it's always better to do both, right? You pay with time and your money if you can, if you want to accelerate your child's improvement, right? So end of the day, this is what I would say. They're not interested because they are. They don't understand the setting. They're getting overwhelmed, they're getting stressed and they cannot perform the, the way that they should. And second of all, they don't understand why interacting with peers are actually, is actually fun. A lot of times when my students, they go into kindergarten, I remember a few times I would go there and check it out and he would come up to me and say, Mr. Ming, look at all the children. I'm like, hey, you're, you're treating them like animals, right? You're like going to the zoo. You're part of them. You're not. You're not supposed to observe them. You're supposed to interact with other children. So a lot of these children who are on the spectrum, they don't understand the context of that they're part of a group and that they should be interacting with them. Instead, he's interacting with me. Out of nowhere, he's. There's a story time going on and he just, like, dismisses it. So therefore, a lot of groups therapy and shadow teacher would be your best bet. And you need to do as much as you can as a parent at home, whether it is to show them videos of children being at school. Right. Children, storybooks. Right. Hold group setting, like play dates at home, as much as you can. So these are all things you need to do. All right? And if you haven't, please go to agents of Speech.com checklist to grab a list of tools and toys we recommend you to get when you start at home. All right? So that's it for today. Let me know if you have any questions, and I'll see you next week. Bye. Bye.