When my daughter was in kindergarten, she didn’t always find it easy to cope with the transition from one activity to another. At the end of a playdate, I’d arrive to pick her up and she’d often fall apart, resist going home and spend endless time dawdling when it was time to leave.

As a 5-year-old, she had a hard time shifting from being in a stimulating environment with lots of excitement and social contact to coming home with mom and getting ready to end her day.

As a parent, you may expect and want your kindergartener to make a rapid transition from one activity or environment to another. Pressed for time, you may easily feel annoyed or frustrated at the delays and difficulties you run into.

You may also have assumed that at the age of 5 or 6, your child would be able to manage the ordinary transitions that occur during the course of the day in a smooth and cooperative manner. You may be quite surprised to discover that this is not the case amongst kindergarteners.

Here’s some insight as to what’s going on and what you can do:

  • In terms of childhood brain development, your kindergartener is unable to be simultaneously in the present and in the future. He is still learning this and needs your help. He needs you to be patient with him and to understand how he experiences transitions in the moment.
  • Try not to only see your child as annoyingly procrastinating or dawdling. He is likely to be totally wrapped up in the activity of the moment. A 5-year-old’s sense of time is really still quite limited. He is unlikely to have developed a strong ability to think ahead in the same way that you are able to do.
  • Use this as an important opportunity to help your child learn about time. Explain to him the sequence of events as they unfold over the course of a given day. Let him know what comes next in the day’s routine. Anticipate that you will have to remind him of this again and again. Begin to introduce him to the times at which different routine events, such as dinner-time, bath time or bedtime, happen.
  • Get into the habit of issuing a five minute warning. This is essential. You may also want to recognize and reflect on his feelings of resistance as you interrupt the moment: “I know you don’t want to leave right now, but we have to go.”
  • Be consistent. Don’t keep postponing and delaying the final transition to the next activity. If you have decided that it’s time to switch off the TV, and that it is now bath time or bedtime or dinner time, stick to it.



Reprinted with the permission of eScore.com, Inc., an online resource for parents of children newborn to age 14, helping parents fulfill their role as their child’s first and most important teacher. © 2000-2001