If the phrase “kindergarten readiness” sends you into a spiral of flashcards and phonics drills, this one’s for you.

In this follow-up episode, I chat with Susie Allison (@busytoddler), former kindergarten teacher and mom of three, to reframe how we think about school prep. Spoiler: it’s not about who can write their name in cursive or recite the alphabet backwards.

We talk about:

• Why academic checklists miss the bigger picture

• The real skills that help kids thrive in school (like asking for help and taking turns)

• Why earlier isn’t always better when it comes to reading

• How to raise kind, confident kids without burning yourself out trying to be their full-time teacher

Whether your child is starting kindergarten soon or you’re just feeling the pressure to “keep up,” this episode is your permission slip to focus on what actually matters.

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00;00;00;02 – 00;00;20;23

Dr. Mona

Welcome to the follow up. Bite sized flashbacks of your favorite episodes from the PedsDocTalk podcast. In faster time it takes to de-escalate a tantrum with a strong willed two year old. Yes, I’ve been there. I’m Doctor Mona, pediatrician mom, and someone whose kid can’t read yet but is starting kindergarten. If that sentence makes you sweat a little.

 

00;00;20;27 – 00;00;39;22

Dr. Mona

You’re in the right place. I wanted to revisit this episode because, yes, readiness matters and my son is starting kindergarten. But when we talk about readiness, we focus way too much on academic skills. My son can’t fully read yet, and I’m not sweating it because comparison. That’s what quietly chips away at the joy of watching our kids grow.

 

00;00;39;29 – 00;01;03;23

Dr. Mona

We get so caught up in checklists we forget what actually sets them up for success. So today I’m joined again by Susie Allison, former kindergarten teacher and creator of Busy Toddler. We talk about what kindergarten readiness really means, why the pressure has gotten out of control, and what your child actually needs before they step into school. Hint it’s not knowing how to write in cursive before you spiral into a flashcard frenzy.

 

00;01;03;27 – 00;01;23;21

Dr. Mona

Take a deep breath and press play. And don’t forget to follow and subscribe. It helps the show grow and reminds the world that raising kind, capable humans matters more than memorizing the alphabet by age three. Also a good skill. But let’s also remember the big perspective. Let’s get into it.

 

00;01;23;24 – 00;01;42;10

Susie Allison

When we’re thinking about kindergarten, and what I hear from a lot of kindergarten teachers is they say, I can teach that. I can teach that really fast. I can teach your child their letters really fast. I can teach them that pattern of counting really fast. Here’s what I can’t teach them. It’s a lot harder in a group of 20 kindergartners for me to teach your child how to win and lose graciously.

 

00;01;42;12 – 00;02;07;07

Susie Allison

It’s a lot easier for me to teach your child what a shape looks like, than it is for me to teach your child how to ask an adult questions, right? And so if we could shift the narrative on kindergarten readiness away from I want to have these really flashcard skills down into, I want to make sure that my child’s first step into a seriously independent situation is successful.

 

00;02;07;07 – 00;02;33;16

Susie Allison

And really, that’s what we should be looking at kindergarten in the public school system, as this is your child’s. Even if they’ve gone to daycare their whole life, this really is their first step into this very independent world where they’re going to create a world very separate from you. And again, not trying to put your heartstrings or make you feel different, but they start to build their own life and they start to pull away a little bit, and they will have their own jokes and they will have their own life at school.

 

00;02;33;17 – 00;02;57;20

Susie Allison

So if we can look at kindergarten readiness and say, this is a lot more than just are they able to rapidly recall the sound the letter C makes and instead say, are they able to go up to an adult and confidently say, I need help? Because those are very different skills and at home I can help them much easier than a teacher can.

 

00;02;57;21 – 00;02;59;02

Susie Allison

On learning those kind of skills.

 

00;02;59;03 – 00;03;16;08

Dr. Mona

But yes, in your experience as a kindergarten teacher and a mother and what you’re seeing on social and just what you’re seeing in the world, what would you say? Like here here is your checklist. Here is here’s your checklist readiness checklist from Susie Allison busy toddler master’s education. Like it’s so I love this I would love to hear that.

 

00;03;16;10 – 00;03;36;18

Susie Allison

All right. So I’m just going to run down my list. So my list is I would love if every child could come into kindergarten. Again I’m not going to say master these skills, developing these skills because we’re all in different paths. We’re we’re honoring the child. And what we’re doing here is we’re trying to develop the child as an independent person and a thoughtful thinker.

 

00;03;36;21 – 00;03;53;16

Susie Allison

That’s what we’re trying to do here, because that is the foundation. Once we have a really good foundation like that going into kindergarten, then we can put up all of the walls. We think about education like a house. Yeah. These readiness skills are the foundation. And then from there, that foundation is what’s going to hold up the walls of academics.

 

00;03;53;23 – 00;04;15;04

Susie Allison

But if we just start throwing up the walls in that toddler and preschool years without a solid foundation, it will eventually crack and crumble. And you know, the shortcuts we’ve taken, they won’t actually come out as great as we hope they would. So here’s my kindergarten Readiness checklist checklist very heavily in quotes. So I would love if your child can learn to follow a multi-step direction.

 

00;04;15;06 – 00;04;30;06

Susie Allison

Can you give them a bunch of steps at home and see if they can follow all of those steps? And note how many steps they can follow before they kind of start to Peter off? Because at school, we have them come in each day and we say things like, take off your coat, put it in the cubby, pick up a book and meet me on the rug.

 

00;04;30;08 – 00;04;52;27

Susie Allison

And I just gave you four directions. Rapid fire to 20 people. And I’m hoping you can follow most of them. So that’s going to happen a lot at school. And so what you can do at home is just really help grow that skill. Learning to speak to an adult. And this is hard. This is one that I think is just a big emphasis item, especially in the preschool years as language has really developed.

 

00;04;53;04 – 00;05;09;29

Susie Allison

There are so many adults in school and so many adults, your child will come into contact with that. Maybe they don’t have a personal relationship with like they do the teacher or the PE teacher, or the music teacher. They need to feel confident going up to an adult and saying, I need help, or I need an assistance, or I need this.

 

00;05;10;00 – 00;05;26;06

Susie Allison

Ask a question. So what you can do to help with that is when you go to the grocery store, when you go to target, when you go to the zoo, let your child be the one that goes up to the docent and says, excuse me, which way do I get to the monkeys? Or we are needing help finding broccoli.

 

00;05;26;06 – 00;05;50;20

Susie Allison

Could you point us toward the broccoli and help your child to be confident in asking questions to an adult? That’s such a big one. Love it. And then another big one. And I don’t want to get too wordy here, but problems happen at school and kids need to know how to solve those problems. So having 2 to 3 ideas of how you could solve a problem is really important, because at school, there isn’t a parent to just hear the kids fighting and swoop in.

 

00;05;50;23 – 00;06;07;18

Susie Allison

Obviously, I’m going to swoop in as a teacher for safety issues, but I’m also going to try to let these kids work it out and that means that your child needs to have some skills. Do they walk away? Do they use the word stop? Are they capable of saying, let’s make a new deal or let’s go to a different game?

 

00;06;07;21 – 00;06;23;26

Susie Allison

They need to start developing those skills at home, and that starts with you as the parent modeling. How do you handle conflict? How do you resolve peer issues even if your child is a single child at home? You can just have these conversations as social stories, you know, let’s pretend a friend took your toy. What do you do?

 

00;06;23;28 – 00;06;40;08

Susie Allison

And then unpack that with them. Talk to them about what would you do if your friend took a toy? And if they don’t know, say, well, this is what I would do. And start having that conversation with them over and over and over again as you drive in the car, have dinner, and then the last one that I want to share because it’s about sharing.

 

00;06;40;10 – 00;06;56;17

Susie Allison

Learn how to share and take turns. And in these early years, the toddler and preschool years, we know that for sharing doesn’t work. We know we can’t walk up to a kid and say, your turn is over. You need to give up the toys. And we also understand ownership, and we understand developmentally that sharing is hard for kids to grasp.

 

00;06;56;19 – 00;07;18;17

Susie Allison

When we move to a school setting. Everything there is communal. So this idea that this is my toy and I get to keep this. It goes away. So we need to start practicing. The playground is a great place to do that because it’s also a communal space. And teaching them those phrases to help them understand how do I get a toy if someone else is using it?

 

00;07;18;17 – 00;07;35;22

Susie Allison

And what do I do if somebody wants my toy? And the phrases I always have taught my kids is when you’re done, can I have a turn? And I say that all the time. Oh, remember, tell them when you’re done. Can I have a turn? And then we work with the other child on saying yes. When I’m done, you can have a turn.

 

00;07;35;23 – 00;07;54;13

Susie Allison

And that sounds so simple, but it is an unbelievably powerful phrase in the school system for kids to come in knowing that so that when they get to the tetherball, when they get to the excuse, when they’re at the pattern blocks that they can say to another child, when you’re done, can I have a turn? And oftentimes a kid will say, you know, I’m done right now and just get up and leave or they’ll say, yeah, when I’m done.

 

00;07;54;13 – 00;08;10;28

Susie Allison

You can have a parent and kids are actually pretty good at remembering. Then another kid wanted to turn. And when they’re done, especially in kindergarten, they’ll turn and they’ll say, hey, I’m done. You can come on over and give up that toy. That’s just a few of the readiness skills that I have listed on my website, because I could literally talk here for like an hour on all these different skills.

 

00;08;11;00 – 00;08;50;07

Susie Allison

But just to say that we focus so much on basic academics and you can see that the skills I just listed are much higher level skills. These take some serious thinking and serious social skills and cognitive development. So much more than being able to just look at a flashcard and say that’s the number four. So if you’re bogged down and weighted down because maybe your child isn’t memorizing those skills as fast, there are other skills that I bet your child has that are going to set them up on a great path for kindergarten readiness, and maybe shift your focus over to those and let the teacher, the trained professional in educating young children, handle

 

00;08;50;07 – 00;08;56;00

Susie Allison

the academic stuff, and we can just turn our focus back to raising really good, awesome kids.

 

00;08;56;02 – 00;09;16;26

Dr. Mona

Oh, I love it. And I love your metaphor of the house, because that is just such an important way of understanding this concept and the things that you mentioned. Not only are they important, just skills, personality traits, you know, coping skills in a way, but they’re just so important as an adult to write, like all the things you just mentioned, I think about it as an adult, and it doesn’t really matter that I know how to write.

 

00;09;16;28 – 00;09;33;11

Dr. Mona

I mean, it’s good. Okay, fine. It’s a great skill. Yeah, it’s a great skill. Reading. I understand we need to read. That’s important, but it’s not my value. You know, I value how I know how to take turns with people I know how to share things. I know how to speak to other adults. You know, obviously, whether they’re older or younger doesn’t matter.

 

00;09;33;11 – 00;09;57;03

Dr. Mona

But all of these are just important life skills which come down to parents. A lot of you’re going to learn these things in a school setting, and it’ll be obviously tweaked and stuff like that, but I love that. I love that we’re focusing on the power we have as parents to parents and teach the life skills and of course, I love that you also say this because we should be focusing on these things and leaving it to educators and just trusting our educators.

 

00;09;57;03 – 00;10;14;20

Dr. Mona

Hopefully, if we can trust in a good school and a system that hopefully is good, that we can trust them and say, hey, look like I’m doing this part, you’re going to help me with this part. And if you need my help with, obviously if we’re seeing that there needs to be reading help down the line or writing help down the line, I’m going to be there and I’m going to help.

 

00;10;14;20 – 00;10;30;16

Dr. Mona

But it’s such a team effort with all of this, and I hope that that takes a lot of pressure off of a lot of our parents listening, that you can’t do everything, you cannot be the teacher. Like, I think even in the toddler years, you know, I think, like I love the activities you put on your website or on your account.

 

00;10;30;16 – 00;10;51;21

Dr. Mona

But I also remind families that you don’t have to do every single activity. You’re choosing things that you love, and you don’t have to be a teacher. Like, I’m not a teacher, I’m a pediatrician, I’m a mother. I know things that I know, and I think when we start to get into that comparison game or I need to do everything for my kid and it has to be me, you’re going to spread yourself thin because you can’t be a gourmet chef.

 

00;10;51;21 – 00;11;05;00

Dr. Mona

You can’t know everything about health. You have to rely on the people that are experts in that field to help you as your quote unquote, village, if you want to use that terminology. But I love how you phrase all of this is so important for everyone to hear.

 

00;11;05;03 – 00;11;25;15

Susie Allison

Thank you so much for just tuning my horn this morning. I’m just getting no, you know, going back to what you said, what you said is just this isn’t just about kindergarten readiness. This is about life readiness. And I wish we could stop looking at kindergarten. Like I said in the beginning as this end goal and instead, say, kindergarten is the first chance that they’re going to have to be this really independent human.

 

00;11;25;15 – 00;11;46;20

Susie Allison

And I’m going to set them up as much as I can to be an independent human. Because as great as knowing letters is, and of course, know your letters and grade is knowing numbers aren’t, that isn’t going to help a child be able to sit through the rigors of school or, you know, be able to cope with some of the challenges and the life issues that come up.

 

00;11;46;20 – 00;12;07;18

Susie Allison

It’s we really want to make sure as parents that we are setting them up for success and earlier is better, is not going to set them up for the kind of success that can really set them up. You know, long term, when we have a child that knows how to win and lose and knows that losing isn’t a failure and isn’t a reflection of them and knows they can try again, that’s so powerful.

 

00;12;07;18 – 00;12;28;05

Susie Allison

And if you think of how that’s going to translate to that child in middle school and in high school, it’s going to translate a lot more than, well, they knew their alphabet at two. So, you know, there’s just so much more out there that we can teach them than boiling ourselves down to flashcards.

 

00;12;28;08 – 00;12;49;16

Dr. Mona

And that’s your follow up. Just a small dose of the real, relatable and eye opening conversations we love to have here. If you smiled, nodded, or had an moment, go ahead and download, follow and share this episode with a friend. Let’s grow this village together for more everyday parenting wins and real talk. Hang out with us on Instagram @thePedsDocTalkpodcast.

 

00;12;49;23 – 00;13;05;08

Dr. Mona

Want more? Dive into the full episode and more at PedsDocTalk.com. Because parenting is better with support. And remember, consistency is key. Humor is medicine and follow ups are everything. I’m Doctor Mona. See you next time for your next dose.