Every spring, the anxiety begins. Parents of four-year-olds start comparing notes at playgrounds and in preschool parking lots. Someone's child already knows all their letters. Another is sounding out words. A third can count to one hundred. And somewhere in the back of your mind, a quiet worry takes hold: Is my child ready? Have I done enough?

This anxiety is understandable. Kindergarten today often looks nothing like the kindergarten many parents remember—the one with housekeeping corners, sand tables, and ample time for play. Research from the University of Virginia found that in 1998, only 31 percent of kindergarten teachers expected children to be reading by year's end. By 2014, that figure had climbed to nearly 80 percent. The curriculum has shifted downward, and the pressure feels real.

But here's what the research consistently reveals, and what teachers know from years of welcoming five-year-olds into their classrooms: the skills that truly predict kindergarten success are not necessarily the ones parents obsess over. Yes, letter recognition helps. Counting matters. But ask kindergarten teachers what they most want in their incoming students, and they won't mention reading. They'll talk about something both simpler and more complex.

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When researchers at the National Center for Education Statistics surveyed a nationally representative sample of kindergarten teachers about what makes a child ready for school, the answers were illuminating. Teachers prioritized children being physically well-nourished and rested, able to communicate their needs verbally, curious and enthusiastic about new activities, capable of following directions and paying attention, and sensitive to other children's feelings. Very few endorsed what might seem like the obvious markers of readiness—knowing letters, counting to twenty, recognizing colors and shapes. Academic skills, it turns out, ranked far below social and emotional competencies.

This aligns with what developmental psychologists have been finding for decades. Dr. Clancy Blair, a professor of psychology at New York University who has spent his career studying school readiness, puts it this way: children are ready to start school when they have reached a point in development where they can manage their attention and emotions in ways that allow them to engage with learning activities. The ability to sit during story time, to wait for a turn, to recover from frustration when a block tower falls—these capacities form the bedrock on which academic learning is built.

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This doesn't mean academic foundations are irrelevant. A 2020 study in Pediatrics followed children from kindergarten through high school and found that early math skills and classroom engagement both predicted important outcomes years later, including grades, dropout risk, and even physical health. But the researchers noted that kindergarten classroom engagement—the ability to adjust to classroom demands and stay focused—was just as powerful a predictor as academic skills, and in some cases more so. Children who started school able to engage had better outcomes even after accounting for their baseline knowledge of numbers and letters.

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The science of self-regulation helps explain why. The prefrontal cortex—the part of the brain responsible for executive functions like working memory, impulse control, and flexible thinking—is still developing rapidly in young children. These capacities allow kids to hold information in mind while following multi-step directions, to inhibit the urge to blurt out an answer, to shift their attention when the teacher moves from one activity to another. Without these regulatory abilities, even a child who can recite the alphabet may struggle to apply that knowledge in a classroom setting.

Dr. Ross Thompson, a developmental psychologist at the University of California, Davis, has noted that limitations in self-regulation affect nearly every skill relevant to classroom achievement. You cannot do well in school if you are unable to manage your thinking, attention, emotions, and impulses. And while kindergarten teachers know how to teach letter sounds and number concepts, helping children develop age-appropriate self-regulation is often the more challenging task.

This is not to say that some children don't arrive at kindergarten with stronger self-regulation than others—they do. Temperament plays a role, as do early experiences. Children who have faced significant adversity may have more difficulty with attention and emotional control. But self-regulation is also something that develops over time and can be supported by parents, caregivers, and teachers. The brain's plasticity in early childhood means these skills can grow with the right kinds of experiences.

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So what does genuine kindergarten readiness actually look like? The American Academy of Pediatrics describes it as encompassing multiple domains: social-emotional development, cognitive abilities, language and communication, physical development, and approaches to learning. Rather than a checklist of discrete skills, readiness is better understood as a child's overall capacity to benefit from classroom instruction.

In practice, this means a child who can express their needs verbally—asking for help when something is hard, telling a teacher they need the bathroom—is better positioned than one who knows more facts but cannot communicate. A child who can follow two-step directions, like "put your backpack in your cubby and then come sit on the rug," has a practical advantage. A child who can engage with other children during play, taking turns and navigating small conflicts, will find the social landscape of school easier to traverse.

Physical readiness matters too, and it's often overlooked. Fine motor skills—the ability to hold a pencil with a functional grip, to cut with scissors, to manage small buttons or zippers—develop over time through play and practice. Occupational therapists note that children who begin writing before their hand muscles are ready may develop awkward pencil grasps that are difficult to correct later. The activities that build these muscles are often the most old-fashioned: playing with playdough, stringing beads, drawing and coloring, digging in sand. Gross motor development—running, jumping, climbing—also supports the core stability children need to sit in a chair and work at a desk.

Self-care skills deserve attention as well. Kindergarten teachers consistently mention toilet independence, handwashing, nose-blowing, and managing one's belongings as practical necessities. A child who can unzip their own lunch bag and open a carton of milk will feel more competent than one who needs adult help at every step.

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Here's a reassuring truth: children do not need to read before kindergarten. Data from large longitudinal studies show that at the start of kindergarten, very few children can read—most are still learning to recognize letters. By the end of third grade, the vast majority are reading. Kindergarten itself is designed to teach these skills. The idea that children must arrive already reading is a myth that creates unnecessary anxiety for families and can push children into academic instruction before they are developmentally ready.

The National Early Literacy Panel identified the skills that most strongly predict later reading success. Letter knowledge—recognizing the shapes and names of letters—is among them. So is phonological awareness, the ability to hear and play with the sounds in words, like recognizing that "cat" and "hat" rhyme or that "sun" starts with an "s" sound. Print awareness—understanding that text carries meaning, that books are read from left to right, that there's a difference between a letter and a word—provides important foundations. None of these require formal reading instruction. They develop naturally through being read to, singing songs, playing word games, and exploring books.

Similarly, children benefit from early exposure to mathematical thinking, but this does not mean drill or worksheets. Counting objects during everyday activities, noticing patterns, comparing sizes, sorting items by color or shape—these playful interactions build the number sense that kindergarten math instruction will draw upon. The goal is familiarity and curiosity, not mastery.

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If your child is headed to kindergarten in the coming months, the summer before can be a gentle time of preparation—emphasis on gentle. Read together daily, not because you're drilling skills but because shared reading builds vocabulary, listening comprehension, and the simple pleasure of stories. Let your child see you reading too. Talk constantly—on walks, in the car, at the grocery store—describing what you see, asking questions, wondering aloud together. Rich conversation builds the oral language that underlies everything else.

Practice the practical: buttoning shirts, zipping jackets, opening snack containers, using the bathroom independently. These unglamorous skills give children confidence. Establish routines that mirror the school day—consistent wake times, meal times, and bedtimes—so the transition feels less jarring. If possible, visit the school beforehand. Walk the route to the bus stop. Meet the teacher. Familiarity reduces anxiety for children and parents alike.

Play remains the most important work of early childhood. Through play, children develop the fine and gross motor skills they'll need, practice social negotiation with peers, exercise their imaginations, and build the attentional capacities that classroom learning demands. Resist the urge to fill the summer with academic prep. Let your child dig in the dirt, build with blocks, and make elaborate games with stuffed animals. This is what their brains need.

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There's one more thing worth remembering: readiness is not only about the child. The AAP emphasizes that school readiness includes the school's readiness for children. Kindergarten classrooms are designed to meet children where they are, to assess their abilities and build from there. Teachers are trained to work with children across a wide range of developmental levels. The fact that your child doesn't yet know all their letters or cannot write their name neatly is not a failure—it's normal variation, and schools expect it.

Four- and five-year-olds develop at wildly different rates. Some will arrive at kindergarten already sounding out words; others won't know the difference between a "b" and a "d." Both groups can thrive. The AAP has cautioned against using kindergarten readiness assessments as gatekeeping tests that determine whether children can enter school—such an approach, they note, places an unfair burden on children and ignores the societal inequities that shape early development. Schools should be ready for children, not the other way around.

So if your child is curious about the world, eager to make friends, able to tell you what they need, and willing to try new things even when they're hard—they are likely more ready than you think. The letters and numbers will come. The reading will follow. What your child brings to that first day of school is something harder to measure but perhaps more important: a willingness to learn, a capacity for connection, and the foundational ability to manage themselves in a new environment. These are the gifts that carry children forward, not just through kindergarten, but through all the years of learning ahead.

Sources

  • American Academy of Pediatrics. "School Readiness." Pediatrics, vol. 144, no. 2, 2019.
  • Blair, Clancy and C. Cybele Raver. "School Readiness and Self-Regulation: A Developmental Psychobiological Approach." Annual Review of Psychology, vol. 66, 2015, pp. 711-731.
  • Pagani, Linda S. et al. "Kindergarten Readiness, Later Health, and Social Costs." Pediatrics, vol. 146, no. 6, 2020.
  • National Early Literacy Panel. "Developing Early Literacy: Report of the National Early Literacy Panel." National Institute for Literacy, 2008.
  • Thompson, Ross. "Developing Self-regulation in Young Children: Lessons from Research." Head Start Early Childhood Learning & Knowledge Center, 2024.
  • Heaviside, Sheila and Elizabeth Farris. "Public School Kindergarten Teachers' Views on Children's Readiness for School." National Center for Education Statistics, 1993.
  • University of Virginia. "Is Kindergarten the New First Grade?" AERA Open, Bassok et al., 2016.
  • HealthyChildren.org. "Is Your Preschooler Ready for Kindergarten?" American Academy of Pediatrics.
  • Reading Rockets. "Learning to Read and Write: What Research Reveals." WETA Public Television.
  • EdSurge. "To Be Ready for Kindergarten, Teachers and Researchers Say Social-Emotional Skills Are Key." September 2024.