Progress Report

[Phoebe]

My daughter brought home a progress report from her teacher's at her MDO program. One of the comments said my daughter is very quiet and only plays by herself or one other girl. She isn't quiet at home or around neighborhood friends. She hasn't had any problems joining groups, but she may be a little shy.

Given this situation, I just signed my daughter up for preschool next fall. My neighbor would like our daughters (with the same name) who play together to be placed in the same class next fall. If it happened it wouldn't bother me, but I am unsure if I should specifically request this based on the comments her teacher made. I would like to give her the experience of socializing and making new friends. Have you had positive or negative experiences placing friends in the same class at the preschool age? Am I worrying about nothing since she may totally change her ways in the next 8 months?

Jennifer

[SueC]

I'm not quite sure about whether or not she should be in the same class with her playmate--I can say that my oldest was very shy in new situations and being in a preschool program without her regular playmates did really help her to come out of her shell a bit. I don't know if having her other playmates would have hindered her or not--I suspect she may have used them as sort of a crutch if they had been there. I'll add this disclaimer since when I brought up shyness once I was kind of given a hard time by those that thought I felt being shy was a problem that I needed to "fix": I think there's a difference between being a shy child who prefers to keep to themselves and one who wants to participate but is afraid. I could tell just by watching my daughter that she really wanted to be a part of things but she just wasn't sure how to join in. I found that I needed to actually give her the words to say, and on the way to school we would talk about how she could approach a child that she wanted to play with and what she could say. Over time, I imagine this was met with one positive experience after another and she eventually she started initiating play on her own. That said, I know she'll always be a little reserved in an unfamiliar situation, and that's OK.