Does it matter that my daughter is immature?

[allhailtheaubergine]

She is 5.

Is is immature. I can see that. She is wriggly and giggly and has the attention span of a flea.

Her peers are now able to sit and complete a craft activity, for example, whereas she is not even close, not interested in the results, not able to sit still and concentrate. Her friends read and write notes to each other and do little girl things. Dd isn't there yet.

She is often called 'boyish' in that she has that giddy exuberance and silliness that tends to be more common in little boys of her age. She is very excitable and physical.

She is utterly perfect as she is in my opinion. But I'm perhaps not the most neutral observer.

Will she calm down in her own time?

Should I be helping her with this? Guiding her? I do intervene with things she has to do like learning to sit still and quiet and take turns at circle time and she tries really hard with this now, and I have praised her for it.

This post brought on by her absolutely lovely teacher mentioning that she is immature and boyish.

I am sure she is a pita sometimes. Not sure how I should feel about it all.

Did her teacher really use those words?

She's still young and is still developing. I teach her age group and if she was in my class I would be helping her to extend her attention span by setting achievable goals and lengthening the time gradually e.g. drawing a picture and spending 1 minute on it to start with. It needs to be something that will interest her, so drawing a picture of her family or something she enjoys doing.

It would help if you were doing the same at home, but not making a big deal out of it. Maybe get a sand egg timer and talk to her about doing an activity for as long as it takes for the sand to get all the way through (you can get different lengths of tine - 1, 3, 5 minutes).

It's important that you and her teacher are using a similar approach so have a meeting with her to agree on a strategy.

But like I said before, it's still early days in her development and they all find their feet at different times.

Don't worry about her not doing the same as the other girls; if that's not what she wants to do that's fine. Just give her time to find what she enjoys doing and you'll find she gives her own interests more focus.

Hope this makes sense. I've been up since 5!

My dd2 is also five, and she is very similar. Compared to her older sister, she is young for her age, and I am a bit concerned about her learning to read and write in school in september.

Apart from that, I'm not worried. She enjoys being her age and doesn't want to be any older, and I think that's lovely. She is lively but in a girly way - she loves her dolls and has announced to me that she will not learn to ride a bike until she is six and a half. Her giggliness and jumping around the house drive me mad sometimes though!

Yes she used those words, but she couched it in a nice way. I didn't feel affronted. It's just afterwards I find I am dwelling. It's not new information, just the first time someone has mentioned it to me outright.

Her teacher is good at encouraging her to stay focussed on a task. Other than homework I have tended to leave her be in the afternoons.