5.5 year old boy doesn’t know the alphabet

[MrsG2017]

Hi everyone.

mildly panicking mummy here. We live in NZ and so our son has only just started school. He’s been in preschool since 6 months as I work long hours but in NZ it is all play now formal learning.

I am now feeling so terribly guilty that he’s got to nearly 6 and doesn’t know the alphabet.

We are returning to the UK at Xmas and I am so so sad for him that he will be almost two academic years behind his peers - feeling awful and wishing I’d done things differently.

does anyone have any good tips for getting a very hyper five year old to learn his abc’s ?? He just isn’t interested in doing any learning like that and I don’t want to force him but I also don’t want him falling behind so young

thank you all x

I'm in the UK, and don't feel that is particularly unusual.
You don't really need to be able to recite the alphabet very often in life. Yes, if you are using a dictionary (but that is much rarer than it used to be).

Do you mean he doesn't know his letters or he can't recite the alphabet?

For the alphabet, it's simply the case of hearing it. I remember my middle one impressing people by singing "ABCD" etc when she was only about 2yo. She hadn't a clue what it meant-it was just nonsense words that her sister was singing. It made no difference to her any more than being able to sing "humpty dumpty" or another song.
I don't think my ds (#3) knew his alphabet until he was well over 6yo. Otoh he could have told you every detail of Concorde before he was 3yo. Also a pretty useless skill.
If you mean alphabet then I wouldn't worry too much. If you want him to learn it then sing it to him, and see if he can join in, but I don't think it's a fundamental skill the teachers will be horrified to find he doesn't know.

If you mean letters, then it's not a bad idea to get him to start looking at them. if you can get Alphablocks in NZ that's an easy way to teach them. Or you can just do things like pointing out the first letter in his name and things like that.

Hi,
I agree with above poster. If it's the alphabet eg ABC I wouldn't be too concerned however knowing the lowercase letters and the sounds they 'make' would be beneficial. My daughter got really good at this with a cheap wooden puzzle. All the letters in the puzzle were lowercase and she loved me hiding them round the room and she'd find them and bring them back. I'd say 'oh well done you found the s (pronounced sss not es' and nothing more than that. She didn't see it as learning just a fun hide and seek game x