Development, Assessment, and Finding Balance in the Preschool Years

By Cozette Laubser |

The first six years of a child’s life offers a marvellously sensitive time to optimise brain and body development and with it the physical, emotional, social, and cognitive competencies that will remain with the child for the rest of their life.

Since these years lay the foundation for everything that follows, it is essential to ensure that the child spends their days in a nurturing environment—one that encourages abundant movement and provides age-appropriate and stimulating learning experiences.

When is assessment helpful in the preschool years?

Assessment can be valuable when it serves as an additional tool—complementing parents’ and educators’ ongoing observations and personal knowledge of the child—to provide deeper insight into how the child is progressing through various developmental stages.

• An occupational therapy screening in a preschool setting typically assesses the child’s big and small muscle development.
• A speech and language screening in a preschool setting typically evaluates a child’s communication skills.

When assessment reports are worded to be solution-driven and offer immediate, practical advice to address the challenge areas, they become wonderfully helpful.

In this light, assessment enhances developmental opportunities rather than competing with them.

If you are willing to put in the work, the reward will be magnificent… ~ Jean Ayres

The amount of assessment in the preschool years becomes worrisome when:

• It is excessive and takes time away from play-based learning – Preschoolers learn best through hands-on exploration and movement. If assessment begins to dominate the daily schedule, it limits opportunities for natural development.

• It creates unnecessary pressure on children, parents, and teachers – When assessments focus too much on identifying “problems” rather than supporting development, it can lead to stress and unrealistic expectations.

• It is not developmentally appropriate – Using assessment tools meant for older children on younger preschoolers may highlight challenges that are not actually delays but simply part of natural development.

With this in mind, it is crucial to emphasise that the preschool years should focus on age-appropriate and ongoing development as a lifestyle, rather than remediation as something that happens as an extra mural activity. For a healthy, typically developing child, these years are not meant for intensive remedial sessions but rather for playfully providing ample opportunity—both at home and at school—to develop fundamental skills that will remain important for life.

Setting the context and maintaining perspective

Effective communication between the school, the teachers, the parents, and the therapists/assessors is essential. A key starting point is to help parents understand that assessment reports are designed to highlight areas for improvement. As a result, they may sometimes come across as a long list of “problems,” which can be overwhelming and frankly devastating to some parents.

Using kind, considerate language that acknowledges the child as a unique and developing individual is not only respectful to the family receiving the report but also helps them better grasp and digest the “not so easy” parts of the assessment report.

It is also important to remember that young children by nature are unpredictable and may be uncooperative with an unfamiliar adult. A therapist or assessor’s ability to build rapport with a child in a short amount of time significantly impacts how productive the session is.

Other factors to consider:

• Did the child have a restful night before the assessment?
• Is the child healthy at the time of the assessment?
• Is the assessment conducted early in the morning?
• Did the child have a nutritious meal and feel energetic?
• Was the child prepared in advance, knowing they would be assessed and that it is okay to cooperate with an unfamiliar adult? Did they learn the assessor’s name beforehand?
• Children born later in the year may need more time to develop certain skills compared to peers born earlier in the year, who have had additional months to mature.

In closing

The preschool years offer a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a child to discover who they are and how they fit into this wondrous world. Assessments are most helpful when they are viewed as a tool to learn more about a child and the developmental opportunities they will benefit from most. Dialogue between the parent and teacher is invaluable in finding a more complete interpretation of the assessment report.

Ultimately, an assessment report should never be viewed as a definitive reflection of a child’s abilities or their long-term learning potential.