A child between the age of zero and five lives in a protective bubble. And that is a good thing because that little one needs to be surrounded by people that she trusts and that love her and will protect her at all costs. But even if that child has some siblings, those years are often relatively quiet and ones in which the majority of the people that child knows are primarily dedicated to one thing and that is satisfying all of her wants and needs.

Obviously this is not the kind of world that child will eventually live in. To say that very young children are spoiled is stating the obvious but that is natural and the way it should be. It is the task of older childhood and adolescence to begin to reprogram your children to live in a world the rules of social behavior are far more complex.

When that first day of kindergarten is approaching, every effort is put against getting the youngster heading out on his or her first big adventure out of the home. There is a lot to do. Between meeting with the teacher, buying clothes and school supplies and preparing the little one for the big challenge of being away from mom and dad for a few hours to a day at school, it’s a big step for the kiddo and for the family.

But what is often overlooked in this rush to prepare for kindergarten is there is a very important participant in the process who also needs to do some preparing. That person is mom.

When you think of it that five years from the birth of that angel from heaven until he or she walks out that door for kindergarten is a pretty intense period of closeness and bonding. For virtually every waking minute of those years, mom is aware of that child, helping her, taking care of her and keeping her safe and healthy every step of the way.

For a young child, making friends with children her age is probably the most important step in developing relationships outside the family that your little one can do. Psychologists tell us that about the time most children begin to go to kindergarten is also the time when they first begin to understand the separation of the world from family and that relationships outside the family are desirable.

When a child is in infancy, the entire world revolves around mom and dad and her siblings. They want for little else and the love and approval of parents, brothers and sisters is all that baby lives for. But it is about the age she is ready to go to school that the interest in friends separate from family begins to surface in most children. This is helpful because the development of friendships at school will also be the one thing that will most ease the difficulty from the life of living at home and going off to school each day.

Preparations for Kindergarten can get pretty involved. They would include making sure your child has the right clothes, looking into the right schools for your little one and helping the teacher have all the school supplies she needs. But preparing your child emotionally to set out on this big adventure is one of the biggest challenges of preparing for kindergarten.

Actually, the task of making sure your little one goes off to have a great first day at school experience doesn’t start with the child. It starts with you. Children take their clues from mom and dad. And very often it is mom who is on the front lines of this first step of guiding her baby through the many twists and turns of public education. And as much as a child might experience some nervousness and anxiety about the big change that is coming, mom may be the one that feels anxious about this next big step in the life of her child.