After a nice relaxing holiday, our daycare and preschool in Mowbray is more than ready to open our doors and welcome our little students back for their 2021 year!
For some students, this could be their first time at “big” school, and they may feel a little anxious or sad when it comes to dropping them off.
Some mild anxiety and tears are normal when saying goodbye, after all you are the only person your child feels completely safe with.
However, there are ways to stop drop-off tears from becoming a learned behaviour as the school year progresses.
Here are a few tips to help improve your mornings and dodge the dreaded drop-off tears. Please note that all information provided is based on years of teaching in a preschool classroom, many hours of which have been dedicated to receiving children from their parents.
As a parent, you are the model that your child will learn a lot of its behaviours from. Before you can make any real positive changes to drop-off time, you will need to make sure that YOUR behaviour is positive and healthy.
The #number1 factor in having a positive / negative drop-off experience is for YOU to be positive.
Although this does sound like a strange statement, it’s often the parent who creates their child’s anxiety for the child.
It’s important to self-reflect and answer some often-tough questions.
Do you subconsciously appreciate the feeling that your child doesn’t want you to leave? Does this make you feel wanted as a parent?
Whether it’s subconsciously or consciously, it’s totally ok to feel this way your child feels the safest with you and is prepared to cry and fight to stay with you.
However, you need to decide that you want your child to be happy to say goodbye to you and excited to see their friends and appreciate that this won’t make you any less than their favourite person on earth.
Before school, it’s important to create a positive expectation about the experience your child will have that day.
Instead of discussing how you might only have enough time for 10 hugs that morning, rather discuss what your child feels like painting that day or what they will do during their free play session.
The way you communicate with your child before school is another big factor that influences the way their drop-off will go down.
Always be mindful of the language you use when communicating about school as this will directly impact their experiences.
For example, when you say goodbye to your child do you say “Have a lovely day my Love Bug. Love you”. Or do you say “Don’t worry my Love Bug. Momma will be back before you know it. I won’t be gone for long. Everything will be ok. Here hold Momma’s bracelet for her while you’re at school.”
You can immediately tell which is the more positive. We automatically want to tell our children it’s going to be ok, but we then leave them wondering if something is supposed to go wrong.
Another example, during drop-off when your child is clutching you, do not say to the teacher “Emma won’t let go. It’s going to be tough leaving here today. I going to need to stay longer because she is very emotional today.”
It’s also important to not have conversations with friends and family in front of your child where you tell them just how scared your child is at school.
Parents use this kind of language in front of their children daily and it affects their child’s confidence as a result.
Parents often forget that they are the actual parents and that they are the ones who make the rules.
Create a drop-off rule and implement it and don’t budge. Your child may want you stay longer, but this does not mean you have to. You know better.
You can say no. Say it compassionately and stick to your rules.
If separation has been tough for a while, the only way to break the cycle is to rip it like a band-aid. Doing it slowly will be torture and won’t work.
It’s important to have a firm conversation with your child. Explain that school is a lovely place and that you’ll only be dropping off and giving one big squeeze before leaving them at school for the day.
In the beginning, there may be buckets of tears, but these will disappear very quickly as your child realised that the new routine is here to stay.
Do not give in and stay for 10 minutes on a “bad day” or you’ll be back at square one.
After 2 – 3 days your child will surrender and accept that school is not really that bad, mom still loves me, and the mornings are much more fun.
We are really looking forward to meeting our new students and providing them with the best learning environment possible.
For more information about our curriculum or preschool, please contact us.
Get the latest updates in your email box automatically.
Your nickname:
Email address:
Subscribe