How to Deal with Children Adjustment Period Positively
As we all know one of the important milestones of any young child's life is attendance in a group care setting. However, this step has always been a hard period for either the child or the parents. The beginning of school year has always been a period of time full with anxiety, fear, tears and tantrums for everyone. Families, as well as teachers in early childhood institution have come to recognize this period as a period of adjustment. Both of parents and teachers will have to deal with crying and frightened students in the first few weeks of their adjustment time. The crying behaviour could sometimes even last longer than merely few days. This anxiety and fear are very common feelings, not necessarily to very young learners; sometimes the bigger ones experience this also. It even happens to us adult. Let us take our first experience taking on airplane flight as an example. We probably had feelings of fear and anxiety as well. The same feeling happens to your child when they first learn that they are going to go to school. However for us adult, we are able to cope with our fear, because we have learned to anticipate and imagine what lay on the other side of that flight. A child's first venture from home is just as dramatic, but for him, the "other side of the flight" is a blank page. It is the parents' responsibility as their first circle educators to fill in the pictures to help them adjust with their first "flight" experience.
You can help your child filling the pictures in their blank sheet with talking about his new school. Discuss about their new friends, classrooms, teachers, playgrounds and give them the sense of excitement of their school. Be sensitive! Accept his fears with empathy and understanding, rather than dismissing or making light of them. Remember it's a HUGE thing for your child. Lines like " I know it feels scary when we go to a new place for the first time, it happens to me as well," will surely sooth and give him reassurance that it is okay to have fear.
The use of dramatic play, storybooks and simple games could also help in assisting children to work through their anxieties as they pretend to take a bus or find their cubby at the new school and help them understand that it is alright to feel sad and afraid, but also that things generally work out just fine as they listen to other characters in books who are also starting a new school.
Involving the whole family in child's first day of school might contribute a big help for him to adjust. It makes going to school becoming more real when all the important people in his life share in this new experience. Let him also take his favourite toy or comfort object to school. It is not for us to decide, but let the child decide when he does not need it anymore. Those toys or objects are their link to home to help them feel more secure.
Be prepared for child who seems to be okay and to have made a good adjustment suddenly announces that he is not going to school. This delayed reaction is really a normal, predictable reaction on the part of the child. It comes from his realization that going to school every day is not a temporary arrangement. If you understand why your child is suddenly balking, then you definitely can deal with it.
Hope everybody could have a less stress adjusting time!
You can help your child filling the pictures in their blank sheet with talking about his new school. Discuss about their new friends, classrooms, teachers, playgrounds and give them the sense of excitement of their school. Be sensitive! Accept his fears with empathy and understanding, rather than dismissing or making light of them. Remember it's a HUGE thing for your child. Lines like " I know it feels scary when we go to a new place for the first time, it happens to me as well," will surely sooth and give him reassurance that it is okay to have fear.
The use of dramatic play, storybooks and simple games could also help in assisting children to work through their anxieties as they pretend to take a bus or find their cubby at the new school and help them understand that it is alright to feel sad and afraid, but also that things generally work out just fine as they listen to other characters in books who are also starting a new school.
Involving the whole family in child's first day of school might contribute a big help for him to adjust. It makes going to school becoming more real when all the important people in his life share in this new experience. Let him also take his favourite toy or comfort object to school. It is not for us to decide, but let the child decide when he does not need it anymore. Those toys or objects are their link to home to help them feel more secure.
Be prepared for child who seems to be okay and to have made a good adjustment suddenly announces that he is not going to school. This delayed reaction is really a normal, predictable reaction on the part of the child. It comes from his realization that going to school every day is not a temporary arrangement. If you understand why your child is suddenly balking, then you definitely can deal with it.
Hope everybody could have a less stress adjusting time!
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