Coping with Your Child's First Day of School

A child's first day of school can give parents nightmares. For some parents the conflict between wanting their little darling to begin formal education and wanting to keep him or her at home can be daunting. Worries about how the child will react to the new environment is a primary concern for most parents. A few simple steps can ease the anxiety in both parent and child.

If you are one of those parents who has been a stay-at-home parent, you are used to being around your child continually. The separation caused by the first day of school can bring on emotions that are akin to grieving over the death of a loved one. So, the first step is to find ways to be apart in small increments before taking the big plunge. Several months before the start of the school year, begin to leave your child with relatives for an hour or two here and there throughout the week. Try not to do this so much that they start to dread your car pulling into the driveway.

Over time, find ways to extend this to three or four hours at a time three days per week. You can arrange play dates with his or her little friends or exchange times with other equally strong concerns about the first day of school. Once you can leave your child for four hours at a time, you are ready for the next step.

Work through friends, your church, or maybe a local preschool to find a way to get your little one into group settings with eight or more children. Working to increase your child's social skills will go a long way toward keeping him or her from sobbing profusely when you drop your offspring off in a room crowded with strangers.

Take advantage of any opportunities that your school offers for getting you and your child acquainted with the teacher and classroom where he or she will attend. Familiarity can really reduce the stress of the first day of school on your child and yourself. Both of you will benefit from believing that all will be well from the first moment.

Spend some time with your child making sure that all of the skills expected by the school by the start of the school year have been mastered. Every school will be different in this area. So, check with the school for this information. Things like counting, knowing most of the colors, names of body parts, and maybe the alphabet come to mind as things some schools look for in new students.

Get your child heavily involved in buying clothes and supplies for the first day of school. This will build an anticipation that going to school will be fun and exciting. Try not to tear up as you envision him or her on the first day of school. This will create a sense of concern in the child.

Try to arrange for another parent or two whose children are friends with yours to meet at the school and walk in together. This will keep your child from feeling that you are leaving him or her alone in a strange place filled with strange people. The children will go in as a group, and this should help keep homesickness from rearing up.

If you are friends with these parents, you might want to go out for coffee afterward to keep from going home to an empty house without your child. This will soften the blow for you.

Finally, be on time to pick your child up from school. You do not want him or her to feel abandoned and alone as all of the other children leave the room. Your little one will be looking for your smiling face right away. Make sure it can be seen.