The Emotional Roller-Coaster of the First Day of School -                     Learning from my experience; By Janet Powell  

The event parents anticipate with joy or dread – the day their first-born starts school – can be a very emotional time. And I don’t just mean for your child. Many of the tears shed on this day come from mothers. I know – I shed a few myself. 

When my eldest child, Christopher, went to kindergarten he seemed fine when I left him. He wasn’t one of those children who cried and clung to Mummy. So naturally I assumed that when he started school, it would be the same. He was ready to start school, I thought, and the kinder teacher agreed with me.

Now Chris was the first grandchild for both sets of grandparents, so everything he did was a first for all of us. He was doted on and responded enthusiastically to the attention. We started talking about school months ahead of time, to get him used to the idea, and because we were all very excited about it. We would say, at different times, things like:“Isn’t it wonderful you’re starting school in three months (nine weeks, six weeks, two weeks, three days, one sleep). You’ll learn to read and write. You’ll make lots of new friends. Aren’t you excited?” 

BIG MISTAKE!!!! 

Day One of school came and off I went with my new schoolboy, my kinder girl, and baby. What a performance just to get there on time! But we made it and I took Chris into his classroom, where I stayed for the time deemed suitable by the teacher. Then all of the mums who could stay went into the multi-purpose room for a cup of tea or coffee and to cry together. Our babies had turned into school-children!

But this mutual comforting didn’t last long, as Chris’s teacher came to ask me to return to the classroom. Chris was asking for me, and not settling. So I stayed with him for a little while until he seemed okay, then back to the other mums. I played this yo-yo game to and from the classroom a couple more times, until Chris’s teacher suggested that it would be best if I took Chris home. She spoke to him and made him promise that the next day he would stay at school with the other children until it was time to go home.

So Chris, his brother and sister and I went back home. His first day of school had lasted approximately one hour! He was so overwhelmed that he went to bed and slept for two hours. When Chris woke up and we had a chat about the morning’s events, he stunned me by saying:“Well I’ve been to school and I still can’t read or write!”And with that, he went outside to the sandpit and played with his Tonka truck. 

The lessons in this for me?    

-      Don’t make a big deal of the first day of school

-      Be careful what you say as children take you literally.

 Of course I wanted to talk about starting school with Chris and prepare him, but all I managed to do was build it up to be a huge event and scare him! I took a different approach with my other two children and it paid off. I talked to them about the practical things, like playtime, where the toilets were and having lunch, in a positive but matter-of-fact way. And I worded up the grandparents to follow suit! We were much more casual about the transition, without neglecting to pass on important information.

I also realised that young children don’t have well-developed time awareness and they don’t understand that they will be at school for about thirteen years. Mind you, I wouldn’t be telling a “preppie” that, it would really scare him or her!

Several of Chris’s classmates had little set-backs a few weeks or months after starting school, because they thought they’d done enough and it was time to move on. I guess helping Christopher understand the process of gradual learning could have been part of the preparation for school. 

You’ll be pleased to know that Chris did go to school the next day and stayed until home-time. And that was twenty-five years ago!!