My child is in kindergarten. He loves it. Every morning he races off to class with his knapsack bouncing all over the place. He can’t wait to get there every morning, and when we do I wave to him before I leave although usually he’s not paying attention to me anyway; he’s too busy clowning around for the other kids. :rolleyes:
Every morning, usually as I’m heading out, I pass a boy and girl who usually come in flanked by their parents. They are in different classes - but both of them are usually bawling. They cry, cling to their parents and generally have to be peeled off, reassured and physically put in their classrooms. Every morning this goes on. I haven’t noticed it’s gotten any better as the school year has progressed.
I’m an anxious, overprotective mother if there ever was one, but as my other children came along I had to learn to adjust. I’ve made some changes and adjustments in my attitude over the years and have really made conscious efforts to foster their independence.
I guess I’m just really curious as to why this continues to happen. I wonder why these two kids have such an ordeal every morning when they go to school. I feel bad for them because clearly they are very distressed each and every morning. The poor kids always have tears running down their faces and are doing the I’m-barely-holding-it-in hiccups.
The father has varying reactions. Sometimes he will just lean his face in his hand or shake his head in exasperation. Once he stalked off in the other direction while the little girl ran after him and had to be taken back to class. Sometimes he does the reassuring thing that the mother does and then one takes one to class, the other takes the other child to that one’s classroom.
Okay. I admit to sort of, eh, stalling around and watching out of busybody curiosity. There are lots of kids who have issues with going to school for the first time and sure, there were lots of tears the first few days while the kids adjusted to the new routine. But most of the kids who had some tears the first few days now don’t bat an eye when they waltz into the school.
But it seems to be more serious for these two and it hasn’t gotten any better. I know there’s nothing I can do. It’s really none of my business and I feel kind of guilty for looking on when I really should be getting a move on. But it’s obviously a big deal for these kids and I just wonder - did any of you Doper parents have similar experiences when your kids went to school?
My kids both loved going to preschool and school. They had both been in a cozy daycare situation since they were babies, though. My gameplan has always been a quick smooch and away, even on the rare occasions that they were unhappy. Prolonging it only rewards the behavior, in my opinion.
I haven’t seen it too often, especially in kids old enough to go to kindergarten. My daughter, who is 8, does have one friend who has always been very clingy with her mom, though, even to the point of tears. I’m not sure why, except that she was an “oops” baby born about 15 years after her sister and is definitely Mommy’s pet. She’s fine when her mom is not around and, from my experience, those kids are probably fine, too. Some kids just have more trouble with transitions from one activity to another than others do.
I cried every day for the first 6 weeks or so of kindergarten, WAY longer than any of the other kids. I had a tremendous amount of separation anxiety and my mom rarely left me with anyone when I was young, so I was traumatized. Of course by that age (5) I had already been fully indoctrinated with the concept that the Antichrist was going to show up any day and kill our family because my dad was a God’s prophet, so I was kind of concerned about martyrdom and the end of the world, and I wanted to be with my mom when it all went down. My mom had to spank me or threaten to spank me every day until mid-October to keep me from running away from the school and trying to come home with her.
So maybe those kids have religious lunatics or similar unfit jackasses for parents.
I have no idea why they’d still be getting that upset if they’ve been in school more than a few weeks – unless they never were away from their parents before, or something like that, like cbawlmer said.
I was the one who took off down the hall to the classroom on my first day of preschool without a backwards glance. My mom is still mad at me about that.
Eh, for some of us it never gets better. When from the very beginning you realize that it’s an establishment that society uses to keep all the kids in one place and not, as advertised, a place to learn - the sheer cynicism makes your heart twist and your stomach turn.
Honestly, I’ve been through probably 18 years of school, and haven’t yet learned a thing I was taught. I’ve always considered it to be a place where you have to show up every day, do piles of useless busywork, just so that you can find out the whatever the short curriculum list is. Once you have that list for any particular class, you spend a couple hours (to a few days, in case of harder classes) on your own learning the semester’s worth of data and take the final… Unfortunately you can only realize what you have to learn towards the end of the semester. I tried extrapolating it from homework, but it just takes too damn long.
Every time now that I walk into any sort of class, a seminar, a training session or a meeting , I’m bawling on the inside. Trust me.
My guess would be this is the crying kid’s basic temperment. Some kids are slow to warm up to new situations, have difficulty with transition times, and are generally immature for their age. Parents can modify things a bit, but a shy, slow-to-warm-up kid is probably always going to be like that to some extent.
Wait until you have a second child in this situation, silver1, before you credit your child’s actions to something you are doing or not doing.
I gave myself all sorts of credit and or blame for my first child’s behavior. Then number 2 and 3 came along. I did the same stuff, they did all sorts of stuff my first never did.
Look, I know this sounds weird, but I’m wondering if what the dog training manuals tell us to do for a puppy with seperation anxiety is the right thing in this case: The parent should simply walk away. Some of my manuals say to comfort is to actually encourage the behavior-- you’re giving hugs and sweet words, tacitly encouraging more turmoil in order to get that reward.
Not that I’m saying the child is in some way faking this. No, I think she’s genuinely distressed, but she’s trained herself to do this. If the parents simply kissed her on the forehead and walked away for about a month or so, i wonder if this behavior would change, especially if the teacher was in league and helped to quickly distract her.
Sooner or later, her peers are going to start teasing her about this, which can either encourage her to quit it out of embarassment, or make her anxiety worse.
Lissa, you’re not far off. If there’s one thing Supernanny has taught us , it’s that kids respond positively to loving limits.
There are so many things that could be at work here. Temperment, yes. That can play a part. Lack of a consistent morning routine, no or poor breakfast or sleep habits, being rushed in the morning - all can play a part.
I find your description of the father’s actions revealing, though. The poor man is obviously overwhelmed, and wants to make things work more smoothly. But it sounds as if he’s trying to acheive that by emotionally distancing himslef, while physically remaining to offer those positive reinforcements Lissa’s talking about.
If I were in his shoes, I’d get down to eye level with the kid and be fully present for just a few moments. Making eye contact, I’d say “I love you very much. It’s time for you to go to school. I will meet you here at 3:00 when school is done. I love you. Have a great day.” Hug. Leave.
Given a well-rested, well-fed, not rushed kid, the temperment of the kid is not so important. But we often think we’re “being there” for our kids when really they are just one more hurdle to jump before we can get on with our morning. When things don’t go smoothly, we get anxious, and impatient. We roll our eyes, breathe loudly, and may look above their heads or at the ceiling instead of in their eyes. We fairly ooze “I don’t like this and I don’t like YOU” vibes. They sense that, and that makes them very anxious. They want to cling and give us hugs so we like them again.
Remember, when they’re stressed, they’re still working with their monkey brains: Mommy and Daddy mad and going away = abandonment and starvation and death. We have to acknowledge their monkey brains while nurturing their human ones.
My mom went through hell getting me to go to school in first grade, but the battle was getting me to go and wait for the bus. Once the bus arrived, I felt strangely compelled to get on, so the struggle wasn’t quite as public.
My first grade teacher was evil. E-V-I-L. I was bored in class and had a hard time paying attention, so it looked like I was lost and not able to follow the material. (I was usually reading ahead in the book.) My report card said “Unable to understand and follow directions,” because the directions called for something boring and tedious and I was always doing things I thought were interesting and creative, something perhaps more difficult than the assignment called for, but not as dull. Lots of big red Xs on my worksheet. Lots and lots of them. The teacher regularly told me I was messy and stupid (probably true, certainly false, respectively), and told my mother that I was retarded and needed to be tested. (The retest showed the same thing as my placement tests, that I had a fifth grade reading level and was well above average in math.)
So I cried every morning and locked myself in the bathroom, hoping that I would miss the bus.
This never worked.
My mother, to this day, feels massive guilt for not insisting that I be transferred to the other first-grade classroom, but the teacher, for some reason, wanted to keep her claws in me and insisted I need to stay right were I was. Mom is a teacher herself, and felt like she should extend professional courtesy to this woman and not go against her judgment, not taking into account the fact that the teacher was sadistic and insane. FWIW, it was a traumatic year (The two happiest weeks I recall from that year were the week I had chicken pox and the week I got my tonsils out, because in both cases I got lots of attention and didn’t have to go to school.) but not permanently scarring. I had a great second-grade teacher, and pretty much bounced back from it. (It felt gooood to go back to my elementary school, visit with my second grade teacher, and inform my first grade teacher that I had been accepted into a prestigious grad school to study astrophysics.)
I’m not saying that this is the situation with the kids in the OP–indeed, it seems unlikely since they’re in different classrooms and there would have to be two e-v-i-l teachers. Just felt compelled to share.
, it’s that kids respond positively to loving limits.