Speaker 1Hello and welcome to the How Not to Screw Up Your Kids podcast, the bucket-emptying episodes. I'm your host, Dr. Mary Han, psychologist and parenting expert. So, pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat and enjoy the conversation. Today, I want to share with you my top 10 tips for those first-day-at-school jitters. Now, I have packed this not only with top tips, obviously, but from those top 10 tips, I've subdivided them into the five ones to think about for the actual first day. But the reality is, whether you've got a child who is starting school for the very, very first time, maybe even nursery or preschool, or a child who's starting secondary school who's making a transition, of course, you've got to think about the top 10 tips for those first-day-at-school jitters. Of course, the first-day jitters are big, but those jitters can remain in place. So, the next five, so the top five are for the first day, and then the other five are just things to be mindful of, to be considerate of, to make those jitters be something that diminishes as time goes on, rather than beginning to ramp up. So, I hope you find these super, super helpful. So, let's start with number one, just talking about feelings generally, in advance, and acknowledging any worries or anxieties ahead of the day. We want to normalise this, yeah? It's normal to feel nervous about something which isn't familiar, whether that's a child starting at preschool, nursery, a child starting school for the very first time, a child transitioning into anything that is new. It's normal to feel a little bit apprehensive, to be a little bit unsure, to be experiencing a lot of anxiety, to be experiencing a lot of all sorts of feelings. So, we want, don't shy away from that, particularly if you've got a child that you know is a bit of a worrier. What we can tend to do is feel like, well, I just don't want to mention it because they don't seem to be saying anything about it. But the danger in doing that is that they're creating their own stories, their own narrative, things are bound to be happening for them. And if we don't address it, then often we don't realise the extent to which their worries have began to happen. So, I hope you find this helpful. And I hope you find this helpful. to take hold until we're right in the thick of it. So, it's really good to do that. Don't discount the nervousness, yet reassure them that the more they go, the more familiar that place will become and the less nervous they will be over time. Now, if you have a child that's transitioning to a new school, whether that's a new school within the sort of the primary or the junior years or a new school transitioning to secondary, and particularly when it's the case of moving from primary to secondary, what I want you to consider as an extra layer is that when our children are at primary school, they've really created a sense of belonging, of being part of the furniture, almost the fabric of that particular school. And so, when they are then making that transition to the fabric is likely to feel rocked. Yeah, they've gone from being the top of the school, known by all the teachers, familiar with everyone at the school and being around it, to now being right at the bottom of the pile in lots of ways and against what feels like giant adult-like teens. Because our gorgeous, lovely year sevens when they start their secondary school look and are physically younger than those big 18-year-old or even 16-year-olds, if that's the age group that that school goes up to. And that difference feels significantly starker than our reception children who are looking at comparing themselves to their year sixes. So, it's about being aware of that. And the more that we focus with children who are transitioning and having their first days at secondary school, the more we focus our communication around helping them make that connection to belonging at their new school, the sooner those anxieties will begin to decrease. Because school, fundamentally, our children don't go to school because they wake up in the morning and think, oh my goodness me, I'm so excited to learn. That can sometimes happen with some children. But really, they go to school for that sense of that connection, of that community and the people, the friendships that they forge the connection that they have with teachers, rather than them waking up excited about what they're necessarily going to learn. So, the more we can focus our efforts, particularly for our older children who are transitioning, on creating that connection. What is it about their interests, their passions, their joys, their interests? Can we then help them see that connection with this new school that is also part of that, so that they begin to feel part of that fabric? Of that new space and school that they're going to. So, that would be my number one, is we want to be talking about this. Number two is we want to create some familiarity in whatever form is best for your child. So, the top of mind is, what familiarity with this new space and place that my child is going to be spending a significant amount of their time, do I need for them to feel a certain sense of reassurance that when that first day comes around, that it doesn't feel too overwhelming? And we want to be guided by our children, rather than what we feel that they need. So, for example, for some children, we might need to walk the walk to school, because it's about that familiarisation of what's my, the beginning of my school day going to look like, if they're walking to school, is it appropriate, is it helpful for our child that we walk the walk, or drive the drive? Or is it that they need to connect with others who know that they're also starting, whether it's, you've got friends that are transitioning from a primary school to a secondary school, or you've got a preschool group that are all moving up, or a number of them are moving up. Or it may well be that familiarisation for your child might simply be talking through what school is all about, what does that look like, break times, lunch, listening, talking, conversations, play, whatever that might be. I really want to emphasise this idea that we need to be guided by our children and what they need, rather than what we think they need, or what we end up doing, because we're anxious about it, and we're trying to over reassure them. So be guided. And we want to do that by asking questions, and then actively listening and responding appropriately. I would highly recommend you search the website for the podcast episode, The Bucket Emptying I've Done on Active Listening. It is so powerful, and you can make it to great use when we're trying to minimise those jitters, particularly if this is the first time we've ever done this. You know, if this is the first time we've ever sent our children off to school, or if it's the first time we've ever sent one of our children off to secondary school, it can feel, in lots of ways, almost more overwhelming for us as their parents, as we want to prepare them for what feels like a huge, big step. But actively listening will help us really tune into, what is my child worried about? And then responding to that, rather than us sort of preemptively, in lots of ways, actually responding to our anxieties as such. Now, as a note, when you ask questions, these are general conversational questions that I would encourage you to do through play or side-by-side conversations, rather than what might feel like an interrogation. And I say this genuinely with love, because the more and more work that I do in schools with young children and young adults, the more and more I hear back from them that they often feel that we labour points, that we interrogate, that we go over things again and again, rather than really listening to what they're saying. So really be mindful about how you go about asking the questions and the space that you create. Less is most definitely more when it comes to creating that space for our children to open up and tell us. So that is number two, is we want to create some familiarity, but the familiarity needs to be in response to what our child needs. Number three is about prepping them physically by reining bedtime back in now, so that we can get on top of that good night's sleep. So we all know what happens. It's the summer. It's been light. It feels far too light for our children to be going to bed. So things have just stretched, they've eked out. So what we want to do is we want to cut back on any excesses which have crept in over the summer. So it's not just going to be about reining in bedtime. It's also looking at reining in any other excesses, such as have there been an excess in terms of sweet consumption or processed foods that we wouldn't normally be doing, but they've just crept in. Whether that's device time that has crept in, and maybe they've had more device time than usual. My feeling about when we start reining some of these excesses in is if we're doing it gradually, we get less of the battles, and we can then begin to replace it with really good habits. Where we often find ourselves a battle is that before we realize it, we're at that start of first aid jitters, and we kind of do that hard stop. That creates a whole host of challenges. Because our children are like, where's this come from? Or they make this association between school is this bad thing, because it takes away all of my fun. And instead, if we can do it as a slowly gradual, we're just getting ourselves ready. We've had a bit of excesses over the summer. We're now getting ourselves back into our ordinary routine, and start bringing back that enjoyment and curiosity through play with things that don't involve devices, or that enjoyment of being curious about food. Without it necessarily being quick snacky type foods or sweets, then there isn't this specific connection between, oh, right, whenever school comes, all the fun ends. So it's looking at reeling in bedtimes, sweets, device time, maybe we've got in a really bad habit of waking up super late, or sofa surfing, we've been in PJs for a really long time. Again, it's not about making everything feel like it's, oh, God, all of the fun has stopped. But it's just being aware for your child in your family and the circumstances that are leading up to their school, their first day of school, what are the things that you know, could be problematic, and so we can then begin to reel those back in. When we're looking at reeling things back in, and particularly around bringing back sleep, it can be helpful, depending on when you found this episode, to be bringing it back in. In small increments, rather than making big jumps, if your children have got really used to going to bed at 10 o'clock, and actually, they really need to be going to bed at eight, don't go from 10 till eight. That's just too big a jump, particularly because in lots of ways, they've become, as psychologists call, habituized, they've got used to not falling asleep until 10. So if you then put them to bed at eight, you could find that they'll be in and out of their bedroom, or complaining that they're taking ages to fall asleep. You're much better off bringing the clock to maybe 9.45, doing that for a few days, then 9.30, and then 9.15. So you're bringing it back in manageable increments, and the same in terms of the morning, is looking at the top and tail. So what we want to do is, if we're going to be getting them to bed earlier, we also want to be making sure that they're waking up earlier too, so that they begin to feel tired, and then they're not napping during the day. So we want to start physically reeling back. Things such as bedtime, and all of those other things. That's number three. And now we're going to take a quick pause for a word from our sponsors. Number four is, through our discussions and that creation of familiarity, we want to problem solve with our child any issues that we've identified as part of our general catch-ups, or our discussion about feelings. And this works. It really ought to be a problem solving, rather than a, that is such an awful thing, and let me solve it for you, or leave it with me to sort out. You want to be able to be doing that together, as a what, why does this feel overwhelming? So it may well be, for example, if you're with a really young child, it might be the whole separation piece. So it's that preparation about what could we do? How might we manage this? And then role play. And practice those specific areas in terms of problem solving. But encourage your child to be an active participant in the problem solving process, because that gives them a sense of agency, and begins that understanding that when we have a problem, we talk about it. We talk about the feelings that we've got. We think about the things that we might try. We're not looking for the perfect answer. We're looking for a potential way of resolving it. We try it, we get feedback, we modify, or we say, great, that seems to be working. So it's really actively getting them involved. That's number four. Number five is about prepping ourselves in whatever way that might be. That might be the night before. That might be weeks before. How your child manages that first day in terms of whether they feel that they're supported, whether they feel that this isn't really that scary. And all of just that sort of feeling confident will brush off from us to them. So if we are riddled with worry and anxiety, maybe we're thinking, my goodness, I just don't think that my child's going to be able to go in on that first day and not be clinging on to me, and I'm going to be peeling them off. I can't even leave them with my parents. How am I going to leave them with school? Whatever your anxieties are, you need to be honest with yourself in advance. About how you are feeling about that. And then you need to look at ways that you can problem solve for yourself how you will manage that. And it's not about being false in any way with your child on that particular day. But your child will be looking to you. You know, when we talk about this idea about co-regulating, if I've got a child who is dysregulated because they're really nervous, understandably, first day of senior school, first day of senior school. First day of school, just generally, first day of primary school or preschool, and they are looking at us, and we're equally dysregulated. We are chatting more than normal. We're fidgeting around. Our children are picking up on those cues because we're social beings. We pick up on those cues. It goes from the child thinking, I'm nervous, to I'm nervous, and I can pick up that my parents are nervous, so this must be something that I really should be supervising. Because we're both in this huge sort of sense of emotional dysregulation. If our child in that emotionally dysregulated space is looking to us, and they see warmth, and they see comfort, and they see confidence, that begins to create that containment that we talk so much about when we talk about helping our child when they're dysregulated. And they feel much more confident. The feelings that they're having are ones that are going to be supported, and ones that are a natural part of what's going on, and that what we're encouraging them to enter into isn't something that they should be scared of. So it's really being honest with yourself, and problem solving, and identifying what you might need to do to prep yourself, and to be able to keep your own anxieties in check. So those are the five that I would recommend, very specifically targeted at the five. The next five are really what we can do to protect those jitters from happening on a day-to-day basis. So it may well be that those first five are ones that you're going to be doing for the first weeks, months, even term. But these other five are also helpful. So for me, it's protect their energy at all costs, particularly if you've got a, if it's a transition to something new, whether it's primary to secondary, or whether it's secondary to secondary. Whether it's our children starting preschool for the very first time, nursery for the very first time, or they're starting school for the very first time. We really want to make sure that we protect their energy. They are using a huge amount of attentional resources and cognitive resources in that space of managing their impulses, of learning new routines, new names, new instructions, that navigation of turn-taking, fitting in, all of those. These areas require so much resources that we want to make sure that we factor in plenty of downtime. So be intentional. I'm also going to talk about lots of play dates, but be intentional when you look at their diaries and you look at other commitments to not overcommit them in that first term. It really is such a crucial thing because if we can protect their energy, we are much less likely to have. If we've got a child who is feeling a little bit anxious and a bit nervous and still becoming familiar, by protecting their energy, when we think about the whole point of the bucket emptying episodes, it's about keeping that bucket from overflowing. That's a really crucial bit. So when we talk about plenty of downtime, this isn't sleep time, but this is their ability to decompress. And that is really through play when they get home. So being able to work through things as well as just having that quiet. So really protect their energy. Whilst number seven is about fostering friendships with play dates. When our children start any school in any of those scenarios, the school. schools are all geared up their whole emphasis and focus is about ensuring that our children make social connections it is not despite if our children are moving into secondary school they're not going to be bombarded with lots of homework initially it's all about those social connections so that is the optimal time for us if we're parents of really young children where we're the ones that are creating those connections is take opportunities to provide opportunities for play dates whether that is at your home whether it's someone else's home whether it's at the park whatever it might be really focusing our energies not on how much more academics can i grill into my child when they get home because you know they've they've been learning things that i want to kind of consolidate that but instead really think about how can i help foster those connections because those friendship connections will be so crucial as part of those foundations to creating that contentment and that sense of belonging if you've got a child that's transitioning to a senior school we might we be wanting to begin to have conversations about the friendships that they've made and maybe you know if we are picking them up or they're catching a bus encouraging them to hang out a little bit afterwards and then coming back that little bit later so really fostering friendships either through play dates with younger children or encouraging our older children to make those connections beyond the time that they spend at school number nine feeds very much into that so a child who is happy and content is more likely to learn so keep that as your primary focus whenever you're going about making decisions so we want to encourage that downtime we also want to encourage them to be able to have those connections and whatever they need to do to be able to come back to that space of being happy and content because those are the foundations that we need when it comes to learning number nine and this is comes into the first five and but is a is a real crucial one to remember is we want to make drop offs always short and sweet our whole okay yes it would be lovely to speak to the teacher maybe we've talked about that a little bit but it's really important for our children to see us being confident that we are taking them to a space where they're going to be safe content curious and engaged and we do that by making those drop offs and particularly if we've got a child who's feeling nervous and anxious not laboring quite often what what i see is that maybe we've got an anxious child and so we feel by just hanging around a little bit i'm just going to hang out a little bit because then they'll find that they're not going to be able to do that they're not going to be able to do that they'll feel a little bit you know once they've settled a little bit then i'll leave but actually what that does is that creates more of that sense of need of wanting to hold on to you it is much better to make those and it's not about just literally dropping them and and running out the door as quickly as we can but our behavior that we're so confident that they're going to have a great time and that they're in a safe and fantastic place to be it will communicate so much whereas our around communicates also a lot around you need me here because you're not capable of managing this on your own so i think if we can kind of keep that in our mind as much as possible it makes that transition much easier it also from the perspective of just simply a teacher if there are 30 children in a classroom and even a third of those are parents of children that are feeling slightly nervous and they're hanging around you've got a teacher who's not able to give the full attention to the whole class but instead is constantly firefighting the 10 parents who are feeling anxious about their children who might ordinarily be able to manage it if they see that they're simply being dropped off like everybody else and then the teacher is able to engage the whole class much more quickly rather than hanging around with us doing that and i say that genuinely with love and i and i know that in our hearts we all know as is the case when we drop off our children at nursery and then they're bursting into tears and we call them 10 minutes later they've settled so it really is having that confidence that the school is going to do what the school does best and what the school is perfectly familiar and and knowledgeable around which is about engaging our children in that curiosity and connection with the rest of their classmates so that's number nine and then number 10 is simply a i guess something to have as an overarching thing that you think about which is remembering that we are creating habits with every choice we make and some of those habits will be good which will be wonderful and some of those habits won't be good and then we'll be unraveling them so when we're thinking about our child starting school or preschool or starting secondary school for the child is utterly exhausted at the end of the school day do you know what when they come out i'm just gonna i'm gonna scoop up all of their bags for them and i'm always going to come and bring a biscuit with me and as soon as we get in i'm gonna let them put the television on and then they're just gonna lie down it's the first kind of couple of weeks of school and they're exhausted they deserve that for example what all i'm saying is by doing that on a consistent basis you are creating a habit now that habit may well be ones that are sustainable that work really well and are ideal for your child and for your family but it's be intentional because what then happens when we are beginning to talk about well my child is not particularly independent they come out of school and the first thing they do is just dump their bags on the floor they expect me to pick them up they expect me to bring them something to eat when we get home i can't get them to start their homework because all they want to do is vegetate in front of the television so it's just a matter of being intentional about what you just being intentional about how might you know we're always working with the end in mind we're working with a what are the skills that i want to ensure my child has to be a fully functioning independent and autonomous adults so what might be the choices that i make now that might create the habits that are the good habits that move me towards that and that might be creating habits that i'm going to be thinking oh my goodness me i now need to unravel and make that a battle now that doesn't mean that we don't have moments and and times that we don't just say do you know what you are utterly exhausted just vegetate that's fine it's just thinking through that the choices that we make in those behaviors and we do them consistently let's just try and make sure where we can that we set ourselves up for future success rather than a situation that we then have unpick and unravel so it's and again which is why i'm a big fan as you know of these family meetings because they allow us to be more intentional they give us a regular weekly opportunity to reflect with others that are involved in raising our children so that we make the choices that we want to make and worse comes to the absolute worst we've got one week to unravel rather than weeks to unravel so that we can make the choices that we want to make that we then have to unpick when something you know they're making poor choices or we've we're noticing a pattern of behavior that we need to unravel so i hope that those top 10 tips will really help with those initial first day jitters but longer terms we see them through into what really will be and is that first long term as we then begin those long winter months and this is generally the very first term at school can be the most wearing just by sheer virtue of this one it's the longest and also the you know we have school plays we've got christmas and all other things that factor into there so i hope that that is helpful do share this episode with friends who you know have also got children starting school or transitioning and and hopefully they will also benefit from those top tips and as ever if you do enjoy listening to this podcast if you're a regular or you have just listened for the first time just taking a moment to rate the podcast out of five and to write a short review is really helpful for other parents who may be having moments of oh my goodness me how am i going to manage those first day the first day jitters at school who will then be more likely to find this podcast that's how we share it with others and we spread the love so until next time you
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