Your Child’s Adjustment to the Classroom
Your child’s experience at Country Day School involves a partnership between the teachers and you, based on three things:
Trust, Cooperation and Open Communication.
Your child may experience something called Separation Anxiety, defined as fear of being separated from the attachment figure. Your child may cry sometimes quite intensely upon your departure from the classroom and exhibit intense joy upon your return. This reaction is quite normal for some children. Just how much time your child needs to adjust to the new situation will depend on her/his particular temperament, background, age and even how the day began at home on a particular day.
The typical stages of Separation Anxiety are: Protest, Despair, Detachment and Adjustment.
Please, try to show enthusiasm and have the most positive attitude about your child’s new school to help relieve their anxiety.
Suggestions for Assisting Your Child’s Adjustment
1. Recognize that new experiences present new challenges that can be quite unsettling, but ultimately healthy and developmentally necessary.
2. Provide predictable, unhurried schedules, particularly when introducing your child to the new experience.
3. Familiarize your child’s teachers with your child’s routine and preferences
4. Ritualize departure time. Find the opportune time to say goodbye clearly to your child then leave without drawing out the departure. Make goodbyes brief.
5. Anticipate the new experience with pleasure
6. Be dependable and consistent.
7. After drop off call the school front office to check on your child if you need to relieve your anxiety.