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Back to School BONUS: Supporting Our Kids Through the Preschool Transition
117 Plays1 year ago
In this special back to school bonus episode, Leanna and her young daughter talk about the challenges of the transition to preschool and what helped to make the drop off process a lot smoother. Knowing there are children and caretakers out there struggling with this too, we hope this episode is helpful to share both solidarity and ideas to help make the transition easier for everyone.
Connect with Leanna here.
Full transcript available here.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Executive Coach for Moms podcast
00:00:08
Speaker
Welcome to my podcast with me, Adela, and my mom. Hi, everyone, and welcome to this bonus episode of the Executive Coach for Moms podcast.
Preschool drop-off transition challenges
00:00:26
Speaker
It's back to school season and my daughter started her second year of preschool and the drop off transition this year was drastically different from last year.
00:00:36
Speaker
And I just thought I'd share some of the things that we did to set her up for success in case your little one is also having a tough time with the transition, whether it be back to school or to daycare or anything else. But before I jump into that, I'd like to share a little mini interview I did with my daughter after her second day of school. Enjoy. Hi, everybody. I am here with the most amazing girl in the whole wide world.
00:01:06
Speaker
Can you introduce yourself? Hi, I'm Adela. And Adela, how old are you? Four and a half. Every time that I go to record a podcast episode, what do you say Adela? What about all recording together? That's right. Let's record together. Yeah. Yeah. So I thought today we could do that. Sound good to you? Yeah. Okay.
Adela's preschool experiences and fears
00:01:29
Speaker
So I thought we could talk about whenever we did drop off
00:01:35
Speaker
preschool last year and when we're doing drop off at preschool this year because did you just start school? Yeah. How many days have you been at school now? Um, two days. That's right. And how did you feel whenever we dropped you off this year? I feel excited and skilled. Yeah. What were you excited about?
00:01:56
Speaker
that I got to play with the painting and baby dolls. Yeah. Anything else you were excited about? That I got to see my teen dolls. Yeah. And what were you scared about? I was scared because my full day of school. Because Mama, I'm a little bit shy today, so you can say some of the words, Mama.
00:02:24
Speaker
Yeah, I'm scared because I got new classmates. You were scared about meeting new classmates? Yeah, because I didn't know the names. Oh, okay. Were you scared that you would forget their names?
00:02:38
Speaker
No, I was skilled because I got to meet my mom the first time and I didn't know any of her names yet. I see. So let's talk about last year. Last year was your first year of preschool, right? Yeah. Yeah. And how did you feel last year whenever you went to school at the beginning of the year? Well,
00:03:02
Speaker
Whenever I was being dropped off, I felt really sad because mama was leaving because it was my first time being dropped off after mommy and me class. That's right. Because we did mommy and me class the year before that, huh? Yeah. And we went together. Yeah.
Coping strategies for preschool transitions
00:03:22
Speaker
Yeah. So when you felt sad, whenever I would drop you off,
00:03:27
Speaker
What helped? Because eventually it took a little bit of time, huh? But then you started to feel okay about it. So what was the most helpful thing for you? Hugging kisses and talking on the walkies and waving at the window. And then this year when we dropped you off on day two, remember you gave mama a kiss and a hug and you sat down and you started doing your activity. Yeah. And you said, bye mama. Yeah. And
00:03:54
Speaker
You didn't feel as sad anymore. No. Was there anything that helped you remember that maybe to feel less sad? Because I looked at the picture of mommy and me and dad and them. That's right. You had a picture in your backpack that you kept in your cubby.
00:04:14
Speaker
And did anything else that you would think about help? I saw about being first mama in me. I saw about being first mama. Yeah, and you would think about, did you remember that we would come back, we always came back and picked you up? Yep. Did that help? Yeah. Yeah. Were there any books that were helpful? Did any books that we read help you feel better or more prepared?
00:04:40
Speaker
The show Daniel Tiger. The show Daniel Tiger? Yeah, because on the show Daniel Tiger, his mama and dad, his mama and dad always said grownups come back. Grownups come back. That's an important thing to remember, huh? Yeah. Yeah. Anything else? Mama. Yeah. Know what? What? Thing is very tiring. Recording is tiring.
00:05:09
Speaker
for me, but since you've done it a lot of times, you know, get tired really often because you know how to do it. But this is my fourth time, so I'm shy and nervous and tired. OK. Well, do you want to be done then? Yeah. We can talk about the rest of it later. OK. You did a great job. Yeah. Thanks for coming to my show. I love you. I love you.
00:05:40
Speaker
That was my amazing daughter, everyone. I wanted to hear directly from her because it was her experience and I think that
00:05:50
Speaker
Obviously, anything that I would share would be from my own experience or my interpretation of her experience. But obviously, since she got a little bit tired there, I'm gonna keep going with what worked for us from my perspective. So last fall, Adela started preschool in August at three and a half, and she had a really, really tough time adjusting to the drop-offs.
00:06:15
Speaker
She actually loved school and we talked about, you know, should we maybe wait and not go to school anymore? But she actually really, really wanted to go. So I knew that she wanted to be there. It was just.
00:06:29
Speaker
the drop-off transition that was hard for her. She was used to spending a lot, a lot, a lot of time with me, but we're really fortunate that she attends a super collaborative program. So her teacher and I worked really closely together to help her through the transition. And we did a lot of trial and error. And so I'll say some of the strategies that I'm going to share here,
00:06:56
Speaker
might not work for you, might not work for your situation, might not be compatible with the school that you're with, but I'm just gonna share our experience and what worked for us and maybe you can try a few things that might work for you.
00:07:11
Speaker
And also, I wouldn't just assume that some of these things are not possible. I assume that some of them weren't possible. But then when I talked to her teacher, she was very open to whatever she needed to be comfortable in that transition. So I would just ask. As Adela referenced in our interview, we did a parent-child program at her school the year prior for her two-year-olds.
00:07:35
Speaker
which was really great. And I got to know the director because she was the teacher of the class and that was wonderful. And I got to know a lot of other parents, but the downside of it is that she associated going to school with me being there. And so it ended up being that aspect of it made it a little bit more tricky because I had to work a lot to help her understand that like parents don't go to school.
00:08:02
Speaker
for preschool. So that took some time to kind of undo that expectation. But in the summertime, we spent a lot of time kind of getting ready for this. So a few things that we did the summer before school started. One was that at her school, there's this outdoor play space that is open in the summer.
00:08:25
Speaker
So I took her about once a week or once every two weeks to play. So it was familiar and also so she had positive associations with where she was going to school.
00:08:38
Speaker
And then we would, we knew which classroom she was going to be in. So we would walk to her classroom door and I would explain drop off. And we would kind of like go through the motions just so she knew what to expect. She tends to do much better whenever she knows what to expect. I also bought all the books, all of the like children's off to school books. So like Daniel Tiger, Elmo, Little Blue Truck, Biscuit, basically,
00:09:07
Speaker
all of her favorite characters going to school. And we read, I kind of worked that into our book rotation. We always read about five books at night before bed. And so I would just always make sure there was at least one about going to school. And then as she mentioned, we watched the Daniel Tiger Goes to School episode, and I can't remember all the shows, but all the shows,
00:09:34
Speaker
tend to have a going to school episode. So we watched a lot of that in the summertime too. And then when the time came, day one was great. She did wonderful and was fine with the drop off transition. And then day two was not great. And after that was not. And I know every parent's different, but I was not okay leaving her there crying because I just felt like I wanted her to have a positive
00:10:02
Speaker
I want her to have a positive association with school. So I didn't feel like starting off her school experience with crying every day and being really upset was something that I wanted to do. So at her school, parents are required to walk the children into the classroom and help them wash their hands and kind of get them started on their first activity. So that's kind of built in.
00:10:29
Speaker
For the first couple months, I would stay with her at the beginning of class until she was comfortable with me leaving, which would take anywhere from like 10 minutes and then sometimes up to an hour. And so it was great because I got to learn a lot. I got to see the classroom a little bit more and kind of learned all of her classmates' names whenever she was telling me stories.
00:10:52
Speaker
And I also learned a lot from her teachers who are obviously trained and educated in this. And so I got to pick up a lot of skills, but if I could do it all over again, I think that I would not have stayed that much for that long. I would have started working with the teacher sooner. It wasn't actually until the first parent teacher conference where we kind of
00:11:17
Speaker
had a chance to talk about it, even though I was there every day. We were not talking about adult things. Outside of that, Adela and I talked a lot about it every day. She almost always brought it up. She was pretty upset most days when she would talk about it and say, like, I don't want you to drop me off.
00:11:39
Speaker
And I would say, do you not want to go to school? And she would say, no, I do want to go to school. I just don't want you to leave. And so that was challenging. But we talked through her feelings about it a lot. And I just tried to provide a lot of space and validation because it is a big transition for kids.
00:11:53
Speaker
So here's what ended up working for her. I think a lot of it was also time and maturity and kind of seeing the pattern of how it works to be dropped off and then also to be picked up every day.
00:12:09
Speaker
So one thing we did is lots and lots of hugs and kisses at drop off. As she talked about in our interview, that was really crucial to her. And then also just talking about when we'd be back to pick her up and showing her like where the hands on the clock would be whenever it was time for me to pick her up. She also took a stuffed animal friend with her. She doesn't have an attachment to one specific one. She kind of rotates who her attachment is. So it was,
00:12:39
Speaker
often a different one that she would take each day, but she always had a stuffed animal friend. And there was a little girl in her class who was always so interested in who she brought that day. And so it was kind of nice to have an immediate conversation with another classmate whenever we got there. She also took a photo of us with her. I taped it to her water bottle so that she could see it anytime she wanted to. And every time she got a drink,
00:13:07
Speaker
there was another room in the building that I could go to. It's like a shared space. And so I often would take my laptop and work at the preschool. And so the teacher would take her outside on the playground where you could see the window where I would work. And so she would wave to me there.
00:13:29
Speaker
So it was like she would see that I was still in the building. I just wasn't in the classroom. So it was kind of like we have this progression of I would stay in the classroom and then.
00:13:38
Speaker
I was in the building but not in the classroom and so she would go out and wave to me and then go back in and she would be fine with that. And over time that also evolved into her waving at the window and me being outside like on my way out to the car waving to her on days that I wasn't working there. And then in one of our many, many conversations,
00:14:01
Speaker
about this. She shared that what she really didn't like was that she couldn't reach me during school. So if she needed me, she had no way to contact me. And so together we came up with the idea of walkie talkies. And that was one that I wasn't sure that the teacher would go for, but she was totally on board. She was like, whatever is going to help her.
00:14:23
Speaker
to feel comfortable in my classroom is what I want to do. So we got walkie talkies and I would stay in the other room and work and she could contact me on the walkie talkie. So when we first got them, she contacted me a few times at the beginning of class.
00:14:42
Speaker
And then it was like just a drop off. Like she would go to the, um, you know, outside to wave to me and we would talk on there at that point. And then she really stopped using them altogether.
Validating children's feelings
00:14:56
Speaker
She kind of would forget about it and just put it in her cubby and not use it. So.
00:15:02
Speaker
there was never a time that she like tried to contact me and I didn't answer because she just got super engaged in school and kind of forgot about me and the walkie talkie once she got into it. But it was just like getting over that initial hurdle. So drop off would look like this for us. So we would walk into her classroom, do the hand washing, pick an activity, and then I would ask her how many hugs and kisses she wanted. And her answer was always 40 20.
00:15:31
Speaker
So we would do a ton of hugs and kisses and I would count to 40 and then 20. And then the teacher would take her hand and they would go outside and wave to me. And then later at the window and wave to me. And it was funny when they would go outside, a lot of her classmates usually wanted to come too. So I had this like little send off party every day.
00:15:54
Speaker
and then we would wave and blow kisses and talk on the walkie-talkie if she wanted to. I think, looking back, one of the most crucial components was really to validate her feelings, not try to rush her, and most importantly, to not compare her to her other classmates who had an easier time at drop-off, because that really just would have piled on shame, because I think she genuinely wanted to be comfortable with this, but she just wasn't, and that's just where she was.
00:16:23
Speaker
I think just letting her know that that's okay and trusting that eventually it would be okay and she would get there, but not trying to push it.
00:16:34
Speaker
In the drive to school, I would also make sure that I would mentally prepare myself, take some breaths, so that I could be patient and not get frustrated if she was going to have a tougher time that day because, of course, I never really knew which days she was going to be OK at drop off and which days she wasn't. And so I tried not to schedule anything right away at the right after drop off. And then I would just make sure that I would clear my head.
00:17:03
Speaker
and get in the headspace that like reminding myself of the parent that I wanted to be for her and how I wanted to show up for her. And I had to make that a very conscious effort and choice every time I did drop off. But I think the real game changer was working together collaboratively with her, with Adela, to come up with a solution and then working closely with the teacher to ensure we were on the same page.
Collaborative solutions for preschool anxieties
00:17:29
Speaker
Adela is the one who came up with the idea of the walkie talkies. And so when she owned the solution, I feel like she was more excited about it. She was more committed to it.
00:17:41
Speaker
I mean, that's true in human behavior and in anyone that you're supervising, right? Whenever somebody owns the solution, they're going to be more committed to it and they're going to believe it's going to work rather than someone else telling them what the solution is. So I think that that's the solution that we came up with together in our conversations. But if anyone's experiencing this, I think collaborating with the person who's actually going through it, collaborating with the child to
00:18:11
Speaker
come up with a solution together that they're going to feel comfortable with. And also that wasn't like our first conversation. We had many, many conversations about it and we didn't come up with a solution right away. It took time. And also not saying that we didn't have any tough drop-offs after we found that solution, but it just got significantly better after that and just continued to get better. So now fast forward to this year.
00:18:37
Speaker
She's four and a half now and she's in year two of preschool. And like we talked about in our conversation this year is like drastically different. So, so different drop off is super easy. She still takes her stuffed animal friend and she still keeps a family photo in her backpack. And we take the walkie talkies every day. She used them the first day and then maybe one or two other times since then, but it's very,
00:19:05
Speaker
rare that she actually needs them. I think it's more about her just like having it makes her feel a little bit more secure and comfortable. She's also just a year older and has a year of drop-off transitions under her belt, knows how school works, knows that parents come back and everything like that. So I think that like sometimes just time, it just takes time and it just takes repetition. And it just takes kind of like that age and maturity for when they're ready.
00:19:34
Speaker
She referenced the Daniel Tiger saying that grownups come back. And that's something that I reminded her of every day at drop-off. And we still say it anytime she's feeling a little bit nervous about being dropped off somewhere, that grownups come back. And I think since she has seen that over and over again now, she feels like she can believe it and trust it.
Reflecting on childhood transitions
00:19:58
Speaker
But I think also it's just so important for us as parents to remember that this is temporary. This will pass. Every phase of childhood is finite, even when it feels like forever. And I think we usually want things to pass faster than they do, but they just take the amount of time that they take and then it does pass. And then suddenly on day two, she's giving you a quick kiss and saying goodbye and getting herself into her
00:20:25
Speaker
activities and you're walking out to your car in a daze and it's just like so bittersweet, right? Parenthood. But I hope some of these ideas will help you in your little one if the drop-off process is currently a challenge or maybe to help prepare you for an upcoming transition. Thank you so much for joining me for this bonus episode today and best wishes in this back to school time. Have a great day, everyone.
00:20:57
Speaker
Thanks so much for tuning in to the Executive Coach for Moms podcast. Please like, subscribe, or follow the show so you'll be notified when the next episode is available. I hope you'll join me again next time. Take care.