Starting School
Today, starting school means opening a new page for parents as well as for children. Primary school is often full of unknowns for the child
• Is it like kindergarten?
• Will games be played in primary school
• Will my best friend be in my class
• What is my new teacher like? Will he love me like my kindergarten teacher?
• Is what they call a difficult lesson?
• I will be a big man when I go to school. So what’s the big guy?
• Will I be able to play when I get home? Or will I always study
• If my studies are not good, will my parents still love me?
• What will my brother do while I am at school? Will he always be with my mother?
• Does my mother forget me at school?
It seems that school is full of uncertainties for children. Uncertainties are always the precursor of anxiety. For this reason, it is important for the parents to talk to their children about what they will do at school and to meet the teacher beforehand and to see the school. But the important point here is how parents see the school. What does school mean to parents?
• Will my child do well in school? (I wonder what the criterion of success is)
• How does being successful in lessons (only grades are the criterion) affect the neighbor’s child, siblings, and the parents what the kindergarten teacher says?
• Getting along with friends
• Keeping up with the order of the classroom -Will my child be happy at school?
We can add many more questions here. But the most important thing is the happiness that will emerge when they are together. To be happy, the child has to do these together. This puts a new burden on him. Because in this period, his social relations are different from the ones he had before. It is not as popular as it used to be because it runs the fastest or jumps a lot. His lessons should also be good so that his friends do not exclude him, he likes the teacher more, and his parents are happy. In other words, the concept of being happy is no longer as easy as it used to be. This is quite difficult for a child who has not yet finished the age of play and never wants it to end. Now they have started to rehearse the life of their parents. This can become even more unbearable for children aged 60-66 months, as you can imagine. In fact, what should be expected from a first grade child is to be compatible at school, to learn to read and write, and to have a few close friends. The child who can achieve these will have succeeded in social relations and teaching for the 1st grade.
If we go back to the parents, they can also reflect the burdens of their own childhood on their children with the opening of the school.
• I studied very hard, but I’m sending him to private school so he doesn’t have to struggle like me
• I couldn’t read, so I had a hard time in life. he should not be like me, he should finish school one by one
• MY child should be successful like me.
Sometimes the responsibility of the child is entirely on the mother (the father’s workload is high, he works outside the city, the father’s personality traits, family structure, etc.). In other words, in case of failure of the child, the first person to be held accountable is the mother. In this case, the mother may approach her child more anxiously. In other words, when the burdens in our own lives are burdened by the child, we put our anxiety, our expectations, and what we cannot do on the child. This child is a very heavy burden to carry at any age and sometimes he can carry this burden throughout his life.
As can be seen, school often opens a new page not only in the life of the child but also in the life of the parents. In order to fill this page beautifully, parents should first see what their children can do, act without forgetting that he is still a child, that learning is an endless ladder and that he has to climb the steps one by one, and that the child can be happy as long as the parents are happy.
