Getting your child off to school.

As I am saying goodnight to my son, he politely informs me that he is not going to school tomorrow. My only thought is “here we go again”. For the past several weeks, my first grader has repeatedly refused to get up and get ready for school. Now, I must admit that this is not the first time this school year that I have had to convince or even bribe my child to go to school. With all these anxious thoughts in my head, I sat down on the bed and encouraged him to share his thoughts and feelings about why he doesn’t want to go to school. Thankfully, we have had enough practice doing this before. He was able to voice his concerns about his struggles to pay attention and concentrate. We said our goodnights and I left the room crossing my fingers that this worked. So as I walked out of his bedroom, flashbacks from the first weeks of school jumped in my head. I quickly begin to dread the 7am hour fearing that I would encounter tears, a refusal to eat or get dressed as well as the potential of an all out temper tantrum.

It is 6:30am and my son has declared that he is staying home. Tears start to flow as he tries to hide under his blankets hoping that he can prevent me from getting him dressed. I silently get him dressed and walk him downstairs to eat breakfast. Within minutes, he is undressed and racing back upstairs to hide. The morning only gets more interesting with my daughter joining the fun, declaring she is also staying home. Thankfully, she is easily distracted by being reminded that she will miss a class party.

Back to getting my 6-year-old dressed again. First, I needed to find his hiding space. This has become a challenge because he is now very creative in his choices of hiding spaces. Life was really easy when he was younger and I could look behind the door. Thankfully, the sniffling leads me to his sister’s room where he has crawled under her bed. Once again, I set out to get him dressed and calmed down enough to go to school. It is always a challenge to manage these types of situations especially when you see how upset your child has become. Also, you realize that by giving in to these demands you are only setting yourself up for future school refusals not to mention that the clock is ticking and he needs to get to school and you need to get to work.

Try these steps to work through this situation while being supportive of your child’s thoughts and feelings. Since I had advance notice, I spent time developing a plan of action with my husband to be prepared for the morning’s events. We agreed to take a divide and conquer approach to the morning. While I focused on getting our son together, he took care of our daughter. I know not every family has the opportunity to have two parents available in the morning to help. That is why a plan is so important. Consider how the morning is likely to play out. How your child will wake up and how determined he/she will be to stay home. Think about what you will need to do to get your child to school. Consider how praise and rewards for appropriate behaviors can be used to achieve this goal. Remember do not bribe your child but normal rewards for positive behaviors is appropriate.

Next, I checked his schedule for that day in order to remind him of a class or activity that I knew he would find enjoyable. It worked out well. I was able to distract him from his protests by talking about his music class and the funny shirts his teacher always wears. We made a bet with each other regarding which shirt Mr. Music would be wearing. Tears began to turn to giggles. Also, by reviewing his schedule, I wanted to consider if there was a test or activity that he was trying to avoid and think of ways to bolster his confidence. With that in mind, we reviewed his spelling words. He was even able to remind me of 2 words that I forgot were on the list. Again, he was laughing. Before we both knew it, he was completely dressed, ready for breakfast and happy about the approaching day. Both of us were calm and started our days with smiles as opposed to sadness and tears.

Thankfully, this approach worked several weeks later when he woke up early and secretly drew countless red dots on his stomach only to proudly lift his shirt at breakfast proclaiming that he had the “chicken pox”. With minimal encouragement, he revealed that he was concerned about his math test that afternoon. So, we practiced counting by tens while we ate. Until next time, remember like life, your children are full of surprises.

Kimberly Mula, Psy.D.

Licensed Clinical Psychologist