What can we do to help ease ds's anxiety about starting Reception?

[MrsChocolateBrownie]

Ds1 is will be starting reception in September in a small primary with 20 a year. Sadly none of his friends are going there so at the moment he won't know anyone in his class.

His reception teacher came to visit him in nursery yesterday and he was totally overwhelmed and huddled into his key worker and didn't speak to her for the whole 20mins we had told him she would come to visit. He is of a sensitive nature and can get overwhelmed by his emotions easily so knew he'd either not speak or show what the confident little man he has started to become.

He has a morning at school soon while I have the parents meeting. Then a home visit in September. He'll also have a couple of settling sessions with his cm and hopefully one of these will be with a little boy who will be in his class.

So apart from reading books about school, talking about school and obviously the visits does anyone else have any ideas how we can help ease his obvious anxiety about going to school. I am hoping for example at the parents meetings I can meet the mum who will use the same cm and suggest a play date for the boys.

TIA

I think that reaction at seeing the new teacher at nursery is pretty typical. Even some very confident ones do that. Ds would probably still do that and he's a fairly confident (when you know him) year 2.
It has no bearing on how easily they go in to the actual school, nor how they settle.

Personally I wouldn't make too much of starting school. A book, occasionally mentioning it in context, but if you go into overdrive you can end up having the opposite effect-they think there must be something to worry about.

If he's feeling unsure you could ask the teacher if you could take some photos of the classroom, etc to look at and talk about occasionally over the holiday.

DD1 was exactly the same when her teacher visited her at nursery and I was really worried, however she was absolutely fine when it was time for her to go and visit her new classroom. I think the idea of her school teacher turning up at nursery completely confused her (even though she was at the school nursery anyway). Hopefully it will be the same for your son and his morning at school will go well. We read lots of books about school and also watched some tv programs about starting school. I think one was called Big School and was on Milkshake, the other was Time for School on CBeebies.

Will the school be having a summer fete you could go to?

I think ElBandito has hit upon a good idea - going along (even for only 30 minutes) to a summer fete can help them see school won't just be scary but can be a lot of fun.

I also think you're on the right track with reading books about school - believe it or not Julie Andrews & her daughter (Emma Walton Hamilton) have co-written a book about being anxious starting school: www.amazon.co.uk/Dumpy-School-Julie-Andrews-Edwards/dp/0786806109/ref=sr_1_10?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1403877404&sr=1-10&keywords=dumpy+the+dump+truck

DH and I also spent some time when visiting grandparents showing both DDs when about to start school pictures of us at school at the same/ similar age.

I think it helps if you talk about your happy memories from school: maybe learning to play an instrument, learning sports, making things, making friends, learning new things, going on outings with the school, etc...

We also caught Grandpa having a heart to heart with DD1 about how painfully shy I was and how I held on to their hands for dear life the first day I went to school. Oddly enough I think that chat and going through old photo albums with grandma did more help than anything else. Lots of laughing at my expense - so be prepared!

HTH

PS it does get easier if you have any younger children - DD2 who'd been to the school on DD1's reading mornings/ performances/ assemblies knew her way around and felt very at home right from the start.

Is there no way you can find out who else might be starting at the same time? It might help if he and you knew someone.

Is he starting a new CM and Reception at the same time? If so could he do half a day a week (or something) with the CM over the summer? At least that would be one less 'new' thing.

We are moving across the country in the summer holidays so DS (also going into Reception) will have new house, new life, new school all in quick succession. We have taken him to visit the school three times, gone to buy uniform which we are now practising putting on and taking off and we breezily chat about school often. We know his teacher's name so if he does something nice I say 'Oh, Miss X will love it when she sees you writing you name so neatly' or whatever.