Year 2, my confident daughter has become more anxious in Year 2

[Longstocking2]

A friend said to me that Year 2 feels different, work is harder, teachers have to do less unconditional love and more teaching etc.

She seems not to love school like the last three years, she really misses their open 'sparkle time'. She's doing well academically but there just seems less joy.

Home life has been much the same throughout this period.

Is this at all common?

Would appreciate any experiences you have of this.

Well, this happened to us as well. It felt like start of proper school. DS got over it quite quickly, but he felt taken aback by how much stricter and more distant the teachers were. He started channelling more energy and love into his friendships and properly took up reading.

Y3 is another real shock with a lot less playtime, no golden time (shock and horror) and lots more homework.

Hope your DD will soon be fine.

I feel schools are temples to No Joy now. There is such pressure and push.

How can the kids not feel anxious when the Teachers must be feeling anxious and under pressure. I love the teachers, don't get me wrong, I just feel we are dancing to the tune of Chinese, German and Singaporean results and we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water in rejecting what we are good at in creativity and joy! We can't all learn like factory robots. And I've seen a school in Pakistan where they just learned reams and reams by heart. Heart breaking but I guess school is better than no school.

I wish I could homeschool or afford a lovely private school with small classes and an ethos of joy and the fostering of individuality.

Yes that would be good but obviously not possible (for me either, I have a very sensitive 10 yo who I'm worried is going to get chewed up and spat out by secondary school when she starts later in the year). I think concentrating on teaching your dd emotional resilience would be a good focus especially if she's OK academically. I wish I'd started this sooner with dd.

absoutely, I couldn't agree more.

My ds is at a really tough boys secondary school which is academically excellent but pastorally piss poor in my opinion. The teachers are macho and shout and the regime is like a fantasy of an old brutal private school. The leadership team don't seem to realise that from what I understand the private schools don't run like that any more!

It's made him an amazingly hard working and focussed boy but school is a mostly joyless....

I think it depends on the school dd is in a mixed 1/2 class so the switch between those two years is pretty non existent. In terms of 'love' I think that's individual teachers, some are more loving than others. Dd's teacher last year was the softest, most caring teacher I've ever come across and she's moved to ks2 I can't imagine the love evaporating that easily....

I'd take dd for a coffee OP (that's the only time mine will really talk) and have a proper chat with her about what's going on. Its problems with friends that upsets mine.

The contrary really, also year 2; DS is having fun but chomping at the bit waiting for the academics to gear up. I guess it just depends on the school and the child.

What does her teacher say? Have you had a parents' evening yet?

Thank you, the teachers are just mentioning it and we are keeping talking and no one is certain what it is. But taking her out sounds a great idea.
Thanks

I think it does need to ramp up a bit, in Year 2, though, otherwise the shock when they go into KS2 would be pretty severe.

My Yr 2 is being marked much more harshly on spelling vs imaginative use of language, for instance, and cracking down on reversal of numbers even when the maths is clearly correct, and being nagged a lot more about independence e.g. remembering reading record etc. So it can seem like a lot of pressure, but really it's stuff that's needed. Compared to Reception and Yr 1 it does feel more like hard work and less like joyful creative learning, but on the other hand if the basics are neglected they'll spend longer struggling with them higher up the school, when they could be learning fun stuff to stretch them instead. So I can't say I disagree with the teachers.

At home, they are still 6-7 and free to feel the joy in playing and imaginary games and discovering their own interests, fostering creativity and reading for pleasure etc. And I don't enforce any form of homework as it's optional and I don't currently see the need. But at school there needs to be consistency with what the teachers expect to see, so I support that.

I agree, I am happy with rigour. My ds was at a very warm but academically unamibitious primary school where the middle drifted up but got no attention and my son really missed out the kind of targeted attention he needed and I wasn't experienced enough to see it.

Dd is a different kettle of fish, hugely able academically and in a much better school, it is just her ebullience has decreased and it's made me panic a bit, but she is fine and maybe she is just changing in her character too, growing up (sobbing in a heap, where did the time go emoticon)