5 Year Old School Anxiety!

[AnxGirl]

Hi,

My daughter is currently in Year 1, she is summer born and has missed a significant part of school due to lockdown. After the Easter holidays, she started getting upset about going to school, it has got worse as the weeks have passed and trying to get her ready in the morning is very difficult, she will get upset and cry at various parts of the morning from waking, saying she does not want to go to school, she will refuse to get dressed, put her shoes on etc and only with the threat of removing her iPad, will she eventually get ready, sometimes we are late and as she has a sibling, this impacts him too. She has also been getting upset at school and has been complaining of stomach aches, (which i assume is anxiety related!) School haven’t put anything in place to help her at school, she’s clearly not happy but I don’t know what to do.

Any advice?

Thank you!

I'm guessing that she's completely unable to articulate any more specifically what the cause of her distress is.

It might be helpful if the school could try and observe how things are during the day. Then there might be some chance of working out whether it's separation from you, playtimes, lunch, the work, friendships, etc. it might be then be easier to find a way forward.

I think you need to have a proper meeting with the teacher and possibly the Sendco. If you're starting with them observing to try and work out the triggers, then make sure you get another meeting booked in to look at that and decide on the next steps.

@lanthanum - Thanks for replying. I will talk to her teacher again, it seems to be happening in the morning, before she starts her work, she is below where she should be in her core subjects, so is obviously finding the work challenging. When I spoke to my daughter, she said her tummy would start to hurt and then she would get upset, I assume this is the anxiety about starting her work. The problem is, it’s getting increasingly difficult to get her to school, it gets to the point where I have to threaten to remove her iPad (she plays on this for half an hour after school!) and I don’t know if me threatening to remove things is making things worse but without that, I can’t physically get her to school. She’s a very happy girl at home but in the morning she’s completely different in that she refuses to do things and is very emotional. I am really struggling myself, having to deal with this on a daily basis too, as it’s upsetting to see her feeling like this.

It sounds as if she needs something to boost her confidence so that she is able to cope. Does she improve once she's got going on the work, at least when tummy ache hasn't kicked in?

Maybe they can look at setting her less challenging tasks for a while, until she regains confidence - relaxing the demands now might pay off in the longer term. If they are able to give her a bit more TA support, that might help - maybe even just sitting her with other strugglers so she doesn't feel she's lagging behind so much.

If the tummy ache is starting even before she starts her work, maybe she could make a start on a task first thing with a TA while the teacher is doing whole-class input, so that there isn't time for her to be worrying in, and she'll get a bit of a head start.

Could you offer her five minutes on the ipad in the playground if you get to school five minutes before school starts? An incentive to get there instead of a sanction, and possibly also a welcome distraction just before going in. That might depend whether there's a suitable 5 minute game or whatever that would fit the time.