Hello, please help me sense check my worries about DD settling in at school. She has only been going for a month and had three of her nursery friends go with her. The nursery kids all seem to have settled well and appear to be incredibly confident from what I can see and what their parents tell me. My DD on the other hand seems quite anxious at school and isn’t feeling as confident with the social aspect of school. She was initially clinging to one of the nursery friends but I think that child perhaps started getting irritated and has been quite unkind to my DD so that friendship seems to have faded. DD tells me that she doesn’t like the “big children” and wants her friends to “look after her”. At her school the kids from all years play together at lunch time and my DD is finding this overwhelming. I recently met with her teacher who said that she’s doing fine with the learning aspect of things but she starts to get anxious before lunch break and hasn’t been eating lunch the time she has been there. I have now started to send her in with packed lunch which she is eating well. At lunch play time when all the kids are mixing, my dd seems to spend most of it walking around the playground holding the hand of a teaching staff and not playing with other children.
there have been a few instances where the other mums have told me about times when their children have been hurt (being bitten, hit by other kids) on the playground and no one from school contacted them about it. When the parents speak to the school, they say that they did not witness it. I know that my dd was pushed off a bench by an older kid on her second day and has been shouted at by other children. I am wondering if this is part of what’s making her anxious.
is this all just normal part of school? Or are there some issues with my dd’s behaviour or the schools practice that I need to address? is it too early to be thinking about moving dd to another school?