Y7- 2023/24 support thread

[BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz]

Hi, just dropping in a thread for those of us who have kids starting secondary this coming September. There was a lovely thread going last year and they are carrying it on into Year 8, so here is a place for us the year behind.

How is everyone feeling as they finish Primary and prepare for Secondary?

Dd is moving from a single form entry "family feel" type cosy Primary into a large 8 form entry, multiple building secondary. She's going alone, her primary class are really split up across multiple secondaries.

The transition days helped, and she is excited,but has been really sad this weke saying her goodbyes

Is everyone prepped for uniform etc?

@twistyizzy

I had exactly the same on Wednesday with the tears and first friendship issue (she went up alone). Said she was struggling to make friends and I was worried sick the next day. I felt so sad for her, it’s hard to watch. Thursday she had a much better day (quick turnaround). This low level stuff is really, really common. I used to work as a pastoral head in year 7 so I know this but it doesn’t make it any easier to watch when it’s your own going through it. Fingers crossed Monday is a better day. Friendships are swapping on a daily basis at the minute.

@Itslosenotloose thank you. She has perked up and we have discussed a strategy for how today could have been prevented as I think she actually started it by telling this other girl that she shouldn't be you tuning in the prep session 🙄 She has a strong moral compass and cares about her work but she needs to learn how to rein it in and not force her opinion on everyone else!

All the little friendship niggles and dealing with low level silly behaviour from older kids is all so annoying and tricky to navigate isn't it. There's just a lot of jockeying for their place in the pecking order going on I guess. Hope it all settles down for everyone soon.

Thanks @twistyizzy , I was worrying again that we'd chosen the wrong school so was wondering how common it is. Hope your DD friendship issues get sorted. It is upsetting to us as parents, I feel so helpless when my DS gets upset about secondary school.

Luckily it's not affected my daughter but I've heard from a couple of mums that older children are picking on year 7s 😞

DS says an older boy ruffled his hair yesterday as he walked past but otherwise not heard of any unwanted behaviour from the older ones. He thought it was a bit strange!

It happens in every school and all children.

It happened when I was at school too!

shouldn’t happen but it does!

We have a bit of a homework slog going on here today. DS was very teary last night, think just exhausted really, and adamant he wouldn't be doing any homework this weekend as he wasn't intending to return to secondary school!
We seem to have talked him down a bit today, I feel it's going to be a long term.

Sorry some DC’s have had a tough couple of days. Here unfortunately as DS2 has been so wiped out in the evenings we left homework for the weekend - I have now discovered that this may have been a terrible idea. We have had yelling, tears and a slammed door and it’s less than half done…..In my defence it didn’t look like that much but apparently drawing posters is very very stressful. I’m thinking it might be a long term here too.
No friendship issues here apart from the fact I don’t think he has voluntarily spoken to anyone from a different primary school yet. I knew it would take him a few days but hoping he cracks soon.

Oh god so. many. posters. Mine is not very artistic and has the soul of an essay writer so it's definitely a tougher path for him.

Mine is also absolutely shattered despite seemingly enjoying it so far, he's in a form with a few kids from his primary school and he loves the subjects and different teachers. He's finding the 'in between' bits a bit overwhelming and there's definitely jostling and barging from the older kids. He's gone from being one of the tallest in the school to feeling very small.

Luckily the school are putting a huge amount of effort into transition, there's a separate part of the playground just for Y7 if they want to get away from the older kids, and he loves the clubs. But he's just fallen asleep after football so is clearly exhausted by it all.

@Walkingbkwrm it is so hard to know what the best time for homework is. Thankfully DD has some set every night for the next day so there's no getting away from it otherwise we would be in exactly the same situation. I don't think that there is a good time for them to do it these first few weeks, they are constantly exhausted!

DS is currently chatting on the phone to a boy he didn’t know a week and a half ago, which is so lovely to hear.
We haven’t had any posters or big project homework, but he’s spent ages answering “what is art? Why do we study art at school?” Quite a large question!

@HalfasleepChrisintheMorning that is lovely 😊.

Oh yes we are mid homework hell this weekend as well. Lots of it is set for a week or 2 in advance which DS seems to think he can leave it. Well at the rate he produce the poster and storyboard today I think not. We did take a break to go feed and clean out the primary school ducks and chickens as my daughter was the rota child today. So that cheered him up a bit. He is still very tired and like @JassyRadlett DS he finds the in between bits at school stressful.

He has football in the morning but will have to do at least 2 of not 3 more pieces of work and look over his French vocabulary later in the day Will be another struggle I fear 😟.

Hope all those who are struggling have a better week this coming week.
DD has her BFF from primary around today for couple of hours. Not sure whether that will help/make things worse, we will find out.

DS has his best friend round today too. They have known each other since they were babies and have never been at the same school. It seems to be helpful.
Meanwhile, I am trying to pack for his residential— Wed to Fri.

Homework woes here as well. DS happily completed his Maths yesterday in about 10 minutes.

English on the other hand has always been his kryptonite, we talked about what he was going to do yesterday, came up with some good ideas. When it came to putting it down on paper today cries of "it's too haard" "I don't know what to do" and just loads of sulking.

I think some of it is PTSD from lockdown but I'm really hoping that it gets easier otherwise weekends are be depressing 😕

🤞 for a better week!
A good friend who is an educational psychologist says not to be worried if things don't settle down until Easter 😵‍💫. Then for girls Yr 8 can be even worse as friendship groups can chop and change again!
I think I will be in an early grave by then!

@twistyizzy don't tell me that, my DD has just gone into year 8!
Yes, fingers crossed for a good one everyone.

@Sazzlesw2 I can completely empathise with the PTSD from home learning during lock down. Except it's me that has the PTSD.

Every time a new bit of homework pops up on the app my stomach starts to churn because I know the resistance and subsequent melt down is coming.

So far we've had Maths, Science, Spanish and Art. Then Geography homework was uploaded last night.

More tears last night and this morn from DD. She says there is nothing wrong, no one is being mean to her, no one has hurt her or excluded her. She just doesn't like secondary.

I can sympathize re lockdown ptse. I'm pretty sure my daughter has this. When she was doing this online thing called TT rockstar which they're timed with their answers,my daughter literally was pulling her hair out and biting her clothes. She still struggles with timed online stuff now.

I'm grateful that so far most of her homework has been good old fashioned homework books and sheets. She does have an app called bedrock but not really used that yet. She did struggle when she did some work on it over the holidays so we left it.

DD has had homework but it's mostly been "decorate your book", "cover it in plastic", "fill this worksheet out". Apparently the real homework starts this week.

Completely sympathise with all of the homework refusers and PTSD from lockdown!