Surviving school separation anxiety can be exhausting on so many levels. If it feels like all the other children are settled, all the other parents have got it sorted and you are the frizzy-haired, falling apart mum in the corner, then take a moment to read on. Here are our 5 things to remember when your kid just can’t get through those big school gates.
Read our School Separation Anxiety story here.
4 Ways that School Separation Anxiety Feels like an Epic Parenting Fail
1. You Feel Like a Bad Parent
When your child is the one screaming or crying at the school gates, it can feel like every eye upon you is judging you. Judging your ability to cope, your ability to calm the storm and your ultimate ability to actually get your child into school. And deep down, most of us feel like we have failed.
But a difficult drop off, whether they are one off’s or regular don’t mean that you have failed. It’s nothing to do with what you are doing and much more about how the child is feeling. You are safe and school is scary, dangerous and daunting.
2. You Feel Like Your Kid is Broken
It’s the ultimate parenting trap: looking at the child who walks in smiling and assuming they are “perfect,” while viewing your own weeping child as “defective”. But children are all unique. They all develop at their own pace and in their own way. Not every child expresses their big feelings in giant, volcanic explosions at the school gates. But that doesn’t mean they are all perfect, in control, little robots.
Embrace the child you have and all the personality traits that are unique to them. They are not broken.
3. You Feel Like Success Should Look the Same Each Day
But success will look different every day. Some days will go ‘better’ than others. But stop putting the bar really high for what success should look like. Some days you will have eruptions, some days there will be tears, some days they will be excited and other days they will be exhausted. They are human after all.
Learn to look for the success of the day you are living and not what you expected or hoped for. Celebrate the wins of every day with and for your child and you might find yourself teaching them a life skill rather than the simple ability to go to school.
4. Share your story
Isolation makes the trauma of school separation anxiety feel worse. Feeling like the only one can lead to even more intense feelings of hopelessness and failure. So, talk to other parents, friends or family. The moment you share your disastrous morning, you will often be greeted with a chorus of “Thank goodness, mine too”.
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More Information on School Separation Anxiety
Here is a more detailed explanation of what school separation anxiety is and what is could look like at different ages.
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