Practical Parenting Tips for Kids Starting at a New School
The Cheerios sat soggy in Lila’s bowl at 7:15 a.m. last August, and she wouldn’t look up from the scuff on her white sneakers. Two days before, we’d moved 45 minutes across the state for my husband’s job, and this was her first day at a new middle school. She’d turned down every offer to pick out a new backpack or meet her homeroom teacher the week before, and when I asked if she wanted me to walk her in to the building, she just mumbled “no” so quiet I barely heard it over the hum of the coffee maker.
I’d read all the generic posts about starting a new school before that day. Join a club! Put yourself out there! But when I pulled out of the parking lot, my chest felt tight, because I could tell none of that big-picture stuff mattered to Lila right then. She came home that afternoon, dropped her backpack by the door, and locked herself in her bedroom for three hours. I knocked twice, asked twice how it went, got two grunted one-word answers, and paced the kitchen trying not to panic. By the end of the night I called my sister, a 4th grade teacher who’s helped dozens of kids start over at new schools, and she showed up 20 minutes later with a bottle of rosé and a list of small, doable things that actually work, not the stuff you see on Pinterest.
The first thing she told me was to stop leading with “did you make any friends?” That question feels like a test, she said, and if the answer is no, your kid will shut down right away. Instead, ask low-stakes questions that don’t carry that weight. Try “what was the weirdest thing that happened today?” or “did any teacher say something that made you roll your eyes?” I tried this the next morning before she left, and that afternoon when she got in the car, I asked it instead of my usual opening. She paused for a minute, then started laughing about her science teacher who kept accidentally calling her by the name of the student who’d sat in her desk the year before. We talked about that for 10 minutes, no pressure, no big heavy questions about friendship. It was the first time she’d opened up about school at all.
Next, she told me to let Lila hold onto one small, familiar thing from her old life, even if it felt silly or juvenile. Lila had been carting around a faded stuffed fox named Finn since she was 3, and I’d half teased her about leaving him at home when we moved. My sister said that didn’t matter. A small, secret thing that feels like yours can be enough to get through a weird day when everything else is new. Lila ended up tucking Finn into the back of her locker, and for the first month she told me she’d open the door between classes just to touch his ear when she felt lonely. No one else knew he was there, and that was the point—it was her anchor.
When Lila came home crying in the second week and told me she’d eaten her lunch in a bathroom stall because she didn’t know where to sit, I immediately grabbed my phone to call the school counselor. My sister stopped me. She said don’t jump in to fix the problem unless your kid asks you to. Ask them first: “Do you want me to do something about this, or do you want to try a couple things on your own first?” I did that, and Lila thought for a minute and said she wanted to try eating in the library the next day. I just packed an extra chocolate chip cookie in her lunch that day and didn’t say another word. A week later, she came home and told me she’d met another girl who reads graphic novels there, and they’d started sitting together every day.
I also used to make the mistake of framing the old place as worse to try to make her feel better about the new one. I’d say things like “The new park here is way bigger than the old one, right?” or “This school has a better art program than your old one.” That just made her mad, and my sister explained why: when you brush off the good parts of what they left, you’re telling her her feelings of missing it are wrong. Instead, just name the feeling. If she says she misses her old best friend, just say “That makes total sense. She was such a good friend to you.” You don’t have to fix the sadness, just let it be there.
The last thing we started doing that made a big difference was keeping one tiny, unchanging routine at home, when everything else felt upside down. We picked 10 minutes after dinner every night to work on a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle on the coffee table. No phones, no pressure to talk about school. Some nights we don’t say anything at all, we just sort pieces. Some nights we end up talking about silly things, and sometimes she brings up what’s bothering her. It’s just 10 minutes, it doesn’t take much planning, but it’s something she can count on, no matter how weird school was that day.
It’s been a year and a half now. Lila still has weeks where she comes home upset that she doesn’t get to see her old best friend every weekend. She still brings Finn to school sometimes, and she still eats lunch in the library more often than the cafeteria. She’s going to the fall dance next month with the girl she met there, and they have sleepovers every other weekend. Some days it feels like she’s fully adjusted, and some days it feels like she’s still figuring it out. I used to think starting at a new school had to be a big, dramatic transition that ended with everyone happy and settled. Now I know it’s just a bunch of small days, one after another, and the small, quiet things you do are the ones that make it easier.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » Practical Parenting Tips for Kids Starting at a New School