There will be a lot of blog posts being published about little ones starting school. Without a doubt, I don’t think there’ll be a parent out there not having heart palpitations about the thought of dropping them off on their first day, jumper down to their knees and a perfect pair of shoes without a single scuff. But what about when you have a “summer-born” child? I am currently speaking from the heart of it, with my daughter turning 4 just 3 weeks ago and starting full-time in reception. So how am I dealing with it, how is she and what have we tried to make the transition easier?

The parental point of view

I’ll start with me and my husband, we can’t help but look at her and think she is far too tiny to possibly go to school. Over the last 12 months, there have been lots of discussions about possibly pushing her back a year and applying to the council to defer her entry. Which he was really interested in, and I was really not into. I felt that she would be ready come September and would be ok as she seems to be at all her milestones, whereas my other half thought that she may struggle, and if there is something that is within our power to do, then we should do it. In this instance, we talked with her nursery teachers and asked their opinions. We asked them if there was anything we could do at home or support nursery with, and the biggie was toilet training and getting dressed and undressed. We really struggled with potty training and so that brought a lot of anxiety, but we worked on getting her dressed and undressed by herself.

During this period of anxiety, we also attended all the school open evenings and spoke with the staff at the school we wanted her to go to.

They reassured us that as long as the children can socialise and use a toilet, then they would teach the rest. This allayed our fears massively.

We did come up against an issue with regards to getting a place at our chosen school (the typical waiting list issue) – which I’m planning on blogging about soon, but that is too big of a topic to include with this.

Getting her ready to start school

So despite my husband’s concerns, we went ahead and put her into school alongside the government guidance for school ages.

We worried and worried for the weeks that approached the first day and felt the best way to get her ready was to do trial runs.

During the two weeks before the big day, we got the uniform on and walked to the school, just to get her used to wearing the, let’s face it, scratchy clothes and used to the journey. Having previously being driven to nursery every day, this was a new experience for her. There were also a lot of tears and tantrums about wearing the uniform.

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We soaked up every settling experience the school offered, from a teddy bears picnic to the two-hour kids-only session, and also the find your peg session – which was amazing. With this, the SENCO invited us to attend just before the first day to come and see the classroom and find her drawer and peg. The benefits were two-fold – I felt a lot better for seeing her learning environment, and she had the chance to have some one-on-one time with her teacher and teaching assistant. I would wholeheartedly recommend doing anything the school offers if you’re anxious about your child settling in.

Ultimately these experiences weren’t wasted and on the first day, she hopped into her uniform and sprang to school. It is probably the novelty at the moment, so I won’t say too much too soon.

Her point of view

Finally, I will touch on her side of things. This was a lot more complex than we first thought. We knew that there would be some anxiety about it, but we didn’t anticipate quite how much.

She was saying for weeks that she was scared of starting school and that it was “a bit frightening”.

So we had to be delicate about how we did things. The trial runs helped with this, but most of all we couldn’t show her that we had any reservations about it too. Every time we talked about the school we were positive and excited, but gave her plenty of opportunities to explore her feelings. We didn’t want her to feel we were dismissing her worries.

When it came to the first day I tried the “heart on your hand” idea that was floating around Facebook – we each drew a heart on the palm of our hand and held our hands with them together – which we called charging our hearts; then if during the day she felt sad or scared she put her palms together to “charge the heart” and remember that we love her and our sending good vibes. She seemed to embrace this really well and when I asked her about it when she got home, she said “I had to charge my heart once because I was sad”, bless her.

Ultimately the process is never an easy one whether you child is born on the 1st Sept or 31st August, and there is no right answer as to whether you should defer entry for your child. It is so complex and I don’t think you’ll ever know if you’re making the right choice until they’re there. But my little modicum of advice is to talk, talk, talk. Talk to your child’s nursery (if they go to one), talk to the school, to the teachers and most importantly your child. The more you speak the better the position you’ll be in, come day one. As for you, you’ll never be prepared for the moment they trot off into class the first time, take tissues… lots of tissues!

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