First day at school

April in Delhi; the days are hot, the plump red flowers of the silk-cotton tree carpet the streets and the wailing of three-year-olds fills the air. On Monday morning, thousands of toddlers will start their very first day of school.

Nursery admissions have become so fraught over the last few years that as parents we have been forced, not by the system but by the sheer absence of one, to focus on getting a place and not on what happens once our child is ‘in’. As parents and educators we are in danger of missing the wood for the trees. Our children do not care what nursery it is, which school it is or where it is located. A large majority of them are just scared at the prospect of leaving home, being with strangers in an unfamiliar environment and having to communicate with adults who may not understand what they are trying to say.

Each child’s struggle will be different. I recall my daughter’s classmate crying for months at the school gate while mine had luckily decided she loved the teacher and was happy to go to school after the first week of reluctance. In that first week, we would return home and playact our separation with her stuffed toys. A pink bear was designated as her teacher and another bear was her ‘mumma’. A tiny bear represented her. The tiny bear and mumma-bear went to school together and then kissed goodbye at the gate. Mumma-bear would then say, “I will be right here waiting for you under the tree.” The tiny bear would go into the school gate with the teacher bear. My daughter wanted this enacted on three consecutive days and then, to my enormous relief, declared that she now felt better about leaving me because she knew I would be at the gate when she came out.

A three-year-old is not always functioning at the peak of his/her capacities. Like all of us, they are sometimes (most times) younger than their chronological age and when tired, hungry, ill or scared, regress to being the babies they are. Going to nursery then becomes less about learning and more about negotiating the separation from parents and home. They may have been to a playschool before, in which case the separation from previous relationships can be an added loss. Their fears may be real or complete fantasy but often they can’t verbalise them. Children, however, understand a lot more than they can explain. When I asked my three-year-old daughter what she was afraid of, she said she was scared that I would get lost and never return to pick her up. This implied a connected fear of being abandoned in a new place and not returning home. Her being reassured then depended on my reliability over a period of time — of showing up when I said I would.

Talk the talk

Since so many fears arise from not knowing, speaking to our children as honestly as possible can help immensely. Talking gives children the permission to bring up their worries. They may worry about how to use an unfamiliar toilet or who will help them with their trousers or whether they will be sleeping in the school or that mumma /papa will leave them there. Be clear about what you will say to her when she asks, ‘Why do I have to go to school?’ One cannot expect a three-year-old to not ask ‘why’; it is part of their job-description. On the other hand, there are children who find it difficult to express their fears in words and show them in other ways, such as waking up at night, wetting the bed, throwing tantrums, not eating. The list is endless, since each child is unique. The parent is often the best person to try and make sense of what the child is trying to communicate, if they can view the child’s behaviour as an expression of emotion.

Stories of ‘when papa and mumma first went to school’ are irresistible to children. It becomes more interesting when you throw in stories involving maasi, mamu, chaacha, even grandparents and their early days in school. It makes going to school ‘normal’. It was hard enough for my daughter to imagine that her parents ever went to school, let alone picture her grandparents as school-going four-year-olds. She was highly entertained by the different names of schools and laughed hysterically at the photographs we showed her. She was intrigued at how schools were different through the ages and in different towns. She couldn’t believe that her father used to go to school by a horse-pulled tonga, her mother by cycle rickshaw, her aunt by a shared taxi, and that her grandmother and her siblings were driven to school by their father.

Other than normalising school-going, starting early with picture storybooks or even a visit to the school beforehand also helps. Be prepared for repetition — as every parent of a young child knows, once is never enough. Stories that matter the most must be repeated endlessly, without variation so that they can sink in. The story of how everyone leaves home and goes to school is of central emotional import.

Mumma at home

Some children are unhappy about going to school because they worry about their mother’s feelings — ‘what will mumma do at home without me?’ Leaving their mothers may feel like a betrayal, especially if she is lonely, sad or the parental relationship is rife with tension. All our children have an unspoken awareness of difficulties in the family and they often feel responsible for it, especially if they experience their mother as fragile. It is extremely difficult for a child to begin to enjoy a different space if they feel they are betraying a loved one in the process.

A seven-year-old I know started refusing to go to school after having apparently settled down in nursery. It turned out that there were regular fights between his parents and he felt he needed to take care of his mother. Once this was unearthed, it became easier to know what to say to him. He’s back at school now.

A firm and gentle clarity can go a long way to help our children not feel guilty about going to school. Parents can help by putting it into words — it is sad one cannot be a baby forever but it is also fun to grow up; go to school and enjoy it without worrying about what has been left behind at home; your work is to grow and learn and adults will take care of themselves.

Father at hand

Fathers are particularly useful for this process of helping their children separate from their mothers. Not by dragging them away kicking and screaming, of course, but by allowing them to see that there is a lot to be gained from an interest in the outside world. A significant amount of research suggests that a father’s involvement in their children’s lives has a positive impact on their adaptation to school as well as their interest in learning new things. When my husband became involved in the school-going process and started dressing our first-born and dropping her to school, his presence itself became an incentive for our daughter to stop whining about waking up early. His style was more playful than mine (which tended to be more fraught), yet firm, and it worked. When he praised her for being responsible for small things like washing her hands, finishing her glass of milk, dressing herself, tidying up or remembering her manners, I noticed that it had a greater reinforcing effect than when it came from me. It became more fun.

For my first-born, experiences shared exclusively with papa, like going to the park, activities that excluded me (and included an ice-cream), were a special favourite and these helped to initiate the process of moving away from me when her sister was born. Many first-time school-goers may also simultaneously be in the process of gaining a sibling, which may make it doubly difficult to leave home and their mothers. It is bad enough to go to school without the added envy that mumma is being monopolised by a new, potential ‘replacement’ baby. Sharing parents with a new sibling is difficult at any age, even seven-year-olds who are school-going veterans may struggle when there is a new baby who gets to be at home, while they have to face the outside world of rules and homework, heat and dust.

The adult version

It is rare for us as adults to recall our own early school-going experiences with fondness. Most of us focus on the good parts, on the one teacher we liked and the friends we eventually made. We gritted our teeth and got through it, one might say. Does school have to be that way? Is it not possible to actually enjoy the many years we spend in educational spaces? I am suggesting that the early experience of separation from parents, the first day, the first weeks and months in nursery may form a blueprint for what the future may feel like — an internal wrench that has to be borne by suppressing anxieties — that is, not thinking about it. Can’t we co-create a version that includes the good? If we understand the fears, there may be freedom to look forward to learning new things without being scared about losing something in the process. Learning is an emotional task and the patterns are set early in our lives.

It is never easy on us parents to let go of our children. Watching them cry is extremely distressing for us. I distinctly recall my daughter’s first day at nursery and me standing and weeping under a tree outside the school. The principal felt the need to come out and reassure me that my child appeared to be doing okay. Luckily, my daughter did not see me cry; she had enough worries of her own without having to think about my feelings too. We parents have mixed feelings toward our own school-going histories, whether consciously remembered or not. We also have ambiguous feelings toward the fact that our babies will grow up. It becomes manifest in our hanging on to them in the last lingering hug or standing and watching till they go into the school gate.

(Nupur Dhingra Paiva is a clinical child psychologist who teaches at Ambedkar University, Delhi , and is the mother of two daughters.)

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