The joy of new pencils and crayons. The beautiful notebook that will be kept super neat this year…at least until the second week of school. Ahhh the beginning of the school year.
There is something about starting afresh.
But this time of year may feel very different for the parent. The worry of costs. Did I get the right kind of binders, the right pencils? Will my child fit in? Though it is easy to prepare things like school supplies and buy the new school clothes many parent can tell you it can also be quite stressful.
If you are the parent of a child with a family member with a medical issue, there may be a different layer to the worries you may have for your child. You may be concerned of how the stress of the illness may transpire in class.
We have been there. The craziest school year had the children facing the loss of a grandparent and seeing their dad in a coma which put him on the fast track to two brain surgeries. All in all, a busy school year.
It brings us to the questions:
Why should you share what is going on with the school? What should you share? Who should you tell?
I am lucky to be both a mother and teacher. I understand as a mom, I entrust my children to the staff in the school or the daycare. They become my ears and my eyes when I cannot be with our kids. They are also well placed to see if the kids are hitting the expected milestones.
If the school or daycare staff already know the child, simply informing the staff of the new situation at home could be enough for them to support the child and take note in differences in their behavior and ability to concentrate.
If the adults don’t know the child, it is important to give as much information as you have of his or her behavior or attitude in a group setting. (It is important to remember children act and react differently in a classroom than they would with their parents so please share what you know of your child in a group setting.)
I encourage sharing about the medical condition in as much as it might affect the child. In our case I needed the teachers to know that if my children shared about their father, they were not making up the situation to get attention. I avoided the gory details since I wanted to respect their father’s privacy. I usually stuck to the dates of the surgeries. They did know he had experienced potentially deadly seizures, which had put us on this track.
We were lucky the children both attended the same schools which made it easier to deal with the adults dealing with my children I was luckier still when the high school principal was a constant in all of our lives. She knew what was going on. We talked so easily. She could be our and our children’s voices when we weren’t at school.
To make sure all the adults would have the same information, there were moments we would write a letter and gave each teacher a copy. We did so for only the most intense brain surgeries. We wanted to make sure the children will be taken seriously when they would explain their absence or their possible distraction.
I never wanted the teachers to expect less of my children or make excuses for them. What I truly needed from the teachers was to be informed of changing moods and behaviors in hopes of supporting the children as best we could in dealing with these difficult situations.
They say it takes a village to raise a child. To all the adults who have been part of our children’s lives, especially during the difficult times, thank you for being part of their village.