Preschool separation anxiety: How to deal?

3 weeks of going to school and Gwen still has separation anxiety. Remember my post about her getting excited during the first week?

Read: First day of Junior Kinder

On the first 3 days of going to school, we had no problem. She’s really excited and goes to school willingly. On the 4th day, yaya Rose said that her classmate is crying nonstop and then Gwen suddenly joined the crying fest. Now, that little girl is no longer crying but that incident might have activated the separation anxiety switch on Gwen. On the second week until now, we’re always thinking of new tricks, bribes, and rewards just to get her to school. She doesn’t want me to go out the room, and she only wants ME, she doesn’t like Yaya Rose but ME inside the room.

For the past 3 weeks, I’ve been obsessing myself on how to deal with separation anxiety on preschoolers. I’ve asked a number of friends on how they overcame it with their own kids. They all said: “Masasanay din yan!”. I’m really not sure if that point will come sooner pero effort talaga ang ginagawa ko just to accompany Gwen to school. I go to the office very early, do some work and go back home in time for her school. If I’m lucky, I’ll go home to a toddler dressed in school uniform ready to go to school OR a toddler who is crying and refuses to go to school. For the latter, it means a lot of crying and so much prodding before I can finally convince her to go. “Basta kasama ka sa loob ng room….” is all I often hear from her.

Aside from accompanying her inside their classroom, here are other ways I do to overcome her separation anxiety:

• Before the classes start, I make a small chat with her seatmates. I also ask Gwen to ask questions to them, share her snacks, pencils and crayons. In time, she’ll be at ease and will consider them her friends.
• Rewards. Some parenting sites is against the rewards and bribe system. But I’m only doing this to encourage her to go to school, once we established that routine, I can now slowly stop giving rewards. After class, we’ll slip a Happy Meal toy inside her bag. When she asked who gave it to her, I just said, “Siguro yung mga teachers mo kasi sumagot ka sa board, etc.” This way, she will also find a reason to like her teachers.
• Bring fun snacks and her favorite food that she likes. This way, she will be excited to see and eat her baon.

These are some things I do as of the moment. If you have other tried and tested ways, feel free to share. I badly need all the tricks just to cure Gwen’s school blues.