Starting at a new school can cause anxiety for your child, especially with all the unknown factors such as a new teacher, harder lessons, wearing uniforms and where they’ll sit in class.
But, perhaps, the most frightening challenge for your child may be making new friends while keeping those they already have.
Friends are people that your child can sit with, play with, talk to, share things with, confide in and sometimes argue with.
Your child’s teacher has an important role to play in supporting children to make friends. Some of the ways in which a teacher can do this includes identifying their skills in making friends; seeing which children are chatty, confident and good at interacting with other children and those that are a little more cautious.
Children’s friendships are often very fluid and it is the quality of friends that your child has that is important not how many they have. Whether your child has one special friend or many friends isn’t really the issue. As long as they are happy and content you can be assured that they’ll do fine.
Conflicts between children are a normal part of growing up and are to be expected. These conflicts are not considered bullying, even though they may be upsetting and need to be resolved.
Let your child know that if another child doesn’t want to play with them, they still have friends and people who care about them.
Encourage your child’s interests and get them involved in clubs or after school activities, this will assist with your child being able to make new friends.
