Disabled Students restrained, secluded in school

This is a graph of Instances of Restraint and Seclusion Per 100 Students. Credit: Carsey Institute at UNH

The restraint and seclusion of students in U.S. public schools in response to student behaviour problems are used much more frequently on students with a disability than on students without a disability, and especially in affluent school districts, according to new research at the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire.

Restraint is a practice that uses physical or mechanical means to restrict a student's freedom of motion.

Seclusion is a practice that usually involves the involuntary isolation of a student for a period of several minutes.

Douglas Gagnon

The research is presented in the Carsey Institute brief "Variation in rates of restraint and seclusion among students with a disability."

The research was conducted by Douglas Gagnon, doctoral candidate in education at UNH and a research assistant at the Carsey Institute; Marybeth Mattingly, director of research on vulnerable families at the Carsey Institute and research assistant professor of sociology at UNH; and Vincent Connelly, associate professor of education at UNH.

Vincent Connelly

On average across school districts nationwide, there were 2.6 instances of restraint for every 100 students with a disability for the 2009-2010 school year, compared with only 0.1 instances for every 100 students without a disability, the researchers found. Seclusion rates followed a similar pattern.

Add caption

This is a graph of Percentage of Districts Reporting Restraint/Seclusion For Students with a Disability. Credit: Carsey Institute at UNH

The researchers found there was wide variability in the use of restraint and seclusion on students with a disability in school districts, with the vast majority of school districts not employing these techniques.

According to the researchers, 59.3 percent of school districts report no instances of restraint of a student with a disability and 82.5 percent do not report a single instance of seclusion.

However, a small proportion of districts report exceedingly high rates.

"Schools today are tasked with implementing positive techniques that can effectively manage the difficult and sometimes violent behaviors of the most challenging students with a disability, which might lead some schools to more extreme measures," the researchers said.

The researchers also found that school districts with higher concentrations of poverty and larger black and Hispanic populations are associated with lower rates of restraint and seclusion. In fact, average rates of restraint and seclusion are more than twice as high in school districts of low poverty and low diversity.

"If certain disability types elicit more frequent restraint and seclusion, and the frequency of such disabilities differs by school type, this may help explain why rates differ across school poverty and racial composition," the researchers said.

More information: This research is based on data from the 2009-2010 Civil Rights Data Collection and the 2009 Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates. The research brief "Variation in rates of restraint and seclusion among students with a disability" is available at carseyinstitute.unh.edu/publication/969

ADHD at School: Help Your Children to Learn!

One of the frustrations for teachers and parents of children with ADHD is getting a child to stop, listen, and understand what is being taught or asked of him.

These tips and strategies will enable students to listen and learn in school and at home.

Tools for Teachers

• Get your students' attention! Clap out a rhythm and have your students clap the rhythm back until the class is quiet. This signals that it is time to move to the next activity. During group lessons, keep students involved by asking them questions. Play music or sing a song to keep them focused on the material being taught.
• Repeat it back. When giving instructions, limit the number of steps involved and have the students repeat the steps back to you, one at a time. Use the words first, next, and last to give order and structure.
• Go beyond textbooks. Relate concepts to real-life experiences through visuals, sign language, or gestures. Bring vocabulary words and stories to life by giving students examples from everyday life. If you are starting a story about a supermarket, bring in items that you buy there.
• Make directions concrete. Make sure your commands and directions are precise. "Do careful work" or "Be respectful" are too vague. Be specific in what you expect to see: "Eyes looking at me, bottoms in your chairs, book open to page 21, and desks cleared except for a pencil."
• Take small steps. Read a few pages of an article or story at a time. Teach students how to stop and ask themselves questions about what they have read. Allow them to draw a picture or write a key word on a sticky note and attach it to the page.
• Use attention-getting strategies. Make your voice go up or down, or make it louder or softer while doing a read-aloud or giving directions. Buy a garden glove and write a story element on each finger.

Pointers for Parents

• Keep it predictable. Be consistent with the words you use to give directions, and stick to established schedules in your household. This will increase a child's listening comprehension because he knows what to expect and feels secure and calm.
• Show them what you want them to do. Walk through the steps of a task. Check for understanding of directions. Write down the task you want done (in words or pictures) and give it to your child for reference.
• Check in with a child to make sure he isn't tuning out. Before, during, and after chores, homework, or a task, have your child tell you specifically what he is doing. This continuous reminder of the task at hand keeps your child focused. It may seem redundant, but it works!
• Move to remember. Get your child up and moving to help with listening skills. Use hand gestures, exercises, or dance moves to help him remember what to do.
• Help a child recall. If your child is watching TV, ask her about what she is watching. When your child gets off the phone, ask him what he talked about -- and, above all, don't interrupt.

To read the full article with helpful links visit here

School For Kids With ADHD, Dyslexia Boasts Record Enrollment

Marburn Academy began the new school year today with enrollment at an all-time high. The private school in the Northland area has been educating students with ADHD and dyslexia for more than thirty years.

Teacher Robots may become the future in elementary schools

We’ve been promised for years that robots will soon move from factories into our everyday lives and yet so far, nothing.

In addition to dexterity and the ability to walk, one of the biggest hurdles to personal robotics has been human-machine interaction.

For a machine to enter human space, it has to understand certain niceties and if a robot with social skills can be built, it could have a huge effect on our classrooms.

An ideal social robot responds not just to what you say, but to how you say it, factoring in social cues like intonation, gestures, and facial expressions.

The robot can then respond with appropriate body language. We take this kind of interaction for granted in science fiction.

In reality, it looks like Leonardo, a robot built by MIT’s Cynthia Breazeal that smiles and reaches for a puppet that he’s told is good, or Kismet, who hangs his head in shame when scolded.

We like treating robots as though they are people. Even with today’s simplest robots, researchers have seen study participants give their machines names and carry on one-sided conversations with them.

Compare that to the ambivalence people feel about their computer screens and it’s easy to see the potential for robots to keep people engaged.

Our affinity for robots also appears to affect how we learn from them. Researchers at Yale recently found that people doing cognitive tasks like logic puzzles (in this case nonograms) learn more effectively when guided by a physical robot than they do with the same help from an on-screen avatar.

The study doesn’t draw conclusions as to why the physical robot was a more effective teacher than its on-screen version, but one guess is that the physical presence of a teaching robot lends it a degree of authority that participants didn’t sense from the digital instructors.

The way we divide the world between animate and inanimate objects plays a major role in how we learn, says Yale professor Brian Scassellati, who worked on the study.

We’re used to identifying computers as inanimate and teachers as animate, but social robots don’t fit neatly into either category.

Their physical presence and interactivity make them seem animate without actually being alive, and they can respond to people and social cues, but often only in fixed and superficial ways.

A National Science Foundation project led by Scassellati, Breazeal and USC professor Maja Mataric aims to push these limits.

The team is working to develop robots that can help children with disabilities learn social and cognitive skills.

To carry out meaningful interactions, though, these robots have to be able to learn on their own so they can understand an individual’s personality traits and social cues.

Juyang Weng, co-founder of Michigan State University’s Embodied Intelligence Laboratory, is studying how robotic learning and cognitive development can look more like human learning in order to strengthen the connection between children and robot teachers.

Traditional robots, even ones used in education, aren’t really interactive, he says, but are often just a new interface for familiar computer programs.

Creating artificial intelligence based on learning and social skills, though, will set a new standard for interactive educational technologies.

“Eventually if a robot can develop its mind, then the robot can be a very close friend of a child,” Weng says. “The robot can be a teacher in a very fundamental way.”

Yes, it may still be a long time before children learn their ABC's in the robotic classroom but moving social robots from science fiction to reality promises to be a powerful force for education.

Dyslexia: Praiseworthy legislation addresses dyslexia

(An extract from the Sun Herald of Mississippi and the Gulf Coast.)

One of the good pieces of legislation to come out of this year's session was signed into law by Gov. Phil Bryant.

It requires kindergartners or first graders to be tested for dyslexia, a reading disorder that occurs when the brain does not properly recognize and process certain symbols like letters in the alphabet.

The new law also gives dyslexic students in the first six grades the ability to move to a new public or non-public school if it is determined the student can be better served by the transfer.

A separate bill also signed by Bryant creates a scholarship program for people who want to study dyslexia therapy.

There's no telling how many people were considered "slow learners" because of this condition. Many were otherwise highly intelligent, but because they couldn't learn to read properly, were behind throughout their school years.

Too many dropped out. A couple of notable ones we can recall were allowed to stay in school without achieving much except to excel in football.

Bryant himself says he was in the fourth grade before a teacher discovered dyslexia was causing him to scramble words and failing to put the right sounds with letters.

"I repeated the third grade. What a difficult, horrible experience that was for a child," Bryant said at the bill signing.

Fortunately, the condition can be addressed with therapy, and the governor is living proof it can be overcome. More therapists are needed, though, and it is hoped the scholarship will increase the number.

Estimates are that between 10 and 20 percent of the population suffers from dyslexia. Good for Bryant for openly discussing his own struggles and for encouraging those who have the condition.

Good for the Legislature for addressing the subject with the new laws.

Can Starting school at seven 'boost pupils' reading skills?

Pupils kept out of formal schooling until the age of seven perform just as well those subjected to normal lessons at five, it was revealed.

In some assessments of reading skills, those with a later start actually overtook their peers by the age of 10, figures show.

Academics suggested that infants given more time to naturally develop their language skills in the early years had a better foundation when they started conventional tuition at seven.

The disclosure – based on an analysis of pupils in New Zealand – will raise fresh concerns over Government reforms to pre-school education which appear to place a greater focus on the three-Rs at an increasingly early age.

This includes subjecting all pupils to a new-style reading test at six to identify those lagging behind.

It comes after a major US study showed that bright children actually benefited from being slowed down in the early years, suggesting that they risked growing up in an “intellectually unbalanced” way by being pushed too far, too soon.

Most British schoolchildren already start classes earlier than their peers in many other European nations. Children are normally expected to be in lessons by five, although most are enrolled in reception classes aged four.

But the latest study – published in the journal Early Childhood Research Quarterly – found that children who begin decoding words later than their peers can “eventually achieve equally in reading fluency”.

“Our findings suggest that success at reading is not assured by an earlier beginning,” it said.

Academics from Regensburg University in Germany and Otago University in New Zealand tracked hundreds of children who started formal schooling at different ages.

This includes those who joined conventional New Zealand state schools at five and others from progressive Steiner schools, who are allowed to delay formal tuition until seven.

The second group remained in Steiner nurseries for two more years, where written language is banned to encourage the development of oral communication and children spend time on play-based activities, such as painting, drawing, cooking, singing or oral storytelling, the study said.

Children were given reading tests at different stages during the first six years of their primary education to assess their ability to decode individual words and fluently read a passage of text.

The study, led by Dr Sebastian Suggate, found that those learning to read later had caught up by the age of 10 and actually had “slightly better reading comprehension” before the end of primary education.

“Instead of focusing on developing decoding-related skills between the ages of five and seven, and in the first years of school, it may be that the environments in the Steiner kindergartens favoured language development, which later feeds into reading comprehension,” said the research.

The findings come amid claims from academics that children in England are being pushed too hard at a young age.

Currently, all nurseries and childminders are expected to follow a compulsory pre-school curriculum that requires children to hit a series of targets before their fifth birthday.

This includes reading and understanding simple sentences in books, writing simple sentences, counting up to 20, using simple addition and subtraction and employing everyday language to describe and compare size, weight, capacity, time and distance.

Read more of this article here

Dyslexia ADHD: School for Learning Needs - YouTube video

http://LindenHS.org Linden Hill School in Northfield, MA serves boys ages 9-16 of average to above average intelligence who have learning differences. The School specializes in ADHD, ADD, Learning Disabilities, and Dyslexia.

Rules Your Children didn't Learn at School

A Box of Many Ideas: Parents' Support Website for Dyslexia, Dyspraxia and DCD

The one stop shop for 1000s of ideas, guidance and information for parents of children who suffer from Dyslexia, Dyspraxia and /or DCD. 

The website boast that it provides guidance on everything from early years to employment. Click on the pictures to visit the website or follow the links below.

Practical skills and information for parents concerning Education, schools and employment

Practical skills that parents and carers can use at home or outside school time. 

Move 627 is a website that examines the transitional stages that children go through in their lives, offering information and support.

To learn more about supporting parents and children with Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, DCD, ADHD, etc., be sure to visit the website of Move627 and their sister site: www.dyscovery.co.uk

The websites are supported by Prof. Amanda Kirby: A registered Medical Practitioner who specialises in Community Paediatrics and Psychiatry. Prof Kirby has particular interest in Dyslexia, Dyspraxia and DCD and is currently the patron of the Dyspraxia Association in New Zealand and medical advisor to the Dyspraxia Foundation in the UK and Ireland.

She is also a medical advisor to a developmental disorders clinic in Singapore, the UK Neurofibromatosis Association and is on the Royal College of General Practitioners Learning Disability Working Party.

Free Vision and Learning Guide - Download

Dr. Kellye Knueppel noted that what a client's daughter was experiencing was not uncommon. Letter and /or word reversal.

“From approximately age 5 to age 11, directionality concepts are developing, so reversals are normal at younger ages,” she said. 

Dr. Knueppel also shared that educators are usually taught that reversals are normal until age 8, and typically, no action is taken even if the child at ages 6 or 7 reverses things more frequently than his or her peers.

“We have tests to determine if the amount of reversals the child is doing is actually age appropriate or not,” Dr. Knueppel said. 

“If it is, we would just monitor the situation. If the reversals are more frequent than they should be, we would work on laterality and directionality concepts.”

If you notice frequent reversals, as she did with her client's daughter, consider a Functional Vision Test. 

You may find out that, as Dr. Knueppel noted, your child’s word reversals are normal.  However, if you find there is a problem, you can pursue the treatment that will allow for healthy visual development.

The Vision and Learning Guide is filled with information that can help parents and teachers determine if a child has a vision problem.

It provides an overview of how vision can impact learning, and includes:

• The Vision Quiz to help you quickly assess a child's symptoms.
• Samples of what schoolwork looks like from a person with vision problems.
• Classroom stress points and modifications to help students.
• Links to studies on the efficacy of vision therapy.

The Vision and Learning Guide provides the critical first step to determining if a child has a vision problem.

Download Your Free Vision and Learning Guide

Spare the rod and develop the child

Children in a school that uses corporal punishment performed significantly worse in tasks involving “executive functioning” – psychological processes such as planning, abstract thinking, and delaying gratification – than those in a school relying on milder disciplinary measures such as time-outs, according to a new study involving two private schools in a West African country.

The findings, published by the journal Social Development, suggest that a harshly punitive environment may have long-term detrimental effects on children’s verbal intelligence and their executive-functioning ability. As a result, children exposed to a harshly punitive environment may be at risk for behavioral problems related to deficits in executive-functioning, the study indicates.

The study – by Prof. Victoria Talwar of McGill University, Prof. Stephanie M. Carlson of the University of Minnesota, and Prof. Kang Lee of the University of Toronto, involved 63 children in kindergarten or first grade at two West African private schools. Their families lived in the same urban neighborhood. The parents were largely civil servants, professionals and merchants.

In one school, discipline in the form of beating with a stick, slapping of the head, and pinching was administered publicly and routinely for offenses ranging from forgetting a pencil to being disruptive in class. In the other school, children were disciplined for similar offenses with the use of time-outs and verbal reprimands.

While overall performance on the executive-functioning tasks was similar in the younger children from both schools, the Grade 1 children in the non-punitive school scored significantly higher than those in the punitive school. These results are consistent with research findings that punitive discipline may make children immediately compliant – but may reduce the likelihood that they will internalize rules and standards. That, in turn, may result in lower self-control as children get older.

“This study demonstrates that corporal punishment does not teach children how to behave or improve their learning,” Prof. Talwar said. “In the short term, it may not have any negative effects; but if relied upon over time it does not support children’s problem-solving skills, or their abilities to inhibit inappropriate behaviour or to learn.”

Despite the age-old debate over the effects of corporal punishment, few studies have examined the effects on executive-functioning ability. This new study uses a quasi-experimental design to derive data from a naturally occurring situation in which children were exposed to two different disciplinary environments. The parents of children in both schools endorsed physical punishment equally, suggesting that the school environment can account for the differences found.

There are many further questions that remain unanswered. “We are now examining whether being in a punitive environment day in and day out will have other negative impacts on children such as lying or other covert antisocial behaviors. Also, we are pursuing the long term consequences of experiencing corporal punishment. For example, what would children’s cognitive and social development be 5 or 10 years down the road?,” said Prof. Kang Lee.

Addendum: My Latin teacher was a very aggressive man and believed in corporal punishment for the slightest thing. He also insisted on complete silence whilst translating Latin text into English. It was during one such exercise that the teacher slumped over his desk and died of a major heartattack. But, because we were in fear of this man, even in death, it was fully 10 minutes before anyone plucked up courage to seek assistance. At the age of 12 years I learned a very salutory lesson on how to behave, or how not to behave, when in a position of authority.

School Related Linguistic Abilities in Siblings of Children with Autism

A recent study proposes that Siblings of probands with autism spectrum disorders are at higher risk for developing the broad autism phenotype (BAP).

They compared the linguistic abilities (i.e., pragmatic language, school achievements, and underling reading processes) of 35 school-age siblings of children with autism (SIBS-A) to those of 42 siblings of children with typical development.

Results indicated lower pragmatic abilities in a subgroup of SIBS-A identified with BAP related difficulties (SIBS-A-BAP) whereas school achievements and reading processes were intact.

Furthermore, among SIBS-A-BAP, significant negative correlations emerged between the severity scores on the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule and full and verbal IQ scores.

These results are discussed in the context of the developmental trajectories of SIBS-A and in relation to the BAP.

Read the full paper and it's findings here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

School bus uses abundant resource: kid energy

There is one renewable resource that shocks and awes people the world over, is abundant at all times and of which one company in the Netherlands plans to take full advantage: The energy of children.

This kid-powered school bus can accommodate up to ten children and one adult, plus might even burn off enough energy to make them sit still for all of ten minutes once they get to school.

Now there’s the perfect way to nip that obesity epidemic in the bud and save a bundle on transportation costs!

Dyslexia Through the looking glass

Human beings understand words reflected in a mirror without thinking about it, just like those written normally, at least for a few instants. Researchers from the Basque Centre on Cognition, Brain and Languages (Spain) have shown this in a study that could also help to increase our understanding of the phenomenon of dyslexia.

Most people can read texts reflected in a mirror slowly and with some effort, but a team of scientists from the Basque Centre on Cognition, Brain and Language (BCBL) has shown for the first time that we can mentally turn these images around and understand them automatically and unconsciously, at least for a few instants.

"At a very early processing stage, between 150 and 250 milliseconds, the visual system completely rotates the words reflected in the mirror and recognises them," says Jon Andoni Duñabeitia, lead author of the study, "although the brain then immediately detects that this is not the correct order and 'remembers' that it should not process them in this way."

To carry out this study, which has been published in the journal NeuroImage, the researchers used electrodes to monitor the brain activity of 27 participants while carrying out two experiments in front of a computer screen.

In the first, the participants were shown words with some of the letters and other information rotated for 50 milliseconds (an imperceptible flash, which is processed by the brain); while in the second case the entire word in the mirror was rotated (for example HTUOM INSTEAD OF MOUTH).

The results of the encephalogram showed in both cases that, at between 150 and 250 milliseconds, the brain's response upon seeing the words as reflected in the mirror was the same as when they are read normally.

Better understanding of dyslexia
"These results open a new avenue for studying the effects of involuntary rotation of letters and words in individuals with reading difficulties (dyslexia) and writing problems (dysgrafia)," Duñabeitia explains.

The researcher gives reassurance to parents who worry when their children reverse their letters when they start to write: "This is the direct result of the mirror rotation property of the visual system." In fact, it is common for children to start to write this way until they learn the "established" forms at school.

"Now we know that rotating letters is not a problem that is exclusive to some dyslexics, since everybody often does this in a natural and unconscious way, but what we need to understand is why people who can read normally can inhibit this, while others with difficulties in reading and writing cannot, confusing 'b' for 'd', for example," explains Duñabeitia.

The scientific community has yet to discover how reading, a skill that is learnt relatively late in human development, can inhibit mental rotation in a mirror, a visual capacity that is common to many animals.

"A tiger is a tiger on the right side and the left side, but a word read in the mirror loses its meaning -- although now we know that it is not as incomprehensible for our visual system as we thought, because it is capable of processing it as if it were correct," the researcher concludes.

Parents' support is the most important

Researchers reveal that parents' effort is more important for a child's educational attainment than the school's effort, which in turn is more important than the child's own effort.

The study found that the socio-economic background of a family not only affected the child's educational attainment -- it also affected the school's effort.

Researcher Professor De Fraja, who is Head of Economics at the University of Leicester, said: "The main channel through which parental socio-economic background affects achievement is via effort.

"Parents from a more advantaged environment exert more effort, and this influences positively the educational attainment of their children.

"By the same token, the parents' background also increases the school's effort, which increases the school achievement. Why schools work harder where parents are from a more privileged background we do not know.

It might be because middle class parents are more vocal in demanding that the school works hard."

The findings suggest there is a relationship between children's performance and the effort put in by parents in supporting their education.

UK Entrepreneur to open school for dyslexic children

THE first dedicated centre for youngsters in Wales with dyslexia will open next month. The not for profit Tomorrow’s Generation Trust will initially provide specialist dyslexic teaching during the school holidays and during weekends.

The trust was set up by Swedish-born entrepreneur Anders Hedlund who, like his father and son, also has dyslexia. The school is based at his home in Cardiff, in a 1,400 sq ft environmentally friendly building with solar panels and a rain harvesting system.

Mr Hedlund, the founder of Christmas cracker-to-gift- wrap company International Greetings, said the strategy was to provide specialist teaching, based on dyslexia software such as Lexion, which is used with successful results in 80% of schools in Sweden.

“It has always been my dream to help dyslexic kids in Wales,” he said. “Our aim is to be the number one school for dyslexia in the world. It will take time, but the strategy is also to establish satellite schools in other cities in the UK and potentially overseas.”

Mr Hedlund said many youngsters with dyslexia were wrongly diagnosed with having behaviour problems, and as a result were unfairly labelled as “lazy and stupid”.

“It is therefore not surprising that youngsters with dyslexia suffer from low self-esteem,” he said.
“Our vision is to get the kids back into conventional schools as quickly as we can. And when they do, near the top of the class rather than the bottom.

“It is all about providing them with the right toolkit to be successful back in the mainstream.”

Read More 

Home, preschool and school coordination boosts achievement

Researchers evaluated children's homes and child care/preschool settings when the children were 4-1/2 years old, studied their first grade classrooms, and evaluated reading and math test scores through fifth grade.

In doing so, they gauged whether the links between various combinations of cognitive stimulation and children's achievement were simply due to the socioeconomic circumstances of the children's families, or whether children from different socioeconomic backgrounds got more or less, academically, from each combination.

"The ultimate payoff of attempts to improve one context of early childhood depends in part on whether related contexts are improved, too," according to Crosnoe.

Moreover, even though children from advantaged families are more likely to experience this convergence of support for learning across the contexts of their lives, the study found that low-income children may benefit more from it.

"Helping children, especially those from poor families, get off to a good start in elementary school has become a major focus of education policy," Crosnoe adds. "These policy interventions typically target one setting -- the home, preschool, or elementary school -- but rarely the intersection of all three."

This study suggests that increasing coordination among the three main contexts involved in the transition to formal school is critical. "To do so, policymakers must put renewed focus on the home-preschool partnerships often advocated by early intervention programs and the family-school partnerships advocated by No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the Elementary and Secondary Education Act," according to Crosnoe.

Journal Reference:

1.Robert Crosnoe, Tama Leventhal, R. J. Wirth, Kim M. Pierce, Robert C. Pianta. Family Socioeconomic Status and Consistent Environmental Stimulation in Early Childhood. Child Development, May 13 2010 DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2010.01446.x

Dyslexia: First Days at School

The first days of school are difficult for all children but they can be expecially difficult for children who are suffering from a form of dyslexia.

This is especially the case if the child knows that they have difficulties with words and reading. Their apprehension will be even greater, so you need to make the transition to school as pleasant and as comfortable as possible.

Preparartion
Preparation is the key word to help your child transition between the comforts of you and your home and the unkown scary world of school. So, the key things to address in the beginning is to make the experience less 'unknown' and less 'scary.'

Similar Experiences
Take time to explain to your child what the structure of their day is going to be and make it as real as possible for them. If they have already experienced being at a pre-school nuresery or class, then simply use that as a basis to explain the differences to come.

Older Children
You can ask older children to explain what school is like but this can be a bit tricky because some older children will tease and joke around, thinking they are being funny but instead they are frightening the child more.

So, this has to be a supervised event. Stay with them and correct any negative or scare tactics as and when they occur.

Making Friends
Hopefully your child will have already made friends with other children of their age and that they are going to the same school together. The school is just another place for them to go and play and have fun together. This is certainly the best scenario but it doesn't always work out that way.

Networking
Do some mother to mother networking in the neighbourhood. Use your own be-friending skills to introduce yourself to another mother in similar circumstances i.e. their child is preparing to go to school for the first time. Explain how you would like the children to make friends with each other before going to school, so that they will have a friend in situ.

The friendship may not last but by that time they will have made other friends and school will be just another place to go and have adventures.

Use Your Own Experiences
If your child is going to a new school and doesn't know anyone there, spend some time beforehand telling them about how quickly you made new friends at school. Use your own positive experiences. Let them see the pleasure in your face when you talk about it.

Separation Anxiety
Inevitably, separation anxiety impacts the mother as well as the child but it should be a transitional phase that both can overcome. The mother knows that they will be re-united at the end of each school day. The child has been told this but may take some time to realise the truth of it.

Constant reassurance does help but the best way to prepare the child for the separation process is to introduce the concept to them slowly and regularly, during normal day to day activities.

Leaving your child in the care of a responsible adult for a short time until you do something else, should not be an alien experience for the child but the difference with going to school is the length of time that the child is separated from it's parent.

It is important, in the first days of a new school that the parent is there, waiting outside the school, to pick up the child and no excuses will be accepted for avoiding this responsibility.

Ask the School
Most schools understand that starting school is a stressful time for children and parents and will arrange a pre-intake visit and if not then you can suggest it to them. A brief introduction to the 'child-friendly' teacher should alleviate some of the child's fears.

Re-assure the child in the presence of the teacher, that they can approach the teacher with any concerns and that they will be as safe and well taken care of in the school, as they are at home.

Raise Concerns
I recommend that you make an appointment to speak to the teacher, before your child goes to school and point out any concerns that you have about the child's ability to read and understand words. At this time you can develop a strategy and a plan to help the teacher, you and your child work on this issue.

Do not expect your child to do this because they will find it far too difficult. If you make this approach early enough, then the teacher may recommend some simple tasks to help you build up your child's confidence and understanding, before starting school.

Escalate
It is rare to find a teacher that will not help you constructively with your child's difficulties but it does happen. You should persevere with this but if, after 2 or 3 visits to the school, you are unable to engage with the teacher, then simply ask the head of school to intervene.

Be positive and assertive, but remain polite and considerate throughout, because you need their support. You do not want to damage the relationship you have with them or that they have with your child, at this early stage. You will need them on your side for the duration of the term and probably longer.

Summary
Preparation, familiarity and reassurance will help your child approach their schooldays with excitement and as a great adventure. Yes, there will be difficulties and the occasional upset but they can be dealt with, if and when they happen.