Hysterical at Kinder (3 year old)

DD (3) is enrolled in 3 yo kinder this year. It's for 3 hours on a Wed morning. Last week she was fine when I left but broke down about 1/2 way through and when they called me to pick her up she was hysterical.
I have talked up Kinder all this week and she was excited but once we got there she would not let me go and became so upset that I just could not leave her there.
We will try again next week - I take her and stay for a while and try and get her involved in activities with kids and the teachers but it doesn't work.
She is very clingy this week after her first week and it has effected her.
Any one been through this and come out the other side? I want her to go so she has some fun!
It's breaking my heart!

I haven't personally, but I've witnessed it a number of times. And yes, if the parent is consistent and sticks with it, the child does get through it! It's tough for you but you need to stick it out. 3 hours once a week isn't much time to get used to it though - is there chance of 2 days attendance?

Nope just once a week for the 3 yo. She also has activities on other days but I am there for all of those.

We have some mums at our kinder who took about 8 months to get their kids to stay alone and happy. What seems to work for a lot of them is staying there and then leaving for 5 mins, returning. Even going into the office to have a chat helps.

Thanks Kaz. Yep I think I'll just take her and stay for a while and hope she becomes more comfortable with everything and will want to stay.

Can you get together with one of the mums so she can make a friend outside kinder? There is no way M would have let me leave if she didnt already know a couple of the kids that were there.

MM - that half the issue - she doesnt know any of the other kids yet, Her BFF starts next week so we will see if that makes a difference.

Im sure it will hun. Good luck :hug:

Have you had a chance to talk to the teachers about your concerns? This might help you come up with a good solution or at the very least bring your concerns to their attention.

My mother is a retired Kinder teacher - 40+ years experience and she always says we should expect some children - if not all - to have a hard time starting Kinder. Mum's take is, imagine if you had to walk into a room of 20+ people you didn't know, where you didn't know the routine and didn't have a familiar fall back with you. Imagine having to go and make friends with all those strangers, follow all those new instructions and have all those new experiences. A lot of adults would struggle to cope in that situation yet we are old enough and experienced enough to have a whole grab bag of tricks up our sleeve and past experiences to draw on to help us cope. At 3, our kids are still so little and can easily become overwhelmed and overstimulated and the usual response to overstimulation in a child is breakdown.

It is certainly a good idea to speak with the teachers, they need to know where your DD is at so they can keep an eye out for her. It sounds as if the kinder has done the right thing so far, calling you when your DD was distressed. It is important for her to know that if she needs you, you will come. She also needs to trust that her carers will get you and they have proven that.

When my DD started kinder last year and struggled with it, despite being a really confident and happy kid otherwise, it really helped me to keep mum's advice at the forefront of my mind and give DD space to be upset if she needed to. We had an added problem of the teachers changing a number of times during the year at the Kinder and this added to my DDs anxiety about the whole thing and by the end of the year I was exhausted by the challenges of getting her there. I know that she was fine and happy after I left but she often broke down when I picked her up too, a sure sign it was tough for her.

DD who is now 4, is leaps and bounds ahead of where she was last year and has had no problem with Kinder even after a full year of challenges last year. Finally she is loving it. For us it was a developmental thing I think, with the added stress of teacher changes and instability in the kinder room.

What helped us get through the year us was keeping the talk of kinder positive and not putting too much pressure on her with questions of "what did you do" "who did you play with" etc. I felt that those questions were more about me and what I wanted to know rather than what she wanted to tell me if that makes sense. I just stuck with "did you play with the playdough", "did listen to a story today" etc and then gave her space to follow up with more discussions if she was keen. I also tried to help her with strategies if she had any issues, such as how to introduce herself to a group of kids playing or making sure she knew to say "can I have a turn when you have finished" if there were sharing issues.

I also made sure that I stuck to the same routine and calmly and happily dropped her off after a few minutes play together. I would always warn her as we sat down that I was only staying for this one puzzle etc and then would leave when I said I would, making sure she was aware I was leaving. (One time she was a little engrossed in what she was doing and didn't fully notice me leave and had a meltdown)

I did a session of Kinder duty early on so I knew her routine, the people she was talking about, the things she did, and I tried to use the time to model some strategies for coping. There was a boy giving her a bit of trouble and I played alongside him and showed DD how to negotiate out of the snatching and hitting that was going on :rolleyes: It is really hard for 3 year olds to get over their impulsive responses let alone have the tools to negotiate!

Playdates did help a bit - but they were not a perfect answer for my DD. She was just a bit young for playing with other kids, still very much in the parallel play stage and that made the kinder transition harder for her.

Finally I really did keep the discussions open about it. When DD finally described in her own 3 year old way what was wrong "it is noisy there" (which I read as stressful and out of control - challenging for a child who likes order and people following instructions) I asked her what we could do to sort it out. She suggested talking to the teacher and I figured she really needed to know that I was handing over care to someone. She needed to know that the teacher was in charge. Unfortunately, I don't really think the teacher did a great job of that at our kinder but she did offer to come over to our house for afternoon tea and it really did help DD to 'bond' with her teacher.

Sorry this turned into an essay :redface: but I understand the stress and challenges of getting your child to Kinder when they are struggling with it, and when you really, really want them to enjoy it! I very much doubt you will go through this for as long as we did but maybe you can get something out of what we went through/did. This year I sent DD off to kinder with a little knitted heart (fits in your palm) in her bag and told her she could go and look at it and hold it if she missed me or felt she needed a bit of love. So far she says she hasn't needed it! Maybe your DD might like something like that for security?

I know this thread is a month old now, but just wanted to say: that was an awesome response jackrose! I had a really awww moment reading about the little knitted heart, so glad your DD is fully embracing it now! My ds (3.5) started Kindy this year and I can relate to a lot of what you said. He is much more settled and relaxed into it now, but still says he misses me.

I second that! A great, really informative post JackRose... Thank you for your advice and sharing your experience :)