School has started and it is high drama in many households? Do your children come home complaining, worrying and scaring you with horror stories of injustices they incurred during the day.
Especially early in the year, adjusting to the new teacher can be hard. They feel anonymous because the teacher doesn’t really know them yet. Then they have new kids in class to cope with.
And with each year, there is more responsibility. Third grade gets serious: that transition from “learning to read to reading to learn” (to quote my wise friend Deidre Haney) is a huge one. Middle school and kids can go from child to adult responsibility they just don’t expect.
Paranoid Parents is about using facts, substantiated surveys and statistics to see what really happens to most children. So are there any reports and surveys out there about what kids think? Do they say they are happy? Are they frightened at school? Is bullying ruining their day? Do they feel safe?
A number of really sound surveys have surprising answers. Kids from elementary schools through high school tell the survey takers something very different than the complaints we parents hear.
They want you to know how much they have to deal with and want your approval and moral support. But it isn’t probably as bad as it sounds. 98% of children say that they are happy at school.
Almost as many say they feel they feel safe at school. There are horrible schools where children feel at threat 68% of the time. These are truly frightening places. But thankfully this is not the normal.
Schools are the safest place for your child to be. Schools are far safer than home. 300,000 schools and 56 million school kids and there isn’t on average a school shooter incident a year. When there is one, 24/7 news coverage for months make it seem like a common threat. The horror and helplessness we feel trigger the brain to prioritize a rare risk.
More serious playground incidents happen on the home jungle gym than the school one. But the accident rate correlates with the amount and quality of school playground supervision. Volunteer for playground duty.
Helping out in the classroom is the solution for many a parent with separation anxiety. In today’s economy with education cutbacks, many schools could hardly function properly without volunteers. But what is the effect on your child with you hovering?
Surveys are surprisingly positive. Girls especially benefit from mom working in the classroom. They develop self-esteem. The girls learn that is is good for women to work and for women to have authority.
Children whose parents volunteer also tend to perform better academically.
But volunteering really only seems to apply to elementary school. Step off volunteering in such high profile ways in Middle School. Middle school kids whose parents volunteer visibly seem to get bullied more. But this could also be that bullied kids parents want to keep an eye on their child so volunteer. (My book The Paranoid Parents Guide has much information on the profiles of bullied and bullying children.)
When your child comes home, exhausted and airing all the day’s horrific happenings, they need your ear and your appreciation of their great coping skills. But remember that survey that says most of the time they really do love school and feel safe there.
