Meeting the new school child

As parents, we deliver our children to school with trembling hearts. It's like letting all barriers fall and still being on guard at all times. We want them to be accepted both by the community and not least by the community's teachers and educators in power. We want them to keep up and become skilled or at least as competent as possible for them. In addition, we hand over the child with the experience we made ourselves as a child in school. It is not always that we manage to separate the experiences we got in school from our children's experiences. Therefore, our way of meeting the school will depend on what knowledge we have gained and what we expect from the new our children must meet.

As professionals in the school and with children in general, we must be aware that the meeting with the child is also a meeting with its parents. We can strengthen the relationship with the child by trying to find and understand its parents' expectations and align them with reality. In my many years of work as an educator and teacher, I have learned that this works on families with challenges and families with substantial resources. If a parent is nervous and does not think the child is thriving, it is good to make sure that this parent knows that you will tell him or her how you help the child in difficult situations. Quite a few measures can strengthen the trust between you and the child in question simply by making sure that the trust between you and its father and mother is visible.

A child who experiences that the teacher does not have sympathy with its parents or, conversely, may resist receiving learning and thriving. So insight and understanding are essential. Do I thereby mean that we as professionals should do as the parents want at all times? No! I do not mean that. However, I believe that you must try to understand the parents' perspective while being a professional. You have to focus on communicating with empathy and professional insight. Communication is the keyword here. One can talk about many complex topics if one remembers the communication and the compassion in it. One can say things directly without offending, belittling, and thereby degrading the quality of the relationship between professionals and parents.

When you have this familiarity with the parents, understanding the child is more effortless. Then perhaps you ask: what about the abused children? It's the same.

You need to be at the forefront of communication so that the child sees how an adult can behave.

Talking to the parents does not mean that you agree with what they do, and you will always be the child's lawyer. But, you are best at being able to communicate both the easy and the hard.

In the meeting with the child at school, what is the most important thing if the child will thrive and learn?

It's in the meeting and in the substance of that meeting. How do you see the child? How do you get into its life? My experience tells me that it requires a presence that you have to split up between all the kids you have to meet that year. It is a challenging task, and the most important thing is that the child knows that you do see it and that you see it with sincere curiosity and empathy.

It requires that you familiarize yourself with what is essential in the child's life at this moment and update this knowledge regularly. It requires physical contact; a hug, a greeting. It involves eye contact and sitting at eye level with the child. It requires wanting to understand and daring to understand why the child might be triggering something in yourself. The meeting with the child requires insight into your drawers and cabinets, into your own experiences, good as well as bad.

And not least, it requires humor and an inner child who knows that learning requires that the children understand the language in which it is learned. And the child's language is the play. It requires that the children know that you will always assure them that learning requires that you dare to make mistakes because in mistakes lies learning.

It requires that you tell that you as an adult can also make mistakes and not be afraid to say sorry or do something in another way. That you, as an adult, are responsible for them when in school and that you dare to set boundaries, and that the boundaries will always be clear and understandable.

The children need to know that they can come to you when they do not understand or have difficulty solving. You want to listen and make sure they are heard and that you have understood correctly before you act on it. It takes breaks and patience.

It requires individual adaptations, both mental and in physical space. It requires professional insight and a good portion of silliness

If you use these tools in the meeting with the child, you will find it somewhat easier to adjust expectations when something is difficult or needs to be changed.

I experience many years inside my professional life adult children come to me and still wanted my company. I believe this means that I have managed to be myself as a professional and as a human being in the meeting with the child and that the meeting has therefore succeeded and become a meaningful relationship.