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What I Did When My Daughter Said, "I Don't Want to Go to School!"

Written by Abel Cheng

Momentum is crucial.

After a week of holidays, my preschool daughter, J, had lost the momentum of going to kindergarten. On the first day after the school reopened, she told me this with sadness in her eyes:

I don’t want to go to school.

Oh! Poor thing.

For a moment, my heart sank. The last thing parents want to hear is this scary statement.

“What would you do if you don’t go to school?”

“Why did you say that?”

“You don’t like school anymore?”

“What about your friends? Don’t you miss them?”

And many more questions that I wanted to ask J. But I didn’t because I knew it was not going to help a single thing.

And I didn’t want to force her either.

But I knew she liked school. I suggested this to her.

“Why not you give yourself 2-3 days? For this period, you just go to school as normal. After 2 or 3 days and you still don’t feel like going to school, then we can talk about it again. What do you think?”

I didn’t know whether this was going to work. My intention was to get her momentum going by allowing her to experience again what school life was about before she made a hasty decision. Hopefully, by then, she would have forgotten what she had said about school.

To her, the suggestion seemed fair and there was no reason for her not to accept it. I was glad as I solved this problem without using force or threat or bribe.

Did it work? You bet. It worked as planned and she now enjoys her kindergarten every minute of the day.

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Lisa Rizzio said:

Good for you for having some common sense. Adults sometimes feel the same way when Monday morning comes around. Transitions can be tough. Acknowledging that and helping her deal without making too much of it. Thank you for giving me hope that common sense parenting is alive and well somewhere!

Lisa

2008-04-25 02:34:58 | url

JLow said:

My 3 yr old Caitlin started preschool only March this year. From the outset she was already very keen on starting school, thanks in part of our buzz-building leading up to her first day.

Since then I have heard her say, once or twice, that she doesn't wanna go to school. Querying her reasons for that sentiment usually unravels the reasons for her statement- for us it's usually because she is just tired in the mornings, that she wished she was back in bed! Our fault for not putting her to bed early enough the night before. But further prodding about how she will miss her friends will usually get her keen and going again.

To date I have not met any of her friends yet; whom she sometimes talks about, like "Today is Alicia's birthday; everyone got a sweet!"

.... Maybe we should start to know the other parents too....

2008-04-25 15:13:06 | url

Jeni Hooper said:

Little ones find it difficult to conjure up a strong image of what school might be like when they arrive especially if there has been a break. Their reaction is often more to do with enjoying their time at home than having any real problem at school, they hate to miss out on any fun you may be having.

I agree that a first response should be light and positive showing your optimism that things will be ok. That can be hard as it's a private world that separates us from our children unless the school invites parents in to meet everyone via events and open days. Here in England the government has set up the extended school programme to encourage schools to be more open and make more use of their buildings for out of school and community events. So many kids are driven to school and parents don't meet each other.

2008-04-25 15:30:04 | url

JHS said:

Hi:

Thanks for participating in this week’s Carnival of Family Life, hosted by Jen at Diary of 1. Be sure to drop by tomorrow, April 28, 2008, and check out some of the many wonderful articles submitted this week!

2008-04-28 02:30:37 | url

Lady Why said:

We, thankfully, don't have that problem since we homeschool! But, we do run into the occasional, "I don't want to do _______" (insert subject of your choice here)

2008-04-30 20:35:26 | url

kayla said:

I have three kids and and i get that i dont wanna go to school line alot from my 7 year old. My 5 year old loves school and my youngest is 10 months and i hope he loves it when he is old enough but i dono how ill ever let him go ya see he was born with something called esophageal; atresia and down syndrome also some other complications as well he spent his first 6 months of his life in the hospital and ever since we got out we have been in and out in longer than out, i hope things calm down after a while thanks so much fro all the posts.

2008-10-07 21:18:47 | url

Kaye said:

My 7 year old daughter is an honor student. But when I went back to work after 2 years of being a housewife. She suddenly doesn't want to go to school. She will wake up early, prepare for school, but whe the school service comes, she will cry hard and loud and refuse to go to school. We already have asked her if she has a problem in school and said she doesn't have. I already wrote to her teacher and asked if something happened that cause her refusal to go to school but there was nothing. We don't know what to do. Please help.

2009-02-04 16:38:11

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