Helping your child start high school next year

Jill Colton, writing for The Conversation, says that young people face a range of challenges when they move from primary school to the high school years.

The high school environment and learning methods can feel very different from primary school—with different classrooms and multiple teachers. In combination with the physical and cognitive changes also going on with adolescence, this can cause stress.

Young people’s motivation around school work can take a dive during this time. This can be because their sense of belonging is disrupted.

This change can also feel lonely and unsettling, particularly if they don’t know many or any students in their new school.

What can you do?

Encourage your child to go along if the high school offers an opportunity for visiting and being orientated into the new environment. These opportunities to visit the new school will allow you to find out what your child thinks of this time of transition. This is a perfect time to show your appreciation of their resilience (“good on you for going along, I’m proud of the way you listened to the principal’s address with an open mind”) and let them know you are there for them.

You could ask the school about where students store their belongings during the day, what the school day looks like, and where they can go if they are feeling unsure or worried.

Encourage friendships

We know friendships can help young people feel safe and like they belong.

Some children will be moving into high school with friends or peers from their primary school, and the December holidays are a great time to meet up so those important connections are maintained.

Connections can also be made with older students who attend the school, through family, sport or other social and community links.

Others will be starting at a new school where they do not know anyone. You can use this time ahead to talk about ways of initiating and sustaining peer relationships.

Suggest they take time to notice the other people in their class and get to know their names. It is also helpful to be a good listener but also be prepared to tell others something about yourself.

Changes in the brain

Moving from primary to high school coincides with an important stage in a young person’s brain. This can be a time of great social, emotional, physical and cognitive growth. It can see a fluctuation in their moods, motivation and well-being.

But it also sees adolescents’ ability to process new information increase, as well as the importance of connection to their peers.

Talk to your child about recognizing their emotions and practicing self-compassion—treating oneself with kindness—which has been shown to support resilience and well-being.

Be available to talk through decisions (be the “guide on the side”), discuss complex topics (while appreciating their opinions) and model healthy behaviours (such as eating well and exercising). For example, “you seem a bit stressed at the moment. That could be because there is a big change about to happen. Do you want talk about it? Let’s go for a walk or ride

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Talking with your child

It’s important for kids to feel like they will be listened to without judgment, and know the adults in their lives will be there for them, even when they make a mistake.

But, keep in mind, adolescents are less likely to speak to parents or want parents to be involved at this time as increasingly, they are trying to manage socially and emotionally on their own.

Instead of giving advice/telling your child what to do, you could instead discuss how difficult situations can be navigated—and support them to solve their own problems, such as talking to teachers themselves.

Let your child know it is OK to talk with other trusted adults as they work through the challenges and changes in their lives.

Supplied by The Conversation

Image supplied by Freepik

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Martin Doherty, writing for The Conversation, says that at the age of about four, children reach important milestones in brain development.

One of these is a huge improvement in understanding others’ thoughts and feelings. This is the start of empathy. Another is in spatial thinking—understanding how objects are positioned and related. This is the beginning of the ability to read maps.

Martin and his colleague, Catherine Sayer, conducted a study with 175 two to five-year-olds to explore how children are able to use scale models to figure out where something is in the real world. At about four, children are able to use a scale model of a room to work out where something is. We thought that this might result from children’s understanding of how one thing can represent something else. But we actually found that four-year-olds’ ability to use scale models came from their spatial abilities.

At the same age, children start to understand that someone’s behaviour is due to what that person believes, not necessarily what is really the case. This has interesting consequences.

If you’ve played hide-and-seek with young children, you may have noticed that they aren’t always very good at it. They love the ritual of looking in all the wrong places first, but beforehand they may tell you where they are going to hide, hide in the same place every time, or not be especially hidden.

After their fourth birthday, they get much better at hide and seek. They understand that the seeker looks in the wrong places because they don’t know where the hider is.

At about three to four children also start to tell lies. They realize they can make someone believe something that isn’t true.

Understanding symbols

Martin’s earlier research with fellow psychologist Josef Perner suggests that four-year-olds don’t just start to understand how others’ minds work. Figuring this out is part of the development of an understanding of “representation”—that symbols, like thoughts, words, or pictures, can be used to stand for something else.

Children start to think about how words relate to objects. This means, for instance, knowing that “animal” can refer to something you already have a name for, such as “rabbit”. This might help children learn the new word.

Their ability to use a understand the components of pictures also improves around this age. Very young children use a lot of trial and error to complete a jigsaw, picking up random pieces to see if they fit. By the time they are about four years old, they start to use the picture as a guide, trying to connect lines and match bits of colour, while checking the guide picture on the box lid.

Developmental experiments

Another ability children develop at around four is using scale models. A classic set of developmental experiments involved a model of a regular household room. The real room had typical furniture—sofa, table, cupboard and so on—and the model had miniature versions laid out in the same way.

Children were shown where something was hidden in the model and told to find an object hidden in “the same place” in the room. Children of around four can find the object using the identical layouts. If shown a sticker under a particular chair in the model room, for example, they can go straight to the “same” chair in the other room. This is the fundamental understanding required to read maps.

Adults see scale models and maps as representations. Maps represent a town or a country. A scale model of, say, the Eiffel Tower represents the real thing. At first, Martin suspected children’s ability to use scale models is more evidence of understanding representation at this age.

He was wrong. Instead, the researchers found that this ability is based on a development in children’s spatial abilities that also occurs at about four. This is the ability to think about spaces and where objects are within them. Spatial abilities help with maths skills, and good spatial ability is linked to an interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Their experiment was simple. They compared the model room task with a test of understanding how representation works. The two abilities develop around the same age, but they found they were not related. Children who could do one task couldn’t necessarily do the other.

They also had a test of purely spatial ability. Children who passed the model room task also passed the spatial task. So it looks like the model room task relied on children‘s spatial thinking.

They don’t yet know why two important but apparently unrelated abilities arise at the same time. Perhaps it’s related to changes in the growing brain at this interesting age.

Provided by The Conversation.

Image supplied by Freepik.