Saying Good-bye

Posted on April 8, 2009
Filed Under Child Development, My Experiences, Parenting Tips | Leave a Comment

Children like many adults have difficulties with saying good-bye. Saying good-bye also means having to deal with “closures” or “endings”. It can be as simple as “TV time is up” or “Let’s go home” after experiencing a fun time at the park.

When mum leaves the house (e.g. out to the shop), the toddler hollers. In my case, my four-year old still wails his lungs out when he wakes up without mum in the house. It can be exasperating and stressful for mum and the caregivers (who looks after junior whilst mum is away).

While my son handles “TV time’s up” and “Let’s go home” pretty well, there have been other trying times when supreme patience comes into play. When he first started pre-school early in the year, he became resistant after two days. Going to school had been something he was looking all forward to since we took him to the school for registration.

He gave all kinds of excuses and even said he preferred to be at home. And because my boy has the ability to “reason” with me, I quickly found out the reasons he was refusing school. Before he attended school, he could only understand English. So, when some teachers and friends started communicating with him with Mandarin and Malay, he was stumped and he reacted by “clamping up”. He would tell me that he didn’t want to go to school because he could not draw, write and read; probably inferred from observing his older siblings (aged 10 and 8 years) reading and completing schoolwork. So, the poor boy was all stressed up over the new experiences and at his age, obviously his brain didn’t have the capacity to cope with such challenges.* I communicated this to his three teachers (particularly the ones who speak Mandarin and Malay), and with their close co-operation, my son quickly overcame these fears. On my part, I tried all kinds of persuasion, reasoning and yes, including rewards (such as horse-riding, visits to his favourite friend’s home, birthday party, etc) for each week of school.

Children learn to cope and do life better when the adults around him speak on the same page. Being human and particularly for a growing child, there are numerous milestones (mini and major ones) which he has to tackle. Saying good-bye to something familiar (being at home) and taking on new experiences are factors that trigger his homeostasis.

[* Young children’s higher brain which governs reasoning, problem solving, etc is under-developed and when they experience separation distress and other powerful feelings, they are unable to think and calm themselves down. Thus, their lower brain which activates rage/fear and defence/attack responses becomes the driving seat, resulting in tears. (M. Sunderland, 2006: The Science of Parenting)]

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