Starting Secondary School
Starting secondary school can be an exciting yet daunting experience for both students and parents/carers.
It’s a major milestone that brings a mix of new opportunities and challenges. For parents, understanding the transition and providing support can make a huge difference in easing the anxiety their child might feel.
How Parents Can Support Their Child
Parents/carers play a vital role in helping their child navigate the changes secondary school brings. First, open and supportive communication is key. Ask your child how they’re feeling about their new school, listen to their concerns, and offer reassurance.
Encouraging a positive attitude about the transition can help minimise any anxiety. Setting realistic expectations and understanding that it may take time for your child to adjust will also alleviate unnecessary pressure.
Another important way parents can help is by fostering organisation and time-management skills. Secondary school comes with more responsibility, autonomy and home study, so helping your child create a routine for managing schoolwork can make the transition smoother. Keeping track of extracurricular activities, social life, and academic deadlines helps reduce stress.
What Children Can Do to Make the Transition Enjoyable
On the student side, embracing the change with an open mind can lead to a more positive experience. One of the best things students can do is to get involved. Whether it’s joining a club, playing a sport, or attending school events, involvement builds friendships and helps them feel more connected to the school community.
It’s also important to stay organised and manage their time wisely. Keeping track of assignments, maintaining good study habits, and balancing school and social life will help avoid feeling overwhelmed
School Transitions
Whether it is starting school for the first time, moving up to a higher grade or embarking on a journey through secondary school, there is no doubt that any school transition is a very exciting time for children and parents. It means your children are growing up!
However, transitioning is an ongoing process. It can continue long after students have entered their new environment and may encounter difficulties at several different stages. These stressors may appear as anxiety and frustration and result in negative or disruptive behaviours. Such behaviours can become problematic making the transitioning process even more difficult for children and parents.
In this edition of SchoolTV, parents will learn practical strategies to assist your child during the transition process and reduce stress and anxiety levels.
We hope you take time to reflect on the information offered in this edition of SchoolTV. If you do have any concerns about the wellbeing of your child, please contact your child’s Head of House, Year 9 Director / Head of Community or Wellbeing Support Service for further information or seek medical or professional help.
Here is the link to your special report“This is a particularly stressful period for both parents and children and it tends to get trivialised. Parents can often transfer their stress onto their child making transitioning unnecessarily more stressful.”
Dr Michael Carr-Gregg
Friendship and Belonging
Learning how to make new friends and keep them involves several skills every young person needs to understand and develop. For some these skills will come very naturally, allowing them to easily move between different friendship groups, sharing their experiences and opening up to new people. For others, this can be much harder to navigate. Belonging to a group that is like-minded with similar interests is highly beneficial to a young person’s wellbeing. It gives them a sense of security helping them feel valued which in turn builds their confidence.
Positive friendships are an important part of the journey to adulthood. Adult carers can support their child or teenager by providing guidance in the many social and emotional skills required for a healthy relationship. This will help them to obtain, retain and maintain friendships. However, not all friendship are regarded as positive. Sometimes young people develop negative or toxic friendships. Therefore it is also important for them to learn how to identify, avoid or deal with such a friendship.
In this edition of SchoolTV, adult carers can learn how to support their young person’s friendship so that they experience a sense of belonging. We hope you take time to reflect on the information offered in this edition of SchoolTV. If you do have any concerns about the wellbeing of your child, please contact your child’s Head of House, Year 9 Director / Head of Community or Wellbeing Support Service for further information or seek medical or professional help.
Here is the link to the Friendship & Belonging edition of SchoolTV