2016 Back to School

2016

Back to SCHOOL

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2016 Back to School

Dealing with Change

Photos by Metro Creative Services Starting high school brings concerns about academic performance affecting students’ futures.

How to help your kids when they start school, advance to middle school and begin high school s September draws nearer, angst grows higher among a particular group of students heading back to school.

They would be the “first timers,” so to speak: children entering kindergarten, middle school and high school. Their familiarity of life is about to be turned-upside-down, as students enter new environments with new social guidelines, classmates, teachers and expectations.

Stacy Hoffer is a child and adolescent psychotherapist with a practice in Princeton, who always includes parents along with the children during her treatment process. Her website states that her goal is to help patients “resolve problems, and move into a state of peace, coherence and harmony with themselves and in the world.”

Ms. Hoffer believes there are several things students and parents at all levels can do to ease the stress of what can seem like dramatic alterations in the life of 5-year-olds, tweens and teens.

By Rich Fisher

everyone must deal with it. Thus, everyone entering a new level of schooling is feeling the same concerns.

“Change is life, change is normal,” said Ms. Hoffer, who has been in practice for over 25 years. “Anxiety as a response to change is normal.”

There are ways to fight those apprehensions, starting with something as simple as taking long, deep breaths.

“I would also encourage kids to identify ‘Who are my safe people I can talk to,’” Ms. Hoffer added. “For some kids it’s Mom and Dad, but for others it’s an uncle or grandparent, or a school counselor.

Identify who is in your support system if something’s really bugging you.”

It’s Normal to Feel Anxious

Children should also understand that they are not alone in their nerves.

Change is part of life “A lot of times the child feels anxious, and then says ‘Oh what’s One of the biggest challenges, especially at the middle and wrong with me, maybe I’m not normal. It looks like everyone else high school level, is to let them know that change is constant and is fine,’” Ms. Hoffer said. “The secret is, everybody else is not fine. centraljersey.com

00235660.0819.HPH.Arlees.indd Stay Calm, It’s What’s Best For Your Child Another important parental factor in dealing with a kindergartener is to try and stay calm, while also spelling everything out for them.

“If Mom and Dad are anxious, that’s not a good thing,” Ms. Hoffer said. “Mom and Dad have to contain themselves. If one parent is totally freaked out their kid is going to kindergarten, than maybe the other one should drop them off. Children absorb what we’re feeling.

“With a typical 5-year-old starting kindergarten, it’s important to give them as much information as possible about the school they are going to: Where’s it located? How do I get there? What’s the routine? Who is my teacher? As much information as you can give the child ahead of time, for any age group but especially the young child, is really important.”

The Big Sixth Grade

Everybody else is feeling a million feelings too. You don’t want to pile that judgment of yourself on top of yourself, when you’re just having a normal reaction to a change in your life.

“You need to validate that some of those feelings of being upset make sense, but at the same time, contain it. As a parent, it’s being able to say ‘You’re going to feel a little anxious, and that’s normal. I know you can do it and it’s going to be OK.’ We don’t just leave them flapping in the wind with their anxieties with no containment.”

What to Look For In these instances, there are several things to observe during the first few weeks of the school year. Look to see how the child is adjusting academically, emotionally, socially and physically.

A parent might see symptoms such as headaches, stomachaches, trouble sleeping, or a constant refrain of “I don’t want to go to school today.” This can pertain to any level but is particularly important with kindergarteners since they are unable to verbalize their thoughts as well as older children.

Ms. Hoffer suggests parents give the child two weeks and if things don’t improve, then seek professional help. She noted that “If you have talked to teachers and parents, and they say the other kids seem to be adjusting, then it might be time to at least go to a pediatrician and say ‘Hey, Bobby seems more anxious than the other children. The rest of the class seems to have settled down and we’ve tried X, Y and Z and can’t get his stomach better.’”

Once middle school arrives, most students in New Jersey are usually entering sixth grade and Ms. Hoffer says “that is the most challenging period of time for a child.” The reason being, there is a bigger focus on the social aspect of children’s lives, which leads to interpersonal drama and issues. It occurs in high school as well, but is most prevalent in grades 6 through 8.

There are the issues of increasing hormones, of girls maturing quicker than boys, and of numerous elementary schools funneling into one middle school.

“It’s a whole new enchilada for kids,” Ms. Hoffer said. “It’s an even more stressful transition. That kid you sat beside in reading for five years, you may not be next to him or even see him during the day. There’s this social shake-up and academic shake-up.

“In many cases they go from having all their classes in the same room with very little moving around. Now, all of a sudden they go to roaming around a larger institution. They have to negotiate a new floor plan, being on time, not forgetting things and of course the dreaded learning to work the locker is very stressful for a lot of kids to figure that out. So you have a very large change of a kid going from elementary to middle school.”

One advantage to this situation for parents is that children can communicate better at this age than when they were 5. Ms. Hoffer suggests asking your child how things are going by using such words as mad, sad, glad or scared “to help the child match their internal state with a word that is hopefully somewhat accurate as to what’s going on with them. Those words are simple and easy to remember for both the parent and the child. From there, one can launch to a more nuanced and sophisticated vocabulary.”

Have Real Conversations With Your Kids There is also the dreaded problem of one-word answers, as kids tend to try and be cool and detached as they move nearer to adulthood. When asked ‘How was your day?’ the response is usually “Good” or “OK.” “What I suggest the parents do,” Ms. Hoffer said, “is say, ‘What was the best moment of your day today? What was the most frustrating thing that happened?’ Or, ‘Which kid is the most fun to 2016 Back to School

eat lunch with? What’s your favorite… fill-in-the-blank?’ This forces them to say more than ‘good’ or ‘OK’ or ‘bad.’ It’s your building blocks of communication, which are extremely important.’”

Ms. Hoffer suggests parents also loosen their grip slightly and give a bit more leeway in sixth grade. Much of that depends on how in tune they are with their child. Does the parent have the ability to step back and observe themselves and what drives their parenting?

“Sometimes parents bring in the child and are even more anxious than the child entering middle school,” she said. “They have to understand their kid is a different person than they are, with a different personality and different experiences. You don’t want your child to be a Mini Me. You don’t want them to be a narcissistic projection of yourself. You want to nurture a child to be who he or she is and (understand) that the beauty of life is that every single human being is different.”

A way to incorporate positive re-enforcement is to remind a rising sixth grader how he or she conquered early changes in life, such as kindergarten, or going away to camp.

“You have to review things they’ve done in the past where they’ve successfully negotiated change,” Ms. Hoffer said. “That empowers a child.”

High School – Playing For Keeps That applies to entering high school as well. Ms. Hoffer noted that many of the same adjustments made in entering middle school apply to high school, such as social change and academics. But because children are maturing, it is easier to make friends at that level and they have better coping mechanisms to handle the new challenges.

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Conversely, there are other serious issues to deal with, which lead to negative peer pressure. Ms. Hoffer recommended that parents have an ongoing conversation with their children about such matters as alcohol, drugs and sex. “Ideally this conversation will be a continuation of the ones that were started in middle school, but it’s never too late to start,” she said.

Another revelation is that students are suddenly aware that classroom work affects their future more than their previous nine years of schooling.

“It starts to hit them ‘Oh my gosh this actually counts this year,’” Ms. Hoffer said. “This is serious, now I’m in high school.’

“Again, it’s just normalizing it for the kids. Yes the stakes are higher, but guess what? You have four years and colleges care most about seeing students improving over the four years. No one is expecting you, unless you know your kid is capable of it, to come home with straight A’s the first marking period. Parents need to say ‘This is your adjustment period. Yes it’s more serious, but it’s one day at a time we’re going to help you get there.’”

The bottom line is, no matter what level and what year of school a child is entering, no one is more important to their advancement than Mom and Dad. “Kids don’t live in a vacuum and we still know from studies that what parents are doing at home has the biggest influence over child,” Ms. Hoffer said. “Media and peer pressure can play into it, but the parents still are the key influence.”

For more information on Stacy Hoffer, MA, M. Div, MSW and LCSW, visit her website at www.rapidreliefcare.com, call 609-8659902 or email Stacy.Hoffer0703@gmail.com. Her home office is located less than a half mile from Princeton Shopping Center.

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2016 Back to School

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A portal to your child’s education

Photo by Metro Creative Services

Online portals make it easy for parents to keep track of their child’s progress during the school year.

How to stay informed about your child’s education,

By Rich Fisher without over-doing it here was a time not too long ago, where students and their parents could only monitor the child’s classroom progress four times a year. Thanks to on-line portals, that has changed, as parents can constantly track their kids’ progress from September to June.

That is mostly a good thing, but it can become a negative if a parent allows it. The pros certainly outweigh the cons, starting with the fact there should be no surprises come report card time, if the portals are being used effectively.

“We have this thing called marking periods and report cards, which we still do in our district,” said Joel Handler, director of technology for the Hillsborough Township Board of Education. “A hundred years ago the educational system was built to say, ‘This is how your child is doing at this point and time.’ It wasn’t a way of communicating on a regular basis to see how your child was doing.

“These days, it shouldn’t be a shock to parents anymore to get 10

the report card and say ‘Wait, my child got a D in that class, why did that happen?’ They should be seeing that as time goes on and be able to correct that on a more granular level than it was in the past, because you have more regular communication going on.”

Portals include students’ grades for tests, quizzes and classroom work; upcoming assignments; the value of each grade toward the overall grade; and attendance. They also feature forms that parents can sign electronically, along with the student handbook. Portals are available to both students and parents, with the only difference being that parents can access all of their children’s portals, while the student can only access their own individual records.

“They can see the breakdowns of what assignments the student has done and are assigned in the future and what the grade values are in each of those,” Mr. Handler said. “Departments tend to weigh similarly, so in the science department certain tests will be weighted by a certain amount, quizzes will be a certain amount, class work will be another amount.

2016 Back to School

“It’s not just a current marking period grade, but all your assignments,” he said. “That’s where it’s used more than anywhere else. A student can say ‘Hey I took my assignment, what’s my grade?

OK I didn’t do so great, let’s talk about that, let’s see what’s going on.’”

It is up to each individual teacher as to how often portals are updated, Mr. Handler said some do it on a near daily basis, others do it every other week. Teachers are required to reveal how often they will do it at the start of the school year.

“It should be done within every week or two, if it’s not, it’s an issue,” Mr. Handler said. “If it’s done more than that, that’s the teacher’s prerogative. But it puts an onus on them to say ‘I have to be updating this regularly because people are expecting it.’ So we tell them you lay that out clearly at the beginning. If you’re going to be updating it every 48 hours, or whenever they take an assignment, you have to stick to that, or you’ll get unforeseen circumstances.”

And while the communication is key, over-communication could be detrimental. The biggest problem with portals may be over-zealous parents who make multiple visits each day.

“It’s not like a ticker system for a stock,” Mr. Handler quipped.

“Some people are watching it daily and thinking that way about it.

‘It’s up, it’s down, it’s up.’”

That issue usually occurs with what are known as “helicopter parents” who hover around their child.

“We’ve seen that in college and we’re seeing it in high schools

now, where they’re too on top of what’s going on,” Mr. Handler said.

“They don’t let their child kind of grow and learn independently.

They’re too on top of things. They don’t let the children speak for themselves, that kind of thing. They monitor too closely.

“Some of them are sitting there monitoring it all day long. It’s not designed for that. It’s designed for ‘Hey I’m gonna take a look, see how things are going this week, next week, and so forth.’ Even though we’re dealing with electronics that can be done at the speed of light, it’s really reflecting information about a learning process; and that is something that happens over time.”

The opposite end of that issue is a parent who hardly visits at all.

“You don’t want to check it just once a month,” Mr. Handler said.

“That may not be enough. Your child could be slipping and you’re not aware of it. My advice to parents is it’s something you want to monitor regularly, but not daily. You don’t want to do it super frequently, but you also don’t want to do it just every so often. You need to find that balance.”

Mr. Handler installed the portals in the Hillsborough district six years ago, and feels that they have accomplished their mission.

“They’ve brought up that level of communication that parents and students need regularly,” he said. “It gives the parent and student a lot more context of how they’re doing and where their grades are at.”

So when the report cards arrive, there should be no surprises.

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2016 Back to School