Crying/Wailing New Kids in kindy.

This the second week of schooling in 2014. Alhamdulillah we are receiving more new students in our kindy. New kids need a lot of attention since some of them come crying/wailing/shouting in the morning as they are still not used to the new environment. I've got a lot support from my staffs i.e. the teachers and my helper to calm them and use different kinds of techniques or tactics on the stressful children.

What do we do to calm a stressful child?

Here are some tips to calm a crying child (might be useful for parents too):

• Give him/her a hug without saying anything.
• Distract the child by offering him/her a drink or a snack.
• Offer some other useful activities like helping to keep the toys, putting away books etc.
• Reassure that the parents will fetch him/her once he/she have finished learning. (applies in school)
• Give him/her a responsibility like telling teacher the time to go home.
• Quickly respond to the child before the crying gets worse.
•  If all tactics fail, ignore the crying and tell him/her that "A good boy/girl smile to teachers when he/she in school". Ask he/she to give you a huge smile.
• Sometimes it's best to let them decide when to stop crying and carry out some interesting activity near the child. So, let the child see the benefit of joining in the activity in school.

 I hope that tomorrow some of my stressful kids won't be so stressful anymore. At least today, I managed to make them smile when the parents fetched them.