A Good Goodbye.
(The words and opinions of this blog are that of the author and her experiences. This is not professional advice, and should not be used in lieu of that. )For a lot of us, school drop off is a kiss/hug/wave as you part to go about your day.
But for some families, school drop-off means heightened emotions, anxious pleas, and repetitive attempts at goodbye resulting in a distressed child and a frazzled adult. If you haven't experienced a hard goodbye yourself, chances are you've witnessed one, leaving you feeling sympathetic yet powerless to offer meaningful help. My family has been there a few times ourselves, you may have seen it, and for us caught in the midst of a hard Goodbye, it can feel isolating, stressful and comes with a sense of hollowness when you run out of ideas on how to ‘fix it’.
But I want you to know that you're not alone. Hard goodbyes are more common than you may think. It’s also possible to get to a good goodbye - eventually - but how that good goodbye looks and when it happens will be different for everyone (I’m saying comparison is not conducive). There are so many different supports and tactics that will benefit different families, along with various professionals and/or communities that you can reach out to for further support, ideas, and strategies.
What’s going on?
What are you observing? Exhaustion, separation anxiety, or something else?
I think we forget school is a lot. Active learning, both in classroom AND socially, for 6 hours straight - is huge. I know that even as an adult, that would wipe me out energetically. Yet I see all our amazing kids powering on through to the best of their abilities.
But, just like every single person on this planet, our kids also run out of power and need to recharge their battery.
When and how that flat battery presents is completely individual. No two batteries are the same, hold the same amount of charge, or recharge the same way. Recognising exhaustion and counteracting by implementing supports is not only crucial for mental health, it provides a life lesson of prioritising and valuing our well being.
Having a combination of Mindful Days, Mindful Afternoons, and/or Mindful Moments can be a game changer. How that looks is different for each family, as mindfulness is not necessarily about doing nothing, but more about down time. It’s activities that recharge us because we truly enjoy them. Activities like nature walks, art and creation, listening to music, deep sensory work (such as obstacle courses or trampolining), or just relaxing and letting the mind daydream.
It could be reducing or increasing the after school activity load, or just chucking a good old ‘Aussie Sickie’.
‘School Can’t’ (also known as School Distress or School Refusal) is very different to exhaustion and separation anxiety, but can come as a result of them, or other factors too. School Can’t is more than a ‘I don’t want to’, it is the child physically UNABLE to engage with school. It’s the sensation of going into freeze, fight, flight - defence mode.
A can’t is outside of choice or refusal, we need to recognise that it is an inability versus ‘a won’t’ and often needs more support than what I list here.
Meet the child where they are.
We almost got to ‘School Can’t’ mid 2023. Drop offs never went well and were continuously getting worse. Bribes did nothing, begging neither, nor did short and sharp goodbyes. Instead it made the for a hyper-emotional child in the afternoons and amplified the next day’s drop-off distress. It was hard on me too, I would go to the car and have big break down cry after drop off.
I was running out of ideas and desperate for both of us (as well as her teacher) to not keep enduring this trauma, so I decided to ask my daughter her opinion on the situation. I want to make a point that I was tactful of when I asked - I chose a time on a weekend during when we were all calm and happy as the best ideas always come from a regulated state. I asked “Hey, I noticed that we aren’t having good goodbyes with school lately. I’m just wondering, what do you think would help us have a good goodbye?”.
I got a LOT of feedback - most of her distressers had nothing to do with school itself but more around supporting her mentally, and some of it I didn’t realise was an issue at all. Once we implemented these changes, the difference was amazing in my eyes. We are far from perfect our drop offs aren’t a Disney movie sing-song experience. Some days are still a bit tricky but it is nowhere near the situation we had last year.
The point of sharing my story is to show the impact of including your child in the conversation. Kids are often not given credit for their intelligence, perceptiveness, and awareness. There is so much power in meeting your child where they are - it can be as simple as just asking them what’s going on.
If at first you get ‘nothing’ or ‘I don’t know’, they may not be in the right physical or mental space to speak about it yet. Another time and/or another person may open that conversation. Rarely is it a “I just don’t want to go to school”, there is almost always underlying factors present. Headspace lists potential contributors such as (but not limited to):
anxiety related to being separated from family.
worry related to social interactions.
changes to school environment such as transitioning from primary to high school or to a new school.
learning difficulties or conflict with teachers.
anxiety about exams or public speaking.
being affected by bullying or friendship difficulties.
an unsettled family life – separation or divorce or illness.
Good goodbyes and neurodivergent minds.
It cannot be ignored that School Can’t/Distress/Refusal and Neurodivergent identification have a direct correlation. Multiple studies have recorded that kids who are experiencing School Can’t/Distress, that above 90% of them are neurodivergent. So, I’d love to factor in a couple more from a neurodivergent perspective:
Physical Exhaustion - exhaustion is the biggest dysregulator and everyones capacity is different. I personally do not have racehorse stamina, in fact I don’t even have the stamina of a retired miniature pony that has done one too many petting zoo experiences. The more I push myself, the longer my inevitable burnout will last.
Masking Exhaustion - heavy masking is energy draining, consciously or not. Restraining and refraining drains more energy than getting it out through movement, fidgeting, taking breaks, etc.
Transitions in general (especially when we’re moving from a task / lesson we love to maths - oh, uh I mean a less favourable subject). Not all of us are great at moving between, especially when we move from a preferred state or focus to a new one).
Dysregulation - interoceptive awareness is often not the strongest in neurodivergent people. Rather than feeling and recognising body signals such as hunger, thirst, tiredness, needing the bathroom, etc. All these discomforters compound and build to dysregulation where overwhelm/shutdown/meltdown ensues. At the point of shut down or meltdown, it’s hard to use relevant needed supports - even when the child knows and frequently uses those strategies otherwise.
One of the biggest distresses for my daughter from the story I told before is that she needed to know where I was and what I was doing while she was at school. Object permanence is an important thing to her, and I was not providing that as I would work from my car, or a cafe, or a library, or home. Giving her clarity on my days plan and where I would be was great for her headspace. Seems so small, but it was huge for her.
The other distress was that she didn’t have access to the things that support and regulate her through the day that she has access to at home. I didn’t realise at first, but in hindsight it is so obvious. She now has a school regulation pack - things like noise cancelling headphones, a wobble cushion, weighted lap blanket/toy, fidgets, visual timer, a chair band, mindful breaks, a chew necklace, and packing her favourite safe foods. This has helped reduce the frequency of her burnouts. When she’s heading to burnout it’s time to call for a mindful day (she actually has began to let me know when she needs them) to let her rest and top her battery up. She doesn’t take advantage of this agreement and I know that this stops us getting to complete breakdown, and keeps her positively engaged with school.
A key point I want to press is that a dysregulated child is unable to learn. If we don't have foundations we cannot build upwards.
The blocks the teachers build are the yellow and green ones, look how many are below that need to be present to support that learning journey.
Image by Neurowild from their Instagram.
If you have relevant allied health support, it could be conductive to include them in this conversation too. Whatever is causing the distress can be one big thing, or 10 individual little things. Those 10 things aren’t that bad separately, but together amount to a School Can’t. Having an external third party to bounce ideas of supports and strategies that can be built and implemented around your child, our OT has been a game changer for us all.
The right mindset.
Knowing and being equipped to positively work with what is stopping the good goodbye is the focus, ensuring we are sitting in a solution frame of mind, rather than blame. Firstly, parent/carer guilt and self blame are so common in these situations, and can be worsened when well-meaning advice comes indirectly (or directly) from peers or professionals.
“One of the most important things for parents to understand is that – while they can do things to support their child – school anxiety is not ever a result of faulty parenting. Not ever. It is a complex issue with multifaceted causes.”
(Alice Campbell, In the Real Wonderland)
Positive reflections to school, especially at school irrelevant times, can help foster that sense of connection and belonging. Our behaviour and attitudes are blueprints for our incredibly perceptive children, so when we show genuine and positive confidence about the school and its staff, it can help the child develop their own confidence and trust too.
Discovering common interests to foster friendships between your family and your child’s teacher can make for a warmer morning reception (the start of the year social stories are great for finding those overlapping interests).
Small things like watching the footy and knowing that their teacher is a footy enthusiast too, saying things like “Wow, that was a great game - I bet your teacher (but actually use the teacher’s name) watched it too - we should see what their favourite goal was tomorrow!” (Disclaimer: Sport is my biggest weakness and I don’t know why I chose it as my example, please imagine this in better and more relevant lingo.)
Peer friendships in and out of school could just need a bit of nurturing. Supporting your child finding others with likeminded interests (Lego Club, Fathering Night Catch Ups, Art Classes, Sport, book club…) can create bonds that transcend the classroom.
Some ideas to help get to good goodbyes.
I asked other parents on my socials if they have experienced not-so-good goodbyes and if they did, what did they do to help it get better. My DM’s lit up, what a community we have when we ask the right people. Here’s a blended list of everyones wins below, including mine too. Some may work and be right for your family, or you may try them all before inventing your own. A one time magic or overnight fix is not what to expect, instead aim for progressive, small, and probably imperfect steps.
Regulation and Gentler Transitions. Good goodbyes start well before the school gate. Personally, I think at the very least a good goodbye begins the night before. A nourished body provides the best grounds for a regulated mind. Having a full belly, well hydrated, a good sleep (we can only hope for this one), some quality bonding time, positive environment, and a sense of preparedness can only be a benefit. I understand (and know firsthand) some of this is out of our control, so we do the best we can to the capacity we have. Running late, rushing, and punting kids into classrooms can be a really abrasive (and failed) transition. Running late is so easy to do for us and when it does happen, I immediately see the effects. It’s a great reminder for me to get back to my routines, prepare the night before and help my girls prepare themselves too.
Hearts in Hands. Draw a heart on the back of their hand, and they draw a heart on the back of yours. Now both of you have a magic connected button to press when you miss each other. When you press your magic heart button, it lets the other person know you’re thinking of them.
2 Halves of a Whole. 2 matching things, or something that goes into 2 parts. Each of you have a responsibility to protect it for the day until they (and you) reunite. My daughter and I made a small mermaid (like a Guatemalan Worry Doll but with our flair) for each other. The activity was a great bonding time to logically talk through our worries of being apart, a trinket from each other to have throughout the day and something to reunite when we were together.
Our version of Guatemalan Worry Dolls - Our Worry Mermaids.
We made them together in a session facilitated by our OT. It was such a lovely bonding experience and we put a lot of effort into our mermaids.
I recollected and recreated the instruction sheet, found reference photos for the doll version (as not everyone is as mermaid obsessed as us) which you can find in my free resources here.
Timing it right. Notice on drop off, what time you’re arriving and how that is affecting your child. Getting to school later in the morning when most of the other kids have arrived can be overwhelming - especially to start the day. Alternatively, getting there too early where your child is waiting around for others can be anxious and unsettling. What does your child prefer? You can always ask if you don’t know.
A Good Goodbye Jar. This one is a bit of lighthearted fun and can really get some laughs! Get a jar and spend the afternoon writing all different ways to say goodbye. They could be funny, or sweet, kooky, unique, or all of the above! Things like a special handshake, a funny dance, saying goodbye in animal sounds, mime goodbyes, small letter to each other to read as you part… and follow that up with a matching reconnection at the end of the day. Disclaimer: This idea is probably more for our younger kids, we don’t need to push for the ‘cringe’ label that I am sure is inevitable for us.
A Safe Friend. Organising with the family of a friend to meet outside school gate so they can enter grounds together, begins the transition before the actual event. The kids can start bonding as they walk in together and reduces the shock of approaching a situation alone.
Comfort Item. The other safe friend - a comfort toy or item from home. Warning: this option can be a dance with fire because if that special toy is lost or left somewhere… chaos ensues, so strategy is a must if you take this route. My youngest has ‘Bunny’ who is her lifetime special toy, but Bunny is too special to go to school. I also value my sanity too much after the last time she had a surprise school sleep over. Bunny and my daughter approved a weighted plush called Flamingo (we’re all about unique names in our house) to look after her during school hours.
Special Meeting Spot. Instead of the classroom door, maybe there’s a nice tree, or a bench, or a quiet space near a garden that could be your special spot to say goodbye and hello. It gives a bubble and a safe space, possibly reducing that building anxiety of approaching the classroom and the departure of you.
Child’s Choice. Empower you child and let them describe a good goodbye. My daughter’s good goodbye request was 5 kisses and 5 hugs - and immediately I thought ‘How perfect! We now have a tangible countdown, a bonding moment, and a child empowered by choice.’ I had a mum DM me they do a ‘1 Minute Mummy Cuddle’, which has the same benefits as my daughters choice. Is it a good goodbye every morning? No, but on some days it’s not needed at all! Which is actually kinda sad for me now that I’m used to it, maybe I need a good goodbye choice.
Short and Sweet. For some, drawing it out compounds the building anxiety and a short sweet goodbye outside the classroom and then directing/connecting them with a friend, their teacher or an SSO if they’re available.
Resources and References.
Your Child is Not Broken by Heidi Mavir.
This book was recommended to me by our OT, I think I have read it 3 times in 2 weeks. It has a big section (close to half the book) on ‘School Can’t’. It explains the difference between the won’t and the can’t and takes you on a specific, detailed, lived experience journey.
Audiobook is available on Spotify Premium for free: https://open.spotify.com/show/5TLnHoPnVCiR5z0UX2KYcv?si=VBdPBIuPQq6GWeo8Tr8fyA
on Audible for $13.66: https://www.audible.com.au/pd/Your-Child-Is-Not-Broken-Audiobook/B0C4TYKV86
physical copies at libraries (log on and reserve to your local one), and online.
Worry Doll Instruction Sheet that I have adopted in my Mindful Resources Google Drive here.
Headspace https://headspace.org.au/explore-topics/supporting-a-young-person/school-refusal/
Another article specifically on School Can’t to read here.
Silly Billy. A children’s book about childhood worries and the introduction of Guatemalan Worry Dolls on Amazon.
