"My Teacher Hates Me"

Introduction

Summer is over and the kids are safely back in school. You can relax, and congratulate yourself on another season survived. Then 3 o'clock rolls around, and your third-grader climbs into the back seat and promptly dissolves into tears. Or your sixth grader stomps up to his room without a word in response to your cheery, "So how was it?" Unfortunately, your sense of peace and accomplishment lasted, what? Seven hours? A parent's first instinct in the face of a child's fear or sadness is to fix things. Fast. But back-to-school problems are very common, and they*re not all bad. Children gain self-esteem by surmounting obstacles, by realizing that problems are often only temporary and by discovering that they can overcome bad feelings, says psychologist Paul Coleman, Ph.D., author of How To Say It To Your Kids (tk pub, date): "As kids get older, it's good for them to learn to think, 'I can handle this, even if it*s uncomfortable.'" But many kids need some help figuring out how to smooth out a rocky start, and that*s where you come in. Here*s how to handle the most common back-to-school complaints:

"I Don't Have Any Friends in This Class!"

Adjusting to a new class or school is especially hard if a child doesn't see a single familiar face when she walks in. She misses her old friends and may fear that they'll forget her, but she's also at a loss: Where will I sit at lunch? Who will play with me at recess? Will I have a partner for the social-studies project? There are many ways to help your child stay in touch with old friends (sleepovers, phone calls, instant messaging), but helping her to make new friends is even more important: This new class is the world she'll live in for an entire school year. So help her see that the kids with the most friends are, well, friendly. Todd Cartmell, Ph.D., author of The Parent Survival Guide: Positive Solutions To 41 Common Kid Problems (tk pub, date), suggests you make a list together of the kind of things friendly people do: They smile, give heartfelt compliments, join in games wholeheartedly, lose gracefully. Be willing to do a little role-playing to help your child become comfortable with such behaviors. Even kids who aren*t especially shy can have trouble finding buddies in a classroom where the other children already know each other well. Anne-Marie Welsh, an Erie, Pennsylvania, mother of three, expected her middle child to make friends quickly when the family moved last spring; 10-year-old Alice had formed friendships easily the last time she'd changed to a new school -- back in kindergarten. "Now I realize that when she started kindergarten, all of the children were uncertain and tentative. It's much harder to fit it when the other kids are already set into groups of friends," says Welsh. "I realized that Alice's insecurity in this new situation may seem to the other children like standoffishness. So my husband Tim and I coached Alice a little, showing her ways to open up conversations and to respond to others in a friendly way. Once she realized that little things, like smiling more, can help other kids feel at ease around her, she didn't have any trouble finding friends."

If such tactics don't yield the desired results, though, you may need to shift tacks a little. Friendships are based on shared interests, points out Gregory Ramey, Ph.D., a child psychologist at Children's Medical Center of Dayton in Ohio. Focus on your child's own passions, making sure she's got a reasonable number of after-school activities -- and thus opportunities to make friends outside of school. Sitting alone at lunch will still be hard, but not quite as hard as being truly friendless.