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Transitioning to a New School

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Starting school for any child is challenging enough. It can be even harder when your child is starting at a new school after already being in school for a while.

There are many reasons why a family might want/need to have their child transfer to a new school. Regardless of the reason, if your child has developed a relationship with their peers and teachers, switching schools can be especially heartbreaking and confusing for them.

Many of the tips provided in this post can also be applied to children who are just starting school for the first time, however, extra care should be given to children who are switching schools.

The most important thing you can do is to tell your child in advance what is going to happen. Tell your child/children as soon as you find out that they are going to be switching schools. The longer you wait to tell them, the worse the transition is going to be for your child. Telling them in advance helps your child process the change and will hopefully make the transition to their new school much smoother. Below are some ideas you can implement with your child during this transition time.

  • Role play school with your child/children. Take turns with your child being the parent, the child, and the teacher. Have your child role play common daily routines, such as saying good-bye, taking off your coat/backpack, singing songs, reading stories, having Circle Time, playing outside, and taking naps. Answer any questions your child may have honestly and openly.
  • Read books to your child about preschool and starting school. Ask your child how they think the characters in the book feel. Ask your child if they are feeling similarly to the characters in the book. A list of book recommendations will be provided at the end of this post.
  • Normalize your child’s emotions. Your child may express to you that they are feeling sad, scared, and/or worried about their transition to a new school. Empathize with your child and listen to their emotions with curiosity. Validate your child’s emotions and let them know that all of their feelings are ok. Respond to any of their questions openly and honestly.
  • Provide an opportunity for your child to say “goodbye” to their old school. Encourage them to bring treats for their class on their last day. Take a picture of them with their teachers and peers. Even better, provide your child copies of these pictures to take with them on the first day of their new school.
  • If possible, try to keep the rest of their lives as consistent as possible. Children rely on consistency and predictability in their lives because it helps them feel safe and secure.
  • Ask their new school if they will let you and your child visit before they start school there. Some schools let families and their children spend an hour or so exploring the school. This will help your child become familiar with their new school so they won’t feel as anxious on their first day.
  • Go shopping for a new backpack with your child. Have your child pick out their new backpack. Hopefully their new backpack will make them feel safer at their new school.
  • Let your child pick out their first day of school outfit.
  • Encourage your child to take a favorite stuffed animal(not their ALL time favorite – so it doesn’t get lost)  to school for naptime. Having a familiar object with them will help your child feel safer.

We hope these tips help you and your family out during this difficult transition period. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at any time.

Further Reading:

Book List for Starting School:


Links to Book Lists Online:

Do Parenting Styles Impact the Developing Child?

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There is a plethora of literature and research out there that tells parents their parenting style is an important factor in how their children will turn out. What are parenting styles exactly? A parenting style is defined as “a constellation of parents’ attitudes and behaviors toward children and an emotional climate in which the parents’ behaviors are expressed (Darling and Steinberg, 1993).”
Throughout my teaching career, I have encouraged parents to be curious about their parenting style. Parents frequently ask me why their parenting style is important to the development and growth of their child. As stated before, an ample amount of research has been conducted on the impact of parenting styles on the developing child. I have found parenting assessment tools to be an invaluable resource because they provide parents with a visual scale on their parenting experience, including which parenting style each parent is using for each child being parented. The assessment tool I use is called the “Prepare/Enrich Parenting Assessment (PEP)”. This particular parenting assessment identifies five parenting styles:

  1. Uninvolved 
  2. Permissive 
  3. Balanced 
  4. Strict
  5. Overbearing.  

In this blog post, I discuss a brief history of parenting styles and then I will elaborate on the research behind the “Prepare/Enrich Parenting Assessment (PEP)” and why I use it with the parents at my school.

The idea of parenting styles emerged from the work of Baldwin and colleagues in 1945. They came up with three different parenting styles: democratic, authoritarian, and laissez-faire (Baldwin, Kalhoun, & Breese, 1945). In 1958, Williams came up with four parenting styles based on two dimensions (authority (A) and love (L)):

  • ignoring (low A, low L)
  • authoritarianism (high A, low L)
  • over indulgent/permissive (low A, high L)
  • democracy (high A, high L) (Williams, 1958).

Perhaps the most well known version of parenting styles comes from the work of Diana Baumrind. She started her research on parenting styles in the 1960s with three types:

  • Authoritarian (very strict)
  • Permissive (very laid-back)
  • Authoritative (the middle ground). 

In the 1980’s, the Neglectful/Uninvolved (self-explanatory) style was added, expanding Braumrind’s parenting styles to four. 

What makes the “Prepare/Enrich Parenting Assessment (PEP)” different is that there are five parenting styles that PEP provides. The PEP assessment was created in 2014 by Dr. David Olson and his wife Karen Olson. It was inspired by their previous work in couples counseling which they started in the late 1970’s. The PEP is based around family systems theory, making it one of the most in-depth parenting assessments available today. The parenting styles provided in the PEP are based on closeness and flexibility. Below, I will describe the characteristics of these five parenting styles.

  1. Balanced: This is the optimal parenting style. Scores moderate to high on both closeness and flexibility. Characterized by warm and nurturing parents who are supportive emotionally, responsive to their child(ren)’s needs, encouraging toward independence (with monitoring), consistent and fair in meting out discipline, and who expect age-appropriate behavior.
  2. Uninvolved: Scores very low in closeness and very high in flexibility. Characterized by low emotional connection, low responsiveness from parent to child, high independence of child from parent (parents are disconnected from child’s life), highly negotiable rules that are loosely enforced, and few demands made on the child.
  3. Permissive: Scores very high in both closeness and flexibility. Characterized by parents who are overly protective of their child(ren), very responsive to their child(ren)’s every need, lenient in discipline, and unlikely to place demands on their child(ren).
  4. Strict: Scores very low in both closeness and flexibility. Characterized by strictly enforced rules, highly restricted child freedom, firm discipline, low responsiveness to child, and low emotional connection between parent and child. 
  5. Overbearing: Scores very high in both closeness and flexibility. Characterized by being a helicopter parent–one that hovers over the child to provide for the child’s needs, and at the same time being strict about the rules while enforcing firm discipline (Olson and Wilde, 2016).

As stated before, I’m an authorized facilitator in the “Prepare/Enrich Parenting Assessment (PEP)”. I really enjoy diving deep with parents and finding out if their parenting styles are compatible with their unique, individual children. Please contact me if you are interested in scheduling a consultation. Contact info can be found here: https://folsompreschool.com/about-us/contact-us/

For more information on the “Prepare/Enrich Parenting Assessment (PEP)”, please visit the following website: https://www.prepare-enrich.com/the-assessment/parenting/

Please contact us for additional resources and research on parenting styles and PEP.

Multiyear Teaching (Looping) and Why It Matters

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At American River Montessori, we practice multi-year teaching. This is done through a process called “looping.” Looping refers to when a group of children stays with the same teacher or teachers for at least two or three years. There are many benefits to looping that affect children, parents, and teachers. In this blog post, we will discuss the origins of looping, where it is currently practiced, and the positive benefits to looping.

Looping started as a practice in Waldorf schools in Europe in the early 20th century and was brought to the United States in 1928. Before this time, looping in the United States was used in one-room school houses as a basis for necessity rather than a pedagogical practice. Although looping is currently uncommon in the United States, it is still a common practice in Europe and China. It is also a common practice in certain educational philosophies such as Waldorf and Montessori schools.

One of the main benefits to looping is the establishment of long-lasting relationships between students, teachers, and families. Benefits of the long-lasting relationships established in looping classrooms include:stability in care practices, teachers are better able to anticipate children’s needs, and increased parent friendships and networking opportunities. Children in looping classrooms develop stronger social bonds with peers, are better able to handle conflicts amongst peers, and are more skillful in problem solving as a team member. Looping also encourages stronger bonds between parents and teachers. This is important because when parents and teachers have a strong bond, they can work collaboratively to support the developing child.

Additional benefits of looping include an allowance for developmental differences such as gender, disability status, and individual variation in the classroom, more time for students to establish positive peer relationships, increased opportunities for shy students to develop self-confidence, and stronger student-teacher relationships. It has also been shown that children in looping classrooms have a significantly better
attendance rate and lower rates of retention. Looping has also been known to be helpful for at-risk children who don’t have a stable home life by providing a stable base for these children.

An example of the effects of looping can be observed by watching the interactions between teacher-to-parent, student-to-student, student-to-teacher, and parent-to-student. One example of this happened when a new parent observed the pick-up and departure process at our school. When the parent picked up the child after their first day of school, the other children supported the new student by helping the child get ready. The parent noticed that the current students were well versed in the pick-up and departure process at the school and were willing to help the new student learn the process. The students did this by acknowledging the parent, informing the new student that it was time to collect their belongings, helping the student collect their belongings, walking the new student to the door, then saying goodbye to the new student and their parent. This example would probably not have happened if all the students started with a new teacher at the same time. Because there were students from the last year with the same teacher, they were able to help walk the new student through the procedures of the school that they have already learned.

One of the many qualities of our school that we pride ourselves on is our commitment to developing long-lasting relationships between students, teachers, and parents. Multi-year teaching/looping is one of the many ways we achieve this goal.

Please look below for additional resources and research on multi-year teaching/looping:
Conway, G. (2020, March 30). Opinion: How ‘looping’ provides kids consistency in school. The Hechinger Report. Retrieved from https://hechingerreport.org/opinion-how-looping-works/
Hegde, A. V., & Cassidy, D. J. (2004). Teacher and parent perspectives on looping. Early Childhood Education Journal, 32(2), 133-138.
Link: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10643-004-1080-x
Hitz, M. M., Somers, M. C., & Jenlink, C. L. (2007). The looping classroom: Benefits for children, families, and teachers. YC Young Children, 62(2), 80.
Link: https://www.proquest.com/openview/fb23c07e48c45a773831ebdb4c245ba7/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=27755
Nitecki, E. (2017). Looping and Attachment in Early Childhood Education: How the Applications of Epigenetics Demand a Change. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 17(2), 85-100.
Link: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1142356

Welcome!

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Welcome Readers,

My name is Debbie Doss and I am the director and lead teacher at American River Montessori. I have been teaching children and supporting parents for over 13 years. At my Montessori school children and teachers are encouraged to learn and explore ideas.

When I first began my teaching adventure I had no idea I would be supporting parents who had a lot of questions about parenting. Being a learner myself I researched parents’ questions. I discovered a number of individuals with little or no child development training providing child development advice. I was motivated to become an expert.

After 13 years of researching child development and teaching children, I am now ready to share my knowledge and provide emotional and practical support for parents outside of my school community.

My mission is to share the knowledge and tools with parents for their child’s developmental success. This blog is my first step in achieving my mission. I eventually plan to provide insightful coaching that empowers parents to achieve the outcomes they want for their child’s life.

I look forward to sharing my knowledge with you.