HOW TO TRAIN CHILDREN TO KINDERGARTEN WITHOUT INJURY?
Ideally, a child is physically ready to be separated from their parents for relatively long periods of time when they are attached at the level of love
When she starts drawing your hearts, talking about love not just by imitating you, but from the inside, that’s when she’ll be ready. Moreover, such a child will most likely complain and cry more than children who enter kindergarten at an early age, because he will already understand his loss and suffering, and not just feel incomprehensible pain. So, she will cry more, and the damage to her psyche will be less. That’s in a nutshell.
Now the long answer.
Never before in history has it been assumed that the responsibility of raising a child rests solely with the parents. The child was always surrounded by other adults who took care of him, considered him “their own”, and were responsible for him.
In Africa they say “It takes a village to raise a child” – “To raise a child, you need a whole village.” When a child grows up among his own people, in the words of Gordon Neufeld, in the “village of preferences”, the childhood fear of losing mom or dad never turns into the animalistic terror that many modern city children feel.
Second, in traditional cultures, a woman’s world was never divided into home and work, both of these worlds were not separate, intertwined, and women did not have a problem with home and child, or work and communication with other adults.
It is not surprising that raising children by the efforts of only two adults is not only a very difficult task, but often impossible. Below, I will describe possible options for engaging outside help that are consistent with what we already know about attachment, are friendly to the child’s normal psycho-emotional development, or if they are not so friendly, offer options to compensate for the trauma the child is experiencing.
As is already known, up to 6 months, a child’s brain is open to establishing attachments. The child willingly smiles in a friendly manner to strangers, almost without resistance goes to everyone’s hands. The task of parents during these six months is to introduce the child to all the adults who can take care of everyone whom the child will meet before the age of 6 months, they will not have any special problems to take care of this child. And the child will not have any particular problems with the fact that these adults take care of him.
After 6 months, the polarization of preferences begins, the child’s brain says, “Yes, thank you, I got to know all my preferences, I don’t need them anymore. Let them take care of me, and I will do other things. From the moment when a child begins to have the syndrome of fear of strangers, passing it from hand to hand, as before, without warning, will be a big mistake.
Now one adult, to whom the child is attached, will have to transfer his affection to another adult, who, in turn, will have to work on the child’s attachment to himself, develop and strengthen it. Give as much physical contact as possible, hug. Then she will find that closeness, which is so lacking.
Develop deeper levels of liking so that physical separation is easier for the child to tolerate.
Make it easier for the child to stay in kindergarten.
Support your baby’s attachment to you at the level of feelings: give something of yours, a medallion with your photo. Or hang your photo in the locker. Record your voice on the dictaphone and agree with the teachers that the child can come to the locker and listen to his mother.
Maintain affinity at the level of similarity: wear the same things. It will be easier for the baby to hold on to affection when he knows that he has the same green scarf as mommy, or the same checkered cap as dad. Educators would do well to emphasize how the child looks like mom and dad (Oh, you have eyes like mom’s and a nose like dad’s).
Maintain attachment at the level of belonging: constantly emphasize that you are a family, one for all and all for one, always protect the child, never unite with anyone against him, even for what you think are humane purposes . Remember, the child’s behavior is instinctive, with those to whom he is not attached, he will behave badly, and with those to whom he is attached – well.
Unfortunately, no matter what we do, it will not be possible to completely avoid the injury. A child is only ready for separation from his parents at the level of attachment through love, when he can hold on to us because he LOVES us. In the best case, signs of such attachment appear in 4-5 years.