Preparing your child for their first day at a special education school

The weeks before a child starts somewhere new are hard on everybody, and they are hardest on parents who have already had one bad experience of school and are quietly braced for another.

Most of what makes the first day go well happens before the first day. Here is what actually helps.

Two to three weeks before

Visit, more than once

Familiarity does more than any amount of explanation. Come when it is quiet, so your child can look at the rooms without the pressure of other children being there. Come again when it is busy, so the noise and movement are not a surprise on day one. Let your child touch things, sit in the chairs, find where the toilet is.

Take photographs

The building, the front gate, the classroom, the teacher, the toilet, where the bags go. Make them into a simple book to look at at home. For visual learners, which includes most autistic children and most children with Down Syndrome, this is far more effective than being told about it.

Tell the school everything

Not just the diagnosis. What calms your child. What sets them off. What their behaviour looks like just before they become overwhelmed, so staff can catch it early. How they ask for the toilet. What they will and will not eat. The word they use for their comfort object. Whether they respond to a raised voice by freezing.

Write it down and hand it over. You know things about your child that no assessment surfaces, and a school that has them from day one will get the first week right instead of learning it the hard way.

The week before

• Shift the sleep schedule gradually, ten or fifteen minutes at a time. A tired child on day one starts at a disadvantage that nothing else can make up for.
• Practise the actual morning routine, in order, a few times. Not a description of it. A rehearsal.
• Do the journey. Walk or drive the route so it is familiar.
• Let your child wear the uniform at home if there is one, so any scratchy seam or unbearable label is discovered now rather than at seven in the morning on the day.
• Make a simple picture schedule of the day and put it somewhere they will see it. Knowing what is coming removes an enormous amount of anxiety.
• Prepare a comfort object and confirm with the school that it can come.

The morning itself

Get up early enough that nobody is rushed. Rushing is the thing that most reliably wrecks a morning, and children absorb urgency instantly.

Keep your own face and voice calm even if you do not feel it. Your child is reading you far more closely than you think, and if you look frightened they will conclude there is something to be frightened of.

Keep the goodbye short. This is the hardest advice to follow and the most important. A drawn-out goodbye extends the distress rather than easing it. Say the same short phrase you will say every day, and go. Almost every child settles within minutes of the parent leaving, and staying makes that take longer.

What to expect afterwards

Be ready for a difficult first few weeks, and for some of it to arrive later than you expect.

Many children hold themselves together all day and fall apart the moment they get home. This is exhausting to be on the receiving end of, and it is worth understanding for what it is: your child has been coping hard for hours, and home is where it is safe to stop coping. It is a sign of trust, not of the school going badly.

Expect tiredness beyond what the day seems to justify. Expect some regression, since a skill that was solid may wobble for a while. Expect a good first week followed by a much harder second one, which is extremely common as the novelty wears off and the reality lands.

Give it half a term before drawing conclusions. Settling takes longer than anyone wants it to.

And you

It is normal to cry in the car. It is normal to feel relief and then feel guilty about the relief. It is normal to feel a kind of grief on the day your child starts at a special school, even when you are certain it is the right decision, because it is a moment where a future you had pictured is finally set aside.

All of that is ordinary and none of it means you have made the wrong choice. Talk to someone about it. Preferably not only your partner, who is carrying the same day.