 How can we support children who are struggling with separation anxiety from a parent or carer? That's the topic of today's episode of Pookey Ponders. Let's dive straight in. Okay, so this question was posed to me by one of my lovely patrons who said, how could they support an autistic child who was struggling a lot with separation anxiety from parents? And actually, the ideas that I'm going to share today could equally be applied to autistic or non-autistic children, and hopefully they'll get us thinking a little bit more widely about how we can support any child who's experienced kind of significant distress when it comes to that goodbye normally in a school or nursery setting, but any setting where they might be needing to let go of and be separated from a parent or carer. First of all though, I think it's really, really important that we acknowledge that sometimes children and young people experience anxiety, not about being separated from the parent or carer, but about going to the new environment. And when they're experiencing that, because in some way that environment doesn't feel or isn't safe for them, isn't meeting their needs, and this is relatively common amongst our neurodivergent population, then that's not traditional separation anxiety. This is about a child going, hey, I can't go there, that's not going to work, I'm going to feel horrible all day, this is really terrible. And this is something that I feel strongly about as a mum, both a parent and a carer, have two daughters, one biological one adopted, both of whom experienced really significant school anxiety, both of whom are autistic, and both of whom weren't having their needs met well at school. And I did all the traditional things about really encouraging that attendance and working hard on that goodbye. And I had got to the point where I could successfully get them to attend school and get them to say goodbye and leave them behind. And then they did not have a good time. And the challenge with this, and we just need to acknowledge this, I think it's really important, if we are going to continuously say goodbye to a child and leave them in a situation that doesn't feel safe to them or isn't safe for them, then we're going to erode that trust, erode that relationship. And the anxiety isn't ultimately going to go away, it's going to kind of come out in other ways. But for many children, separation anxiety is about finding it very, very difficult to say goodbye to a parent or a caregiver. And there are things that we can do to help. I just had to say that from the beginning because if the problem is not that they're finding it's hard to say goodbye, but they're finding it hard to go to the environment, we just need to get curious about what's going on for this child. Why don't they feel safe here? Are their needs actually being met? Does anything need to change in this environment with the faces, the places, the people, the activity in order to allow the child to thrive here? Is it the right place for them? Assuming that we're confident that this is the right place for them, their needs are being met, the fear, the anxiety, the worries are about the saying goodbye, rather than they're going to, then here are some things that we can do to help. Okay, so first of all, I think it's really important when we're thinking about separation anxiety that we don't think of it as just about the child and fixing the child. This is something where we need to think about all the different people involved. So yes, the child is right at the centre of it and we need to think about them first and primarily, and they are the key person who we want to put at the heart of this and to help, but we also need to think about how to support their parent or carer or supporting adult who's saying goodbye. It's really, really challenging having a child who's really distressed when it comes to that separation and this can provoke anxiety for both child and for parent or carer and so we need to think about how to support both and to make this feel okay. If we don't do that then we can end up just feeding into this cycle of anxiety because as a parent or carer, if what happens each morning, say it's a school drop-off thing, is that you have your anxiety peaked and you are taken to the ends of your emotional limits just trying to say goodbye to your child and then you go away and the last thing you saw was a distressed child. Your assumption is they're going to stay in that state all day unless someone tells you otherwise and that really doesn't sit well. You feel horrible, it's really distressing and you are likely to struggle with your own mental health, with your own emotional well-being, it really takes its toll and it's kind of expensive in terms of our emotional energy. What that means then is by the time you know fast forward to the end of the day, picking the child back up, having time at home, whatever, we're not necessarily in our best happy brilliant places to be positive and happy and to do this all again tomorrow. It wears us down over time and that makes it hard and that is not in any way trying to blame parents or carers or say it's their fault or say they're provoking their child's anxiety, it's just acknowledging that when your child is struggling as a parent or carer you love them and it means that you probably are struggling too. When you're struggling it's much harder to be that calm, supportive, nurturing adult that your child needs. It's really hard. I've been there, I've found myself flailing and failing and I teach this stuff for a living. It's super hard so we need to think about how to support both the child and the adult so if you're working in a school or an education setting for example don't just be thinking how can we get the child in here, be thinking alongside parent and carer how can we support both to have a positive experience of the school to reduce the separation anxiety so both are feeling happier. We also need to think about the adult who is doing the meeting, the greeting and the supporting within school as well because we need to try and find the person who can have a good relationship with that child and who feels confident building up this trust and who believes in this process that's really really important. If there is concern from an adult that they don't feel they can connect with the child or that they think that things need to change we need to look at some of those other sort of bigger issues. So involve all the people. This isn't just about the child, the child sits at the heart of it but we need to involve all the various different people. We need to work as a team, we need to be united, we need to be confident that we're doing the right thing. The next thing is that making sure that anything that we're doing here to try to break that cycle of separation anxiety is not going to jeopardize the relationship that the child has with any of those important significant adults whether they're the adults from home or the adults from the environment in which they're trying to enter each day. Those relationships really matter they're absolutely crucial to the child's well-being those attachments as they form ideally we want them to be secure we want them to be positive and those secure attachments are the things that are going to enable the child actually to separate to go off to go and spread their wings and so what we don't want to do is say hey you've got a really great trusting relationship with your parent or carer here we're going to try and break that and bring you away against your will and make you both unhappy that's not the way to go here. The way to go here is to recognize that that relationship has strengths and that leaning into that and really making sure that that relationship is positive is strong is secure is the very best base from which this child is going to have to go off and explore the world so we need to lean into the strengths of that relationship we need to enable and facilitate trust rather than do anything that might jeopardize it. Things that might jeopardize it would be things like tricking the child so doing something like getting their attention to look elsewhere for a moment and then parents suddenly slips off what message does this send to the child it just says I can't trust that adult and I can't trust that adult and tomorrow this is going to be harder you can play those tricks once twice not many times and you will be left with a child who feels really alone with nobody they can trust and the likelihood of getting to a point where they feel really confident and happy saying goodbye gets very low you might get to a point of learned helplessness where the child will be separated but they won't be happy and they are much less likely to engage with the day so this is where we just get to the point where we give up as a child we give up no longer need to be with that adult I don't trust them why would I want to be there with them anyway I don't really want to be here either but I can't do anything about it I'm just going to go with it but you end up with a kind of a shell of a kid to be quite honest and this actually was what happened particularly with one of my own children and this was the thing that made me think I'm not going to send them to school anymore and they weren't little children and teenagers at this point and it was that recognition that they had given up they no longer trusted us when we were we were dropping them off and so there was no longer the tears the difficulties the challenges with that drop off there was just this resignedness and they did go and they went through the motions and they were really really unhappy because the problem wasn't with separation anxiety the problem was with an environment that didn't meet their needs so in order to maintain that trust which is crucial we're going to be thinking about making sure that the people involved feel safe to the child that these are people that they have chosen or that we've observed that they have got positive relationships we're going to be doing things like making sure that this happens in a place that feels safe to the child we'll think about where the actual kind of goodbye might happen we'll be thinking about doing things gradually so the child isn't pushed beyond what feels possible to them where it always feels just about like something they might manage to do so this might be a real kind of gentle transition over time this is about gradually gradually gradually building that child up never losing that trust listening to them and giving them channels to communicate with us how this is going and what we can do to support and scaffold and working with them this should never feel like something that's being done to the child but rather something that we are doing it together because if we love this child we want to support them we want to care for them then we shouldn't be forcing them to do things if they're distressed already that feel really really impossible and yes sometimes this will mean working always to reduce that distress thinking with the child about what might motivate them to want to be able to go into for example school there might be great reasons why they want to be there but this is going to be about taking at a pace that feels comfortable where they feel safe and where that trust with those important adults is not eroded because that trust is key to making this work in the medium and the long term that takes us kind of nicely really onto the the next idea which is about using the child's motivations when it comes to that goodbye so actually thinking with the child or observing the child depending on their age and how much we kind of know about them and how much they're able to share why do they want to be able to say goodbye because many children where it's kind of genuine separation anxiety and the issue is about saying goodbye then often they do want to be able to go and enjoy all of the things that your setting might have to offer maybe they want to be with their friends maybe there's a particular activity they enjoy maybe there's a particular adult or place that they really really like here and they can be really really conflicted between wanting to stay and wanting to go but exploring with the child what are the things that they love who are the people that they feel safe with which are the places that feel good here can help us to think about what might most motivate the child to actually want to be here being told it's drop-off time and it has to happen now and that's it isn't really going to build that that trust that confidence that joy within a child about the idea of being in the new setting so we need to think really carefully about what might make them want to go there and use those things as our kind of our pools if you like and this can mean thinking about exactly how does the day start for that child what activity what place what person might make this feel like something that they're more excited more keen more comfortable with engaging with as they say goodbye to their parent or carer what will really motivate them to want to to come in to do this to do this brave thing and we must never let go of how hard it is for a child anyone who's experiencing anxiety to kind of feel the fear and do it anyway it's so so hard and our children when they're doing this they need our our respect it's a real privilege if we can build that trust with them and enable them to begin to to let go and to enter our settings it takes real bravery we need to respect that we need to understand quite how hard it is and create something good for them to come to the next idea is around routine and ritual if you listen in regularly or watch a lot of my videos you'll be like oh yeah she's on routine and ritual again it comes up all the time this is something I talk about a lot in terms of our neurodivergent kids it's really really helpful with anxiety routine and ritual just finding ways to do things in the same way again and again and again and again it's kind of what can help us cope sometimes the first time we do something it can feel impossible the second time slightly slightly easier by the time we're doing it for the tenth time we're getting there and it feels a bit more manageable by the hundredth time it's okay it might not feel easy but we know we can do it we've done it 99 times before we're pretty confident we can do it 99 times again so finding routines and rituals ways of doing things in the same places with the same faces in the same order doing the same activities just finding a bit of routine and rhythm to that can really really help and in particular over how that goodbye happens so we know how long it is so we know what's going to happen so but both child and both adults the one they're leaving and the one that they're going to knows what their role is here knows what the expectations are and kind of understands when and how that goodbye is going to happen and there are all sorts of things that we can build into this so we in our household love a special handshake and we can use a special handshake as part of our goodbye or indeed part of our hello but it's about finding what works for the child what works for the adults around them and just finding a ritualistic way of doing this that feels kind of positive fun connecting and so that the child knows there's a there is a goodbye moment but they know that they're going to be reconnected again later on I just can't emphasize enough the don't sneak off thing it it might feel like the right thing to do but actually getting to the point where the child can confidently say goodbye is going to be really really crucial you don't want to break down that trust are the little things that can make a difference here are things like transitional objects so allowing the child to have with them something that can remind them of or connect them with the parent or carer that they are finding it hard to sort of say goodbye to and let go of some children might wear piece of jewelry that is in common with their parent and carer they might carry something in their pocket that they can hold or touch that their parent or carer has held or touched or kissed as well and sometimes we do a laminated kiss for children where we kiss a piece of paper maybe write a message on it laminate it and they can carry it with them having a kind of a touch point something we can return to in the day if we need to feel that connection with that parent or carer can really really help just knowing that they're still out there and they still love us and parents and carers can be encouraged to remind their child that you know well i'm going to go off and i've got to go to work or i'm going to go home um i'm still going to be thinking of you i'll be thinking of you all day and loving you all day and i'll be here at the end of the day and i can't wait to see you again but i hope you're going to have really good fun and actually being able as a parent or carer to get to the point where we feel confident leaving our child we know that there are people that we're handing our precious cargo over to who love them to who have professional love for them in a safe environment that's going to meet their needs and where they're going to have a good day that makes it much much possible for us to be the adult that that child needs being able to say you're going to have a great day and to really really believe it that makes a huge difference but those transitional objects something so the child knows that parents still out there i can kind of connect with them i can imagine being with them i know that they're thinking of me because that relationship is able to really help the child to move away if they know that the parent is always there to return to that's absolutely key another seemingly small thing that can make a massive difference is just contacting back home and reassuring them that the child is actually having a good day um so i talked before about the emotional load if we leave and we feel that the child is distressed and we're not completely confident that they're going to be okay and how we leave the child is kind of in our minds how they will have remained all the day long and so actually if you as the person within the school or other environment are able to drop us a text an email a quick call just to say hey your child's doing great actually they're really really happy and they're playing with lego or they went into maths and they were quite happy with that they sat with their friend whatever it might be just reassuring us that actually things are okay so we don't have to hold all day in mind that idea that our child is distressed all day and this is really crucial because as i said before we need to think about all of the people involved the child's at the centre but everyone around them really matters too and if the parent necara believes the child is distressed they will spend their day feeling distressed and that will make it much harder for them to support facilitate scaffold um their child as they come home and then when it comes to the next day as well so relieving them of that burden letting them know actually child's doing okay um it's really important but don't lie again so in just the same way that we need to build up trust between the child and the parent and the caregiver and we don't want to destroy that trust by doing things like sneaking off when they're not looking actually it's really important that we don't look to break that trust between the different adults involved here we need to know that if you call us and say the child is okay that the child is okay otherwise if the child comes home and tells us a completely different story we're then not going to trust you we're going to feel less confident dropping our child off the next day and so on and so forth trust relationships communication is so important for all of this for all of us okay and then finally um we can think about just celebrating small successes and taking really really tiny steps so if we've got a child who is really significantly struggling with this don't think that you're going to fix it right away but rather have a plan to do this gradually over time to build up the confidence of the child and the adults around them um and ensure that they have a positive or at least a neutral experience each day what we're trying to do is help them to realize that this is safe I am safe this is going to be okay they also need to feel confident that the adult that they are going to be separated from will still be there will still return and they need to keep experiencing that and so sometimes at the beginning those separations might need to be short or not complete so it might be that at the beginning the parent or carer is still within eye or ear shot but that the child just practices being with those new other safe adults and safe places within the parent or carer's presence but without being directly attached to you and we might gradually increase that until they feel able to have the parent or carer out of the room and then gradually for short periods as they stay and it feels like it might be a lot of work but what we're looking to do here is to long term build children who are strong who are capable who are able and who are not going to have that relationship put to the test by trying to trick or cheat them into kind of short-term wins that might seem like wins for us they're attending but that actually may yeah jeopardize that relationship and make it harder than to really engage and thrive with our setting long term so taking it step by step by step if we can celebrating those small successes and throughout all of this making sure that we keep open those lines of communication with child with the various different adults and we keep working on this as a team it's not going to be a quick win but we're looking at growing little people here into brilliant humans and sometimes it's worth really persevering okay I hope that there were some ideas in here that have helped you and got you thinking and I do find this to be quite an emotive one as you'll have picked up and there are certainly other approaches out there and some people would advocate a much much harder harsher approach but I've been thinking a lot lately about gentler ways of approaching some of these anxiety issues and actually really respecting the voice of the child and beginning to really think about what is the genesis of this anxiety because sometimes we're not listening and I've got that wrong as a parent as a carer despite the fact that this is my whole world my whole life and I suppose that I always talk about gifting mistakes and that's a mistake of mine that I guess I would like to gift to you just to stop and just think is this actually about saying goodbye or is this about fear of what I'm going to and therefore what appropriate actions should we be taking I really 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every day until next time over