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Expert Q&A

	By Paul Coleman Psychologist Family Therapist

I am a stay-at-home mom of 4 1/2-year-old twins. I want to put them into preschool so that they have at least one year in before starting kindergarten. My problem is that I have been pretty much the only one to take care of these two since birth, and they are very attached to me. They still cry when I leave for a short while, and when I'm home, I'm the only one they will go to when they are hurt or upset.

I enrolled them in vacation bible school this summer, and it was horrible. They cried and threw fits, and by the end of the week I ended up bringing them home. I tried just walking away as they were crying, but they ran out the door of the church and were running after me screaming, the teacher chasing them. I knew that they would be fine after I was gone, but I always feel like I need to calm them down before I go. This is very, very stressful. Any advice you could give me would be great. I want them to have a great experience at school, not a stressful one.?

Young children tend to have one of three basic temperaments: easygoing, difficult to manage and slow to warm up. Your twins might fall in the "slow to warm up" category. Those children are more anxious among strangers and take longer to feel comfortable in a new situation. Such a child may even be more anxious in new situations when they are not accustomed to being cared for by anyone except their mother.

Trying to calm them down before you leave is not a good idea. It won't help, and it will prolong the agony for all involved. Also, a vacation Bible camp staff may really be unprepared to handle kids with separation anxiety. Schoolteachers and daycare staff have much more experience along those lines.

Part of the problem also has to do with conditioning. Whenever any of us can escape from (or avoid altogether) a situation that causes us high anxiety, the relief we feel when we escape is highly rewarding. (For example, imagine you had to give a speech to the Mother's Club and you were highly anxious. If you cut the speech short to "escape" from it or you called in sick so as to avoid it, you would feel relief.) That feeling is easily conditioned. That means that the next time you are in that situation, your brain will want you to escape or avoid it so you can once again get that relief. Your children get relief when they can escape the school situation or when they come to you to manage their upsets. Now it is a pattern and they don't feel comfortable doing it any other way. It is possible to get relief without your involvement ? others can comfort them and they can learn to accept such comfort ? but it takes time.

Ultimately, you may have to do this "cold turkey." Over time, your children will learn that their anxiety at your departure will diminish. Chances are, if you spoke to a teacher a half-hour later, they would tell you that your kids are doing just fine.

You might find it helpful to use dolls or action figures and recreate a scene using the dolls about school anxiety or about seeking someone out for comfort other than you. Have the dolls say things like, "I don't like it that Mom left me here, but I know I'll feel better soon and Mom will see me after school ... The teacher is really nice to me ... I like playing with the other kids ... and so on." Rehearsing such scenes over and over might give your children some useful "self-talk" strategies they can apply in real life.

Good luck.

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