LIVING

This month, Ask The Expert takes your questions about children. Dr Jenkins is a child clinical and school psychologist with 25 years of experience in working with children, parents and teachers on all types of issues; from common day-to-day difficulties to severe learning and emotional conflicts. Her expertise lies in the psychological assessment of learning difficulties, giftedness and behavioural and emotional problems. She also provides therapy to children and teens, consultations with parents and schools and is the founder and president of the Barcelona Network of English Speaking Therapists (www.barcelonanest.com). She also recently created a multi-disciplinary child development team, Positive Parenting Plus, which provides assessment and therapy (www.positiveparentingplus.net).

If you have any questions you would like to ask Dr Jenkins then please email them to:

editorial@barcelona-metropolitan.com

Question 1  - Our daughter is three and starting school this week. I am from the US and my husband is from the UK. Our daughter had a Spanish speaking babysitter for the last year so speaks some Spanish. I'm very worried about school being completely in Catalan, as she doesn't speak it or understand it. She's a very sensitive child and I think he may find it overwhelming and lonely. What can we do to make this easier?

Thanks so much for your help.

Dear US Mom,

I completely understand your concerns and dilemma! Our sweet three year olds are so proud of their language skills; it is their road to autonomy and FREEDOM from parents to be able to communicate their needs, not to mention make friends! I would say that it will be hard for your daughter to begin with – you may find that with some of her independence initially impeded that she regresses a bit, or become frustrated a tad bit more easily. She may have a change in eating or sleeping habits due to the stress. These are things that would be expected and your patience and love as a parent will be very important for your little girl. Try not to take her frustration to heart, this is the time for her to have mommy a little more lenient for a while.

You can help your little one by allowing her to start with partial days at school (i.e. having her attend the first week from 9-11:00, gradually extending her time). Although you will find some Catalan schools look down on this, they also generally concede to parents wishes. Children at this age are very sensitive to their parents stress, so be sure to communicate positive, optimistic attitudes about how great her day is going to be. Since your daughter will be more limited linguistically than the others, be sure she feels some “control over her world” by knowing where the bathrooms are, where her cubby is, where the patio is, etc. Doing a “run through” with her before school starts is helpful. Of course, as I am receiving this on the 7th I assume she probably started TODAY. Another idea would be to reinforce this after school on a few days by just walking around the campus a bit and making sure she understands the “lay of the land”.