Parting with Less Sorrow

By MEGAN RUTHERFORD

Her first day of kindergarten was so awful that 40 years later, Stephanie Johnson remembers every miserable detail. Raised by a stay-at-home mother, she had never spent much time with kids her age before. Arriving at school late, she endured the cold, silent stares of 30 other children as the teacher found her a seat. When her mother abruptly vanished, she felt abandoned, and her sniffling escalated into wails. "I felt like a garbage can deposited at the curb on trash day," she recalls.

She was determined that her son Jeremy would fare better. So the year before he was to start kindergarten, she overcame her lifelong shyness and began to canvass her California neighborhood, introducing herself to kids and their parents and setting up play dates with Jeremy's future classmates. In late summer, knowing that teachers often fix up their classrooms in the weeks before school starts, she dropped by the school so she and her son could meet his teacher, who invited them to look around the room. "I think we succeeded," Johnson says. "Jeremy is a happy, social child who, I am happy to say, occasionally gets into trouble for talking in class."

At some time in their life, all children experience distress--commonly called separation anxiety--when saying goodbye to parents. But as Stephanie Johnson can attest, the suffering can be kept to a minimum--which is important, since the way early separations are handled, psychologists believe, can influence how people manage transitions throughout their life.

Many parents who helped their children master separation in day care are caught by surprise when it erupts again in preschool or kindergarten--or even later. "Separation is not an event. It's a process," says Mary Ucci, director of the Child Study Center at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Mass. "It doesn't happen once. It happens continually over a lifetime." In fact, adults starting a new job are prey to the same prickles of panic that children experience on their first day of the school year.

Far from being aberrant, clinging to parents is instinctual, adaptive behavior. "Human children are very fragile and vulnerable compared with animals that can move independently from their parents at birth. They really depend for survival on their parents or some other connected adult," says Ucci.

PLAY GAMES For young children, games such as peekaboo and hide-and-seek reinforce the concept that people continue to exist even when they are no longer visible.

PRACTICE SEPARATING "Having successful experiences, in the sense of getting through it O.K., even with tears, is really the only way to get used to separating," says George Burns, principal of Fieldston Lower School in New York City. Make play dates with kids in your child's class. Visit the classroom ahead of time to familiarize your child with new surroundings.

STICK AROUND "Going cold turkey doesn't work," says Sara Wilford, director of the Sarah Lawrence College Early Childhood Center in Bronxville, N.Y. So plan to stay with your child as long as you're needed, especially the first few days. When she becomes engrossed in an activity, you may be tempted to slip away without saying goodbye. Don't. "If the parent sneaks out, a child never knows what to expect and will cling even more," says Amy Flynn, director of New York's Bank Street Family Center. Once you've said goodbye, leave. "Don't prolong it," says Ucci. "That's just excruciating."

It's important to address separation anxiety quickly. Social connections and daily routines coalesce in the first few days of the year, and children who are absorbed in their own distress will miss out on these significant developments. A good strategy with an older child is to help him take charge, says New Jersey psychologist Nancy Devlin. "Ask, 'What is it about school that bothers you?' Then ask, 'What can you do to solve this problem?' Parents rush in to solve problems that children can solve themselves."

In early adolescence, separation anxiety may take the form of stage fright. "Adolescents have a sense that they're onstage and everyone's looking at them," says Harriet Lenk, professor of child development at the Bank Street Graduate School of Education. Feeling conspicuous whenever he leaves the home portal can fill a youngster with dread. How can parents help? "Listen to the concerns, talk about what they themselves do when they feel anxious and discuss the child's options," advises Lenk.

Though separation anxiety tends to abate as kids mature, it is not uncommon for it to recur when a teenager heads off to college. Sometimes the anxiety felt by the student is exacerbated by parents who call constantly to assuage their own pangs.

Keep in mind that homesickness can be normal even in college. "It usually means they have a good home and good family they're leaving," says Gail Bell, associate director of career planning and counseling at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta, where last year four of 200 freshmen sought counseling for homesickness. That's the happy side of separation sadness.