You might have heard that I was speaking about my daughter Lola, who's just started at a new daycare and she is having a truly horrible time transitioning to a new daycare. Not only is she having a hard time, but as a parent, I am having a horrible, horrible time.
Because there's a parent's friend and business partner.
Well, there's nothing worse as a parent leaving your child somewhere and having them be sad and cry for you. And with school coming up very soon, there's going to be a lot of parents across the country who are going to be dropping their kids off for school on the very first day. And we have Michelle Mitchell with us now. She is a child expert. With had her on the show many times and she's written an incredible
book around building resilience in children. And the big question is is this resilience building or is it a time when a parent needs to swoop in and help them Michelle, welcome back to the show.
Oh thanks for having me, Laura. And it's such a privilege to talk about your little four year old. I mean, aren't they so precious at this age?
No, she's the best. You almost four county down to a birthday.
Or Michelle, what do you think I mean, do you think this is relatively normal to be this excessively upset like all night after and all morning?
It can be, Okay, it can be, and only Laura can really answer this. So if you'll step into my office, Laura, I have three questions for you. Will you answer these for me?
Absolutely?
I think the first question you want to ask yourself is how big does this feel for you? Because that's normally a mirror of how big that feels for our kids. So if our kids were leaving high school or leaving school or getting married, you know it would pull on our heart strings in exactly the same way. So let's not minimize it. Because there's three going on four. So how big does it feel for you? Give me a number between one and ten, being like I can't cope with this anymore.
Oh, it's it's funny you say that, Michelle, because when we left, like I think any mum kind of knows that you become very close with the daycare or the place that your kids are at. And the last day that we had at her old daycare, I was in tea is because I didn't I don't want her to change. It was more a decision that Matt had made, and I think potentially she has seen how upset I have gotten over the process, and I probably haven't set her up for being I think we did everything right to
start with. We were trying to be excited. But now if she's getting distressed, I'm getting more distressed about it, and so I think it's just escalating each other.
So you would be almost better off vocalizing those things like I'm really missing your old daycare teachers right now? Are you missing them? Because I think you and your daughter are mirroring some of those feelings. So my next question for you would be in your gut and to the best of your knowledge, is she safe where she is? Does that kindy have checks and balances in place? And do you think it's a good place?
Yeah, it's no, it's a fantastic daycare, like it is a fantastic, fantastic school. I think I'm just so used to the familiarity that even for me, I was like, I hate change. Now she's so little and she has to go through that change herself.
You do hate change.
That's really easy to blame ourselves for everything. So we don't want to get too sort of like internally focused with it. And I talked grade one a long time ago, but I'd always say to parents, don't tell your kids that you are going to leave them now or drop them off. You aren't leaving them, You're not dropping them anywhere. You're actually deliberately intentionally transferring them to me. So you
say something like your teachers are going to look after you. Now, I'm going to be at work and I'm going to be right here at three o'clock.
Michelle. The question is like Laura's trying to decide if she's stuck it out for a couple of weeks, now does she think is it going to change for Lola? Is she going to ease in eventually, or if she stood this upset after this couple of weeks, should Laura be taking her back to the old daycare.
You can introduce some strategies like leave a heart in her pocket strategy. So let me tell you about this one. So when you drop her off, Laura, have a little red love heart piece of paper cut up and give it to her and say to her, sweet, I want you to put this in your pocket. And anytime you feel unsure or anytime you feel a little bit like you're missing mummy. I want you to put your heart and hand in your pocket, and I want to remember
that I'll be thinking of you all day. But what that does is it gives your teacher a chance to loop into that. And so your teacher, if she knows your daughter's like feeling anxious, she didn't go to her and say, put your heart, hand in your pocket. Honey. What's your mommy doing right now thinking about you?
Michelle wonderful? Oh my god.
Okay, so we're going to try the hard thing before we pull her out.
Laura.
Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna have to take over this now.
Everyone.
Laura just quit.
Thanks for Laura quit. Like I said, it's something that so many parents go through. I think it's something that hits working parents particularly hard because you don't have an option and the whole you know, like maybe take them in later or pick them up earlier and make the days shorter, and it's like great, all that's great in theory, but when you have a job that you have to be out that doesn't allow you to do those things, you just feel like you're such a crap parent and
you're not doing a good job. And it's it's really hard to navigate.
You are doing a bloody good job.
You are.
Hopefully those kids turn out okay. A couple of years, we'll find out. Well, if anyone wants to get more of Michelle, she's written some incredible books, every Day Resilience Journal, and she sold it one hundred thousand copies worldwide. Put that off. This is so cute.
Hey, you know someone else that's probably going to be crying pretty soon.
The bride's on maths.
It's that time of year again. It has kicked off last night, and I want to talk to you about one of the couples. What would you do if you got onto a show like that and you were paired with an X? Because that has happened, don't forget to head intochemist's warehouse and say more money every year on your regular medication and discounted prescriptions in every.
Store every day. We're going to be talking about it next