What to Say on the First Day of Kindergarten

The night before my first kid started kindergarten I lay awake writing a speech in my head. It was a good speech. It had a theme. It was going to be the thing she remembered.

In the morning I got about four words into it and she interrupted to ask whether the school had a water fountain. That was the whole conversation she needed. And that is basically everything I have learned about what to say on the first day of kindergarten, which is that the small concrete things matter enormously and the speech matters not at all.

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Say the day out loud, in order

Five year olds have almost no sense of time and that is where most of the fear lives. They do not know if you are gone forever. Nobody has told them how the day ends because everybody assumes they know.

So the most useful thing you can say is the shape of the day, in plain order, the same way every time. Ours goes something like this.

You are going to hang your backpack on a hook. You will sit on the carpet. There will be a snack. There will be lunch, and you will eat the sandwich in the blue container. There will be recess. There will be more carpet time. Then Mrs. Alvarez will walk everybody outside, and I will be standing by the fence, and we will go home.

Notice there is nothing in there about feelings or being brave. It is a schedule. That is what they are asking for, even when the question sounds like something else. A picture book about starting school does the same job at bedtime.

Answer the question they actually asked

When a kindergartener asks what if nobody likes me, the instinct is to reassure. Everyone is going to love you. You are so likable.

That is not the question. The question is what do I do if I am standing alone. So answer that.

Here is what you do. You find someone who is also standing by themselves and you say, do you want to play. If they say no, you go find a teacher and you stand near her for a minute. That is allowed and it is not a big deal.

Concrete instructions calm a kid down. Reassurance about their character does not, because they cannot verify it and you sound like a mom.

The lines I actually use

These are close to word for word. I keep them short because the morning is loud and nobody is absorbing paragraphs.

Your teacher knows exactly what to do. She has done this a lot of times. This one does more than any amount of praise, because it moves the responsibility off the kid.

If you need to go to the bathroom, you just tell her. You do not have to wait for a good moment. I am putting this on the list because bathroom anxiety is enormous at this age and almost nobody addresses it directly.

You can be a little scared and still go. Both things fit.

I will be there at the end. Every day. Then say where you will be standing, physically, and describe it.

Your job today is to find one kind face. Not make friends. One kind face is a task you can complete by 9:15.

What I stopped saying

You are such a big kid now. It sounds encouraging and it lands as a rule. Now they think being scared means they are not big, and they hide it.

Do not cry. I said it once, quietly, meaning it as comfort. Her face changed and I have thought about it for years.

I am going to be so lonely without you. I meant it. It was true. It was also not hers to carry.

Are you nervous? Asked at the door, this plants it. If they were fine, they are not fine now. I ask this at bedtime the night before instead, when there is room for the answer.

Everybody is nervous, it is totally normal. This is technically true and it flattens them. It is a way of saying your feeling is not special, which is the opposite of what they need at that moment.

What to say at the goodbye

Short. Warm. Same every time.

Hug, then, I will be right here by the yellow gate at 2:45. Love you. Go.

Then turn and walk, and do not look back, because if you look back they will be looking at you, and every second you stay is a second the leaving has to start over.

I have cried in the car both times. I fully expect to cry again this year, and I am pregnant, so honestly the odds are not good. That is fine. Cry in the car. Just do it in the car.

What to say at pickup, which nobody talks about

This is the part I got wrong for a full year.

I would show up buzzing with questions. How was it. Did you like it. Who did you play with. Was your teacher nice. Did you eat your lunch. And I would get a completely blank kid who did not want to talk.

They have just spent seven hours performing. They are empty. The reunion is not the interview.

Now I say one sentence at pickup. I missed your face. Then I hand them a snack and we walk. The talking happens later, in the car or at dinner or, most often, at 7:50pm with the lights off, when they suddenly need to tell you about a kid named Desmond.

If you want one question at pickup, make it tiny and answerable. What color was your teacher shirt. Was lunch loud. Those are answerable by an exhausted five year old, and often they open the door.

The first week, honestly

Expect the wheels to come off around day three. Day one has adrenaline. Day two has novelty. Day three is when the body figures out this is the new permanent situation, and that is usually the hard one. Both of my kids did this and I was blindsided the first time.

Expect them to be a completely different, worse version of themselves at home for two weeks. That is not regression, that is the cost of holding it together all day.

Expect to feel weird. The house is quiet in a way that is not entirely good. I recommend having something to do right after that first drop off that is not going home.

One more thing

You do not have to say the perfect thing. I want to say that clearly because I spent a whole night writing a speech nobody needed. Your kid is going to be calibrating off your face, not your words. If your face says this is a normal thing that normal families do, they will believe you.

And if you are sending a kindergartener this fall, come tell me. I want to hear about it. Tell me their name and what they are most excited about, because that is genuinely my favorite thing to read.

So glad you are here. Pam