Going off to kindergarten is a big deal to your child. For parents who already have kids, big transitions in the lives of the kids is often taken for granted. But to put in perspective in your life, an equivalent type of event in the life of you as an adult might be a relocation to another country for a new job. For your five year old, going to kindergarten is launching into a new world, a world she has never known before. It is going to a place to do things she doesn’t know how to do, to be under the authority of strangers which is totally new and to spend most of her day with people who are not her family.

When a child graduates from a phase in their lives like from high school, college or even from elementary school, it is not uncommon to celebrate with a big party and gifts. The purpose of the celebration is to commemorate the successful conclusion of a formal phase of life and start of the next phase. We want the child to come out of their completed experienced encouraged and excited so they charge into the next challenge with gusto.

Sometimes we are not even aware how much we do to protect our kids when they are living at home. But when you are preparing your child to go out into the world on her own for the very first time, all of a sudden it can get very scary when you think of the many dangers out there. So one of the big jobs of preparing for your child to go to kindergarten is assure your child’s safety while she is at school.

It’s encouraging that, obviously, schools are designed to be safe places for your kids. The rooms are prepared to have young children in them and the way the children’s days are organized, there really is no time when they are not under the watchful eye of a caregiver. Schools are also more and more doing aggressive background checks on the people who work at the school to make sure there is no chance someone untrustworthy would have access to your child.

Each year when a child makes that transition from months at home to going back to school, there is always a transition. As adults we might compare it to that feeling when we go off on two weeks vacation and then return to work. Except the transition is much more difficult for youth because each year it is a new school routine, new teachers and they have often been out of school for months, not weeks.

But the transition from being a child in the home to the classroom is most extreme for a very young child facing that first day at kindergarten. It helps to think about that transition by trying to look at the challenge through the eyes of your little girl or boy as much as you can. In most cases, being at home with mom, dad, siblings and the family pet may be all that he or she knows. Not only does it seem that the world revolves around family, the family home is a place of comfort and other than brief outings, the world is not a place that the child feels comfortable with yet.

If you have a child under five, you have already watched many amateur productions of plays that were composed entirely in that sweet little mind. Role play and acting scenes out just seems to come naturally to children. Perhaps it’s because they see it on television and videos. But it’s more likely because children just naturally have strong imaginations and creating alternate worlds and then making them come to life is just a natural part of being a child.

We see this kind of play happen nature when we witness bear cubs or even kittens in our own homes as they seem to be all about play every day. But there is a reason for their play. Often the games they “play act” are their way of trying out hunting, stalking, fighting and even running away. In the same way our own children use their creative imaginations to “play act” scenes in life that they will one day encounter for real In that way, nature seems to have put it into babies of every species to use play to get ready for life.

A preschool child takes his or her signals from people around them, and most of the times that is mom and dad. In almost every situation, the child watches you to see if this is a good time to laugh, to cry, to pray, to be serious or to be afraid. Just watch your little one when you are out in an unfamiliar situation. Her little eyes will be glued to you and when you react a certain way, she will immediately react that way too.

So the influence you have on your child’s attitude about her first year at school will be driven to a very large extent by your attitude. If you are nervous or anxious about this big step, your child will go into the first days in kindergarten tense and serious too.

Of course, you know the importance of shaping your child’s attitude toward school. You want them to take school seriously. In a strange way, in order to get your child interested in school, especially in this important first year, you have to lift the pressure and speak of them about kindergarten in their own.