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Parents take a year to 'tune in' to their child's feelings about starting school, research suggests

A team of psychologists led by the University of Cambridge have found that it takes parents about a year, on average, to attune to their child's attitudes towards school once they start education.

In fact, by Year 1, parental perceptions of how a child feels about school most closely match responses given by the child when they were in Reception class a year earlier.

Scientists say that parents can get a "misleading picture" of a child's introduction to education, especially if children only talk about school when they have a bad day.

Now, researchers have teamed up with writer Anita Lehmann and artist Karin Eklund to create a picture book designed to help parents better understand their child's experiences and emotional state during that crucial first year of school.

"How I Feel About My School," by Routledge, is based on findings from the Ready or Not Study led by Prof Claire Hughes at Cambridge's Department of Psychology.

The study included two waves of interviews with over 200 children in Reception and Year 1, from over 100 different UK primary schools.

Along with a series of tasks that measure cognitive skills and well-being, the children were guided through simple, emoji-based questionnaires about how different aspects of the school day make them feel.

A parent or caregiver (predominantly mothers) also completed interviews about their child that covered everything from mood to sociability and attitudes to school.

In Reception class, Hughes and team found little affinity between children's thoughts and feelings about school and how their caregivers believed they felt about it.

By Year 1, levels of agreement between children and adults had more than doubled on average, although significant gaps remained. Year 1 responses from parents often matched those given by their children the previous year.

Over both years, researchers found the biggest gaps between the outlooks of parent and child were parents overestimating how happy children are in the classroom, and underestimating how happy children feel in the playground.

"We found a clear and wide gap between how parents think their children feel about the first year of school, and how children actually feel about school," said Prof Claire Hughes, Deputy Director of Cambridge's Center for Child, Adolescent and Family Research.

"Our research shows that it typically takes parents a year to tune into their child's experiences of school. By Year 1, parents are often only just catching up to where their children were a year earlier."

"We wanted to create a book that can help parents connect with their child's feelings about school much earlier," said Hughes. "Parents get a misleading picture if children are motivated to talk about their school day only when something has upset them."

The new picture book follows four young children through a day at school, from arriving at the gates through to playtime, quiet time and show-and-tell, with incidents along the way including lunchtime disagreements and classroom collaborations.

The book's characters display a variety of behaviors and traits to allow children with a range of personality types to recognize themselves, say researchers. The book has built-in prompts to get children talking more meaningfully about their school day, and how it left them feeling.

"We want to normalize difference. Kids have ups and downs in a day for lots of reasons," said Hughes. "There can be a tendency to over-medicalise sadness, but getting through a school day is a big deal for children, and problems are a natural part of that."

Initial Ready or Not findings came out last year in the , as well as in a book: .

Further findings, published in the journal , suggest that children's well-being at school declines on average between Reception and Year 1. This is perhaps unsurprising for a UK cohort, says Hughes, as Reception is play-based, whereas reading and writing requirements begin in Year 1, so children start to experience the demands of the curriculum.

"A closer understanding of how a child feels about starting school will allow parents to gauge well-being and help their child adapt as key stages kick in," said Hughes. "Happy children are better learners, and the first years of school can set the tone."

The published findings from Ready or Not show that greater well-being as reported by the child in Reception class predicted higher levels of "self-concept"—how confident a child feels about their ability to read, write and count—by time they are in Year 1.

Hughes points to other suggesting that children who say they enjoy school at age six tend to achieve better academic outcomes by age sixteen, including higher GCSE exam grades.

"If children can have a positive couple of years at the beginning of school and we can really protect that time for building up their enthusiasm and their confidence, then when things do get more serious, the children are willing to embrace it," said Hughes.

"We hope the picture book will promote conversations about what happened at lunchtime or in the playground, giving parents a better understanding of their child's enjoyment of school, and building up an emotional literacy for children."