How to Help Children Cope With Separation

Video Transcript

"Hi my name is Dr. Laura Grashow, and I am a child psychologist in private practice here in south Florida. Let's talk about helping children cope with separation. This is a common issue in early childhood. If you are faced with helping your school age child cope with separation though that might be indicative of something that is a little more serious. You might want to seek professional help for that one. But for the little ones once again it is very important to be patient. If you get impatient, and lose your temper or get very critical you can elevate the anxiety that they are already experiencing, and make it worse. You need to do a combination of two things. You basically need to be patient, but firm. Separation has to occur at different points during a child's development. Namely when a child first starts school for example, there are creative things that you can do. You can send your child to school with a picture of yourself that he or she can take out, and look at at various points in the day. You can send them with little notes that the teacher can read to them that you know that this is in the beginning. So you can be creative, but the important thing to do is to be patient, and be firm. If they have got to separate, because you have got to go out or they have got to go to school this is something that has to happen."