When Your Child Cries at Drop-Off

Where to start

• Say goodbye the same short way every morning, and tell your child when you’ll be back.
• Hand your child to the same adult each day, then go without staying to watch.
• If it’s still hard after the first few weeks of term, talk to your child’s teacher.
• Talk to your GP, or your health visitor if your child hasn’t started school yet, if they stay upset for a long time after you’ve left, if being apart from you has started to get in the way of everyday life, or if they have gone back to things they had grown out of, such as wetting the bed.
• If your child seems worried about you or someone else at home, tell the teacher. If your child seems afraid that someone at home will be hurt, is frightened of a particular adult, or says something that suggests someone is hurting them, stay calm, thank them if they have told you, don’t promise to keep it secret, and don’t question them further: treat it as a safeguarding matter and act that day. Speak to the school’s designated safeguarding lead, or, if it’s happening at home, go straight to children’s social care or the police. A national child protection helpline will talk it through with you. NSPCC, 0808 800 5000. Email help@nspcc.org.uk. Mon-Fri 10am-4pm by phone; email 11am-4pm, seven days a week. An email sent when the service is closed is not received. If the NSPCC service is closed and the concern cannot wait, call the police on 101. You can also contact the child’s local out-of-hours children’s social care, social work or social services team. If a child is in immediate danger, call 999. Help is free.

The rest of the tip, and why it works, is in the library.

Sources

Place2Be, Help your child manage separations and goodbyes; Anna Freud, Separation anxiety (under-fives wellbeing); NHS, Separation anxiety (reviewed 2026); Just One Norfolk (East of England Community Health and Care NHS Trust), Separation anxiety, and Starting school; Department for Education, Early years foundation stage statutory framework for group and school-based providers (from September 2026), paragraph 3.42

It goes with

• What to Do When School Is the Problem. For parents whose child has started dreading school.
• Big Feelings and Co-Regulation. For parents whose child has just had a meltdown, on how to help them through it.

The first chapter you open here is free to read in full.

Free on this subject

• Anxiety. What to do first, what helps, and who else can help. Free to read and to print.
• Transitions. What to do first, what helps, and who else can help. Free to read and to print.