Starting school

The admin, with dates that matter

In England, you apply the January before the September they start, in the academic year they turn five. Miss the deadline and you are into late applications, where the schools you wanted are usually full. Dates differ slightly across the UK, so check your council's site rather than assuming.

Practical points people get wrong:

• List several schools, in genuine preference order. Listing only your favourite does not improve your odds. It just risks being allocated somewhere you never considered.
• Check the actual catchment distances from recent years rather than the school's reputation.
• Go to the open days, and go to more than one.
• If your child has additional needs, start the conversation early. The process is slower than you want it to be.

The summer before

• Practise the uniform, especially shoes and buttons. Independence with clothing is the thing that quietly upsets them most.
• Practise opening the lunch box and the water bottle. Sounds trivial, is not.
• Walk the route a few times so it is familiar.
• Talk about it as ordinary rather than enormous. Your nerves transfer.
• Label everything. Everything.

The thing nobody warns you about

The first term will flatten them. Expect tears, regression, unexplained rages at 4pm, and a level of tiredness that looks like illness. They have spent six hours holding themselves together, and you get the collapse because you are safe.

It is not a sign they cannot cope. It usually settles by half term.

What helps: an early tea, a very early bedtime, no clubs in the first term, and no interrogation at the gate. "Hello, I missed you" gets you further than "what did you do today", which reliably gets "nothing".

Your part

Do the drop-off sometimes. Do a school event. Get your face known.

The proportion of fathers at these things is low, which means your presence is noticed by your child far more than you would expect. It is also the easiest possible way to know what is happening in their life before you have to ask.