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Student Homesickness at Boarding Schools How Can You Help

Just like craving for good food or that mid-day tiredness, homesickness is also a temporary feeling. It comes up all of a sudden, creates an overwhelming rush of emotions, then reaches a plateau and finally recedes. Initially, when your children just move out of your homes to move to board schools, homesickness feeling is frequent. However, with time, and help from the top boarding schools in Sonepat, it resides and the students settle in their new environment. As parents, you also play a vital role in assisting your children to deal with homesickness. During those surges of emotions, the students will contact you first and urge you to solve the situation.

But you will have to stand your ground, no matter how difficult it is for you. You know why you had made the decision to send your children to boarding school and initially, you will have to allow that time for the homesickness to recede. Here are a few ways in which you can help your children during those tough phases and do it without feeling guilty yourself.

  1. Normalize the feeling of homesickness

Instead of telling your children that “everyone is staying away from their parents and so can you”, try consoling them by saying “it is perfectly normal to feel homesick but with time, you will be able to deal with it better”. The first statement creates a comparison and struggles among the students. That makes matters worse. The second statement shows them that you are understanding and ready to acknowledge their feelings. Naturally, the second way acts as an antidote to homesickness and normalizes the emotions among the children.

  1. Encourage your children to make friends

The day boarding school in Haryana has orientation sessions for new students, helps them to make friends with their seniors and peers, and fills their time with social activities within the boarding facility so that your children have the opportunity to make new friends fast. Settling into the change becomes easier when the students have an active social life. Homesickness peeks out frequently when the social void remains. Hence, whenever you talk with your children during your visits or over calls, encourage them to make new friends and spend time in the school-organized activities. Your assurance will push them to have a full social life.

  1. Set clear boundaries of your availability

Compare homesickness with that craving for unhealthy food. Giving in, at times, is okay but if you feed yourself every time your mind craves for it, resisting becomes that much more difficult. The same principle applies to homesickness. Your children will want to get in touch with you frequently and complain about how life is difficult without your presence. And however hard it may be for you, you need to set strict boundaries by limiting the number of calls they place to you or the visits you will make in a month. Constant availability will not help the students. Their homesickness will only pass when they learn to live on their own.

  1. Plan something together to look forward to

Homesickness may also arise from the fact that your children merely want to spend more time with you. In fact, this is a sign of a healthy parent-child relationship. So, plan trips and activities for the time when your children will come home and make them look forward to it while at school. That future event will immediately douse the homesick feeling and your children will start living in the present. And when that moment comes, make sure you keep your end of the bargain and spend ample time with your children.

  1. Take the help of the school counselor

And despite trying all the above methods, there might be times when the homesickness feeling among your children will just not go away. They may be sinking deeper into misery and going beyond your help. For such scenarios, the best boarding school in Haryana has a psychology department with expert counselors whom you can contact and seek help. Consult to fish out the deeper reasons for homesickness and help your children to deal with their inner demons. Counseling can really aid to ease things out for both of you.

Swarnprastha Public School is such an institute that makes space for the homesickness feeling among their students and guides them, along with their parents, to deal with it. An active curriculum that keeps the SPS students busy is the first effective method. Plus, the school counselor pitches in to help parents and teachers to provide assistance to the children in a caring way. Such schools are equipped to combat that initial homesickness feeling. Then, students start to enjoy their time at school and the process becomes that much easier.