School Start

Essential reading for any parent wanting to help their child develop the emotional skills necessary for school success!


Starting school can be an anxious time for both children and parents! Studies increasingly show that children who have good emotional skills are far better equipped to meet any challenges and develop resilience in the face of any setbacks. And it’s parents and carers who are the key people in helping children to develop these strong emotional foundations.


By focusing on your child’s emotional and social needs, School Start enables you to understand your child’s brain development and how this impacts on their emotional intelligence. It also offers practical strategies for how you can help your child to:

• deal with anxiety

• initiate new friendships

• cope when things don’t always go to plan

• accept that people have different strengths and weaknesses and that they won’t always be ‘the best’ (or ‘the worst’) at things

• deal with teasing and bullying, and

• develop resilience.


Guidance is also given to help you cope with your own reactions to your child starting school. It’s important for new ‘school parents’ to be self-aware and in touch with their parenting values, as it’s all too easy to draw on ‘baggage’ from your own school years when faced with problems your child might face.


With School Start to help you, you’ll be well equipped to offer the right advice and be the emotional support your child needs—no matter what they encounter!


Lynn Jenkins is a clinical psychologist, author and mother to three young children. She is passionate about providing education on the social and emotional needs of infants and children.

In her private psychology practice, Life Matters Psychologists, she specialises in perinatal mental health and is particularly interested in the parent–child relationship.

Lynn is trained to facilitate several parenting programs that focus on nurturing the relationship between parents and children, which she runs through her practice.

She contributes regularly to various online parenting sites, and her first book, Best Start: Understanding your baby’s emotional needs to create the best beginnings, was released in 2012. Consistent with Lynn’s ‘early intervention’ approach, her first resource tool picture book, Lessons of a Lac, will also soon be available, intended to help children with anxiety.