The new school year can dial up parent anxiety, especially if your child has additional learning needs.
New class, new teacher, new routines (maybe a whole new school) can all come with an uneasy feeling: will the teacher know what my child needs to settle?
The night before day one, you find yourself scrolling through emails and WhatsApp threads at 11 p.m., piecing together a “what works” list and wondering when you’ll find time with the teacher to explain your child, without reducing them to a list of challenges.
Meanwhile, your child is facing new rooms, new rules, and often making new friends. It’s a lot – for both of you.
Transitions are a high-risk zone. For many neurodivergent children, predictability is essential for regulation. Parents feel the strain of advocacy fatigue; retelling the same story, hoping the crucial parts aren’t lost in translation, and worrying about how much to share with each new adult.
Schools work hard to bridge these gaps, and a beginning-of-term transition plan is a helpful start. Here’s what you might let the teacher know about your child:
- What they might notice in class: 3–5 specific, observable behaviours.
What helps: 3–6 concrete supports, with simple if–then examples.
How to handle challenging moments: the response that works if things escalate.
If your child is finding the transition particularly tough, some parents recommend:
- Sending a favourite book or small item from home for the teacher to share with the class.
Visiting a quiet, familiar space at school before heading into the classroom.
Arriving a few minutes early and asking the teacher to give your child a purposeful job as classmates arrive.
Still, even the best handover is just a snapshot in time. Children grow; strategies evolve week by week.
Without a record that lives and breathes with your child, continuity cracks appear. Teachers may miss last term’s wins, therapists may lack context, and you’re back to starting from scratch.
That “remember everything” pressure is real. Reports here, notes there, a dozen threads everywhere. Holding it all in your head makes it harder to think clearly and to show up calm.
Research shows that when parents and teachers are well-connected partners, children do better academically, socially, and emotionally, another reason to make sharing easier and more consistent.
That’s where Dalza comes in. Dalza is an award-winning, secure app where your child’s story lives and evolves across home, school, and therapy. Dalza gives you one organised place for strengths, supports, reports, and real-life notes, so this term’s teacher and next term’s therapist don’t start from zero.
You decide who sees what, when (POPIA/GDPR-compliant by design). And when staff or schools change, the record goes with your child. No more re-explaining the same history.
Transitions will never be completely friction-free. New terms bring new faces, timetables, and friendships. But you don’t have to hold every detail.
Keeping a living record in Dalza protects what you’ve already built, honours your child beyond a checklist of challenges, and makes collaboration simpler for everyone who supports them.
Start your secure, living record today at dalza.com.
- From Lonely Lunches to Gentle Connections: Helping Your Neurodivergent Child Find “Safe” Friends at School - January 27, 2026
- Communication Shouldn’t Be This Hard! - January 20, 2026
- Why Can’t my Child Cope with New-Term Change? - January 13, 2026
