The kindergarten is the child's first space of autonomy, the first place where he goes alone and where his life begins without the permanent presence of his parents. It is a space in itself, physically and mentally, with which the child needs to establish a relationship in order to adapt. It is not just a waiting space while the parents are at work or until someone can pick up the child, but it is a space that the child invests in a certain way and towards which he or she will have certain feelings.

To be able to adapt to kindergarten the child must be able to leave home, to be able to be separated from his/her parents during the time spent in kindergarten. The child must be able to leave and the parents must be able to let him/her leave.
The absence of the ability to separate often leads to the child's refusal to go, to a state of anxiety and discomfort, to a withdrawal and to a lack of a relationship with the space, peers, the teacher, toys. The child remains somewhere at the entrance, between home and kindergarten.

Learning through play
We address the development of the child's ability to play in general, to play alone and to play with others. In childhood, the activity called play occupies all the space that remains outside mealtimes, sleep, hygiene and walking, although there are forms of play in all of these. A child "fishing" noodles out of soup is closer to what is called "playing" than "eating". A child who splashes water in the bathtub or another who is always undoing shoelaces is closer to a play activity than to washing and taking off shoes. That's why they say that toddlers learn everything through play. Just around school age, children say they learn poetry and then go out to play, or they say they learn English in kindergarten but also play.

It is a differentiation that he himself makes when play takes a form well delimited from other activities and he can tell when he is playing and when he is not playing. Some children even say "now I'm not playing, I'm learning", "now I'm writing, I'm not playing", "I'm not really playing", etc. Play is an activity necessary for the psyche and it should never disappear in theory. In older children, teenagers and adults it takes the form of games and sports or different kinds of art or hobbies, including creative, relaxing activities.

The ability to play on their own, to find something to play with, to find something to do, to have a preoccupation, an activity in which to be involved develops in some children from a few months, in others around 1-2 years and in others never. This means that there are babies who can sit in a crib and play from a few minutes to almost an hour, pulling toys, moving them from one hand to another, looking at them, playing with the blankie, their own fingers and toes and whatever else they find around. This first play is accompanied by smiles, laughter, squeaks, "songs" or "speeches" made up of strings of syllables and sounds.

The child is generally cheerful but may have moments of upset when he seems to "fight" with toys or looks at them badly. During this time, he does not need the presence and intervention of the adult. At some point he becomes bored, hungry or overheated, a state of discomfort intervenes and he starts to cry, play stops, calls his mother or starts to fuss. There are children who play alone in the crib and others who never do, who start crying as soon as they are left alone. This correlates with the ability to fall asleep alone in the crib. Mothers often say: "I put him in his crib and he plays until he falls asleep".

And later, at 3-4 years, we meet children who need to be put to sleep by an adult and others who play until they fall asleep. This happens both at home and in kindergarten. The children who can play in the crib until they fall asleep are the ones who sleep in kindergarten, and those who cannot do this, cannot go to bed in kindergarten, cry, refuse to undress and go to bed, panic or refuse kindergarten because they have to sleep at lunchtime. It's one of the big problems of adjusting to kindergarten, along with the meals. So children who cannot eat, fall asleep and play alone are those who cannot stay in kindergarten, for whom the separation from their family is difficult and which they feel as a suffering and not as a new experience.

Back to play and the ability to play. It can be seen in children of all ages, especially when they have to wait (in line at the store, at the doctor's, until mom comes back, etc). Some of them easily find something to do even when they have no toys. They play with buttons or a drawstring from a blouse, a plastic bottle or a cork found on the floor. Others get bored, cry, fuss, run away, want to cuddle, etc.

Things aren't much different at home either, with some children managing to stay in their room and play by themselves, while the mother or the adult they are with is in the kitchen, the bathroom or doing some other chore. He or she may come to the child, say something, but the child continues to play alone for a few minutes or dozens of minutes. At the opposite pole, there are mothers who complain that their child is never without them, that he cries as soon as he is left alone, that they can't even go to the bathroom without him.

Of course there are also big differences between children in terms of the road to independence, but often the mother can't actually stay with the child as long as it would be necessary for her to stay and then give it to daycare, kindergarten or return to work.

In terms of degree, however, it is both the child's ability to relate to other children and other adults, which is easy to observe in the park or on visits, the way they react to new things, there are children who are very conservative and others who feel attracted to new toys and the ability to separate for a while from mom or family in general.

What happens when a child who can't separate from the family, doesn't eat or play alone is taken to kindergarten? At first he cries and clings to his mother, refuses to go or stay there. Then, depending on his ability to adapt, he may stop crying and appear to have got used to it, but without integrating among the children or telling stories from kindergarten. It's as if he's sitting there because he has nowhere else to go and not because he likes it or finds something interesting to do.

Usually, there are children who get sick easily and because of this they miss kindergarten, who become sensitive and feel unfair by the teachers or bullied by other children, who have periods when they cry again in the morning, tell their parents that it is bad at kindergarten or they don't like it, for whom every beginning of the year or semester brings back the problem of crying and refusing in the morning and begging their parents not to take them, sometimes also somatic complaints such as vomiting, lack of appetite, insomnia, nightmares, apathy, sadness, violence. These are the signs that the child is suffering, that he or she is being left out, that the kindergarten is not loving and close to him or her, that he or she lacks relationships with other children and is indifferent to the toys, games and other activities there.

This state does not depend in any way on the type of kindergarten, the type of teachers or how well equipped it is. Parents may be delighted with the kindergarten facilities, the English language or other options, but the children fail to appreciate them because for them "at kindergarten" is the opposite of "at home" or the equivalent of "without mom".

Given these aspects of a child's development and his journey from dependence on family and mother to independence, curiosity and a desire for the new, we can think about how to help a child to be able to detach from his mother for a few minutes when he is small, to find something to play with when he is alone in his room or to stay with another person in another place to prepare for kindergarten. The smoother and less traumatic the transition, the more likely the child is to accept it.