Back to School Anxiety

Ah, back to school season.  After a long summer without school routines, being around other children, and academic demands, some kids really struggle to transition back to the school year.  Even kids who do not experience excess anxiety in daily life might find themselves at least a little nervous for this transition.  How can parents help their kids (and themselves!) make this change a little easier?

Check Yourself

A big thing many parents do not think about is how their children feed on parental anxieties.  If a parent is anxious about the beginning of a new school year, or if they are nervous about how their child will manage the change, it impacts how the parent behaves and how they talk to the child.  Most reasonable people do not want to make their children more anxious, so this is absolutely not intentional.  However, children are very good at picking up on how their parents feel.  This is yet another reason why you as the parent should take steps to take care of yourself (beyond the fact that, you know, you are a valuable person outside of your parental role and deserve to feel relaxed).  Calming your own anxieties now, in addition to helping you feel better, will help you and your child down the road.  It is easier to manage a distressed child if you know how to limit your own feelings of distress.  

Validation

Child worries about school and social life can sometimes feel trivial to adults, so we can often be dismissive of their concerns.  Alternatively, our children’s worries can bring up sore spots from our own childhoods.  Either way, we want to make sure we are listening and validating their feelings, not dismissing them or spiraling into worry with them.  We do not need to solve our children’s problems or fears.  If anything, learning to manage one’s emotions and face lower-level anxieties is an important part of developing into a confident and capable adult.  However, listening and validating children’s concerns helps them feel heard, understood, and can strengthen the parent-child relationship.  This can be as simple as saying “It sounds like you feel nervous about ____,” and sitting in their discomfort with them.  In the long run, this also helps teach your child they can come to you with their concerns and have them be taken seriously. 

Routines

Kids (and adults, let's be real) benefit from structure and routine.  Depending on what summer break has looked like, there might not have been a lot of routine.  This is okay, it’s summer break!  However, practicing school routines such as going to bed and waking up at consistent times can be helpful for when the actual first day of school comes. 

Practice

If your child is someone who likes knowing what they are getting into in advance, it could be a good idea to try visiting new locations and practicing new routines before school starts.  This could look like driving to the school, role playing what drop off will look like, or requesting a tour of the school so your child can get familiar with the space, to name a few.  Exposures are great and help calm uncertainties.  

Back to school season brings many excitements and uncertainties.  Like any transition, it can be tough, but that does not mean there is nothing you can do to manage the stress.  Now, in cases where your child is so afraid that they are refusing to go to school or they are regularly getting unexplained headaches or stomachaches (what we call somatic symptoms, aka being in such distress emotionally that one developed physical symptoms as a result), it is possible they might be experiencing a higher level of anxiety than is typical.  In these cases, meeting with a therapist could be helpful.  If you or your child are struggling with anxiety and you would like to seek professional help, feel free to reach out for a free consultation with Bodhi.