How to Help Your Kids Navigate Back-to-School Anxiety

With summer coming to an end and the back-to-school season approaching, children can often feel a mix of excitement and apprehension. For some children, returning to school can often bring about significant stress and anxiety. On top of this, parents may experience their own anxiety, wondering how to ease their child's transition back to the classroom and handle their own stress as they navigate new routines and schedules.

It can be a very overwhelming time for the whole family. By understanding the “why” behind your children’s experiences of back-to-school anxiety and implementing some of these support strategies, parents can gain more confidence in navigating this transition.

The “Why”

To understand how to help your child navigate these transitions, we must first understand what anxiety is and what it’s trying to communicate to us. Anxiety is our body’s response to a perceived threat. Our brains and bodies are constantly scanning our environments for danger because our ultimate goal is to keep ourselves safe. And, a main threat to our experience of that safety is the unknown.

When we think about all the unknowns that are encompassed in the back-to-school season, a child’s anxiety around returning to school starts to make a lot of sense. Your child may be worrying about the unknowns of whether they’ll connect with their classmates, whether they’ll like their teacher, whether they’ll get the grades that are expected of them.All of these, and more, are potential threats to their feeling of safety, which can create a great amount of anxiety for them.

Often parents want to ease their child’s fears by explaining why they don’t need to feel worried about returning to school or convincing them out of their anxiety. You may hear yourself say, “But you were so excited to start school last year,” or “You were looking forward to being in your friend's class this year, why are you nervous now?”

Trying to convince a child that they should not be afraid does not ease anxiety, but rather continues to fuel it. What this approach communicates to children is that anxiety is not an okay feeling for them to have, and they should avoid feeling it - which, in turn, creates more anxiety.

So, if you shouldn’t ease your child’s anxiety in this way, what can you do to support your child with their worries and fears through this season? 

Remember,

“A parent’s job is not to change the feeling itself but to be curious about their children’s anxiety and to help them feel at home with themselves when the anxiety emerges.”

-       Good Inside, Dr. Becky Kennedy

The only way to effectively manage anxiety is by allowing it to be felt, and to build tolerance for it. A parent’s job here is to come alongside their child and ride the wave of anxiety with them. Through multiple repetitions of riding this wave, parents and children will increase their tolerance for the discomfort that comes with anxiety, and in turn, gain greater mastery and comfort in anxiety-provoking situations. 

Validating the Anxiety

The starting place for helping your children to manage their big emotions is curiosity and validation. For example, your child comes to you and says that they are feeling really worried about starting school in a few weeks, or perhaps they don’t come to you at all but you start noticing that they are not sleeping as much in the weeks leading up to back-to-school. The first step is to offer validation for what they may be feeling. You could say something to the effect of, “I wonder if you’re feeling nervous about starting back at school?”

This framing invites the child to either accept or correct your offer of validation. Remain curious, and try to understand what is the source of the child’s anxiety. Is it a specific teacher, a new routine, or worries about taking a harder class? Remember, we are not trying to convince children out of these feelings, but to be curious about them.

Practice

If you sense your child is worried about returning to school, or if you know the specifics surrounding that worry - this gives you a great opportunity to practice. This could look like driving your child by the school, bringing them into their classroom, or meeting with their teacher a few weeks before starting school. Essentially, we are trying to reduce the amount of unknowns that could cause your children anxiety.

When practicing these strategies, it’s important to check in with your child about how they are feeling. They will likely feel some anxiety or distress. But remember, these practices are about building tolerance to these uncomfortable feelings, so when the time comes for your children to return to school, they have more emotional regulation skills to handle the transition.  

As a parent, in these moments of validation and practice, your job is to be the co-regulator for your children. By coming alongside them in their anxiety, they learn how to be in those feelings and come out the other side of them to gain greater tolerance and mastery. Ultimately, the back-to-school season is filled with many unknowns that will likely lead to anxiety for you and your children, but by focusing on validating worries, building tolerance, and increasing connection, your family will feel more equipped to handle this stressful season.

 If you would like support as you parent, or if your child would benefit from some counselling, I provide in person counselling in Langley, BC. You can reach out to me through info@panoramawellness.ca or 778-726-0550.