5 Ways to Support Your Anxious Child During Back-to-School Season

It’s that time of year again, when the weather has tilted towards cooler, and there’s a hint of Fall in the air. Pumpkin spice is back.

So are the back-to-school shopping crowds. And school team tryouts. And the meeting of new teachers and new friends.

And so is back-to-school anxiety in your children. For some, this is an incredibly challenging time of year that gives rise to worry and stress about returning to school.

Nearly 1 in 3 children and adolescents in the United States will experience clinically significant anxiety, or in other words, anxiety that disrupts their ability to function at home, school or with friends, and causes significant distress. Moreover, since the COVID pandemic, at least one study has shown that 1 in 4 children have been newly diagnosed with anxiety. What that means is that more youngsters than ever are struggling: in any given classroom, approximately 3 in 10 kids experience significant anxiety. The stress of transitioning back to school can increase this anxiety in many children, leading to increased reassurance seeking, doubt, worry, and even, for some, school refusal.

It can be hard to find evidence-based treatment for your children. A study conducted in 2023 found that only about 59% of children with anxiety received treatment, suggesting a large unmet need. It can be a challenge for parents to know how best to support their anxious children, and how to encourage them to make room for anxiety and act bravely when they are feeling it.

What can parents do to help?

One way parents can help is by supporting youngsters in discussing their worries during their transition back to school. Here are some simple tools for parents that can be useful and reflect science-backed principles of cognitive behavioral treatment for pediatric anxiety:

1. Knowing how to recognize anxiety in your child. Anxiety in children and teens can present in different ways - from jitters, worry, upset stomach, increased irritability, avoidance of feared situations or people, and changes in mood. Typically talkative youngsters might grow quiet; those who are generally quiet might grow talkative, seeking reassurance from parents. Children who tend towards discomfort with novelty and change may feel especially vulnerable. If you suspect your child might be feeling anxious about going back to school, read on. All children are different, with some more vulnerable to anxiety than others. Our job as parents is to support their bravery, while at the same time making room for their unique sensibilities and temperament.

2. Supporting your child in disclosing their anxious feelings and thoughts. Kids learn what to do about their anxiety, in part, from watching what their parents do! To help kids share what they are feeling, it’s a good idea for parents to go first by modeling, or by sharing a bit of their own worry. This demonstrates for children that it’s ok to have anxiety, and ok to talk about it. It also opens the door to learning how to handle it when it shows up. For example, I have a fear of heights that shows up for me when I’m hiking. I might say something like, “I really like hiking, and sometimes I get nervous when I’m on a narrow cliff path. Still, I know if I want to hike, this is a feeling I need to make room for so that I can enjoy hiking.” There are a few important ingredients here: clearly labeling anxiety, noting that it can show up when we are doing things that matter to us, and demonstrating how to have it and move through it, rather than fight to shrink it, and noting that there’s often a cost to avoiding feeling anxiety - that we don’t get to do things we care about.

3. Communicating support. Sometimes parents can be overprotective with anxious children. It might feel like the right thing to do, but over time, it undermines children’s ability to cope with, learn from, and grow through their anxiety. It’s tough to strike a balance between encouraging your children to be brave when they are anxious…and accidentally dismissing their feelings. One way to work towards this is to communicate support, which has two ingredients: empathy, in which parents validate their children’s emotional experience, and confidence in their children’s ability to make room for and move through their anxiety. For instance, if a child expresses worry about going to school, parents might say, “I can see how worried you are, and how hard that is, and I know that you will be able to handle it.” Simply put, parents should acknowledge their children’s feelings, and reflect back their inherent strength and ability to be brave.

4. Make a “Cope-Ahead” plan. Worries and anxiety tend to arise about things that we can’t control, and focus on the future. “What if no one likes me?” and “What if I embarrass myself?” are among the myriad types of “what-if” worries that can show up to back-to-schoolers. What can help is creating a plan that centers on things that parents can and do control. For example, parents might take their children for a dry run to school before the first day. It can be helpful for parents to provide their children with a sense of structure, and what to expect about the back-to-school experience. For example, parents might

   • Go over the schedule of drop off and pick up beforehand, in writing

   • Lay out clothes the night before

   • Develop a nighttime and morning routine

   • Remind children of past instances of their bravery

   • Give certainty where you can- schedule, specifics, etc

   • Take children on a practice/trial run to schoolfind a buddy to go with or meet at school, and pair up

   • Model how to do hard things by expressing their own anxiety and doing what they care about anyway

   • Check in after school or at family mealtime, highlighting good, and unexpected things that happened at school, as well as hard things

5. Parent Self-Care. Transitioning back to school isn’t just hard on youngsters. Supporting anxious children is hard! It’s stressful to see children struggle with worries, and can be, in equal measure, heartbreaking and frustrating. When parents are in a rush to get out the door and their child is reluctant to go to school, it can also have negative impacts on parents’ work performance, as well as your sense of self-efficacy, and trust in your own parenting skills. Moreover, research shows that if a child has significant anxiety, there’s a 1 in 2 chance that one of their parents may have the same struggle. It is helpful for parents to remember that in order to support their children, we must also look after ourselves. It can help to build in small self-care rituals throughout the day - a quiet moment to take a few breaths, a short walk in the crisp Fall air, a quiet cup of tea or coffee. Turn off phone notifications, even just for a few minutes. Do a few minutes of mindful breathing, or mindful noticing of the beautiful Fall colors as they begin to emerge. Practice slowing down. This will create some space for you as a parent to meet yourself where you are - and to model how to do this for your children.

If you feel like you or your children need more guidance and skill in handling anxiety, OCD, or school-related fears and worries, we at NECOA are here to help.