Back to School Anxiety
As St. Louis anxiety therapists for kids and teens, we’re super familiar with back to school anxiety.
It might look like more stress and tension, and short tempers, for the weeks leading up to school. It might look like your kindergartener running away from you when you’re getting in the car for the first day, or pre-schooler being super clingy in the week leading up to school, or your high schooler crying when they realize they left their extra notebooks at home.
Your child might be having a FIGHT reaction, FLIGHT reaction, or FREEZE reaction - and regardless of how it looks, it’s all about the underlying school anxiety.
Image Credit: @benhershey
How to prepare your child for back to school anxiety:
Some kids respond better to lots of prep time, and some kids get really caught up in anticipatory anxiety. Your know your child best! Do they do better with lots of time for questions and comments and concerns before a big transition, or do they better when we keep that prep time to a minimum?
Talking about it or not talking about it doesn’t change the fact that your child is probably THINKING about it.
Anxious minds get really fixated on worries, so ignoring the problem won’t make it go away. Instead, we encourage parents to focus on open ended questions and giving opportunities to explore fears or worries. Try a simple introduction of the topic and question in the weeks leading up to school, like “We just have 7 more days til school! I know that school can be exciting but also can make people nervous. How are you feeling about going back to school?”
If you’re noticing anxiety, and your kid won’t claim it (lots of kids AND grown ups like to say that they’re fine when they’re really not!), you can be a little more direct: “I’ve noticed that you seem a little more stressed or grumpy than usual, like when your brother asked to share toys and you yelled at him. It’s definitely okay to be stressed. I’m wondering if you’re feeling worried about going back to school, and if that’s making you feel more on edge and ready to explode.”
Relaxation skills practice: tips from a child counselor!
Once you’ve identified what emotions your child is experiencing about the return to school, you want to make sure you’re regularly incorporating relaxation skills throughout the day. The more you practice a skill, the easier it is to recall it in the moment!
We have tons of relaxation activities on our blog (as child therapists we’ve got YEARS of relaxation content, people!)
Generally, purposeful relaxation skills and clump out in to three groups: breathing activities, muscle activities, and mindfulness/meditation activities.
Practice lots of skills, and consider using an emotions elevator to track their effectiveness. That way, you and your child know what skills are going to be the most impactful to use at school.
Create an anxiety game plan for the first day
You’ll want to strategize around two specific questions:
What’s our plan for dealing with anxiety on the way to school?
What’s your plan for dealing with anxiety and anger during the school day?
Together, you and your child are going to come up with a relaxation plan for the morning of day 1. Anxious minds really respond well to planning and routine. Often, as child therapists we want to challenge this routine - we certainly can’t plan out everything of every day, and if your brain loves control it is NOT going to enjoy when you’re not in control - but for the first day of school, we’re going to work WITH this need for control and predictability rather than against it.
Work out with your child the time you’ll get up, what you’ll have for breakfast, what they’ll wear, and when you need to get in the car or on the bus, or head out the door to walk/bike.
Then, sprinkle in relaxation skills they can use.
When they get up, can they take 5 deep belly breaths? During breakfast, do you want to do a 5 senses scavenger hunt? Should you do a progressive muscle relaxation in the car? Can you listen to some calming music on the way? Let your child decide what sounds best where, and let them take ownership of their relaxation plan.
And then during the school day, what tends to set off their anxiety? What problems did they have last year? What are they worried about? What’s the specific content of these worries, and what are we in charge of? Really thinking through the variables and exploring our own sphere of influence allows us to create a game plan to handle most of the potential issues.
(Also, are you feeling worried about their first day, too? Check out Managing Your Own Anxiety As a Parent)
Child counseling in St. Louis providing concrete anxiety skills:
There’s a three step approach to managing overwhelming emotions: 1. Identify the feeling and Empathize with it (no such thing as a bad feeling!) 2. Calm Down and 3. Game Plan. Our therapists use this structure to help kids and teens with anxiety build up their own emotional identification, relaxation, and problem solving skills. These are the pillars to healthy anxiety and anger management.
But it’s also really important to have the space to just vent about problems at shcool.
If your child is experiencing a ton of back to school anxiety, or if it’s to the point of causing problems for you as the parent, you might want to consider working with a child anxiety specialist to build the necessary skills you and your child need to manage the anxiety, anger, and issues that can so often arise in schools.
Meet our anxiety counselors:
Our therapists are here to help! We structure sessions so that we meet on a weekly basis, and the first few minutes of every session are saved for parent check in time - meaning we can keep eachother in the loop about what’s going on and what strategies we can share with you.
We love working with anxious, angry, and easily overwhelmed kids, teens, and young adults, from age 4 on up.
Curious to learn more about child anxiety plans? Contact Compassionate Counseling St. Louis to set up a free 15-minute phone consult. We’ll talk about what’s going on and best next steps - and if we’re not the right fit, we’ll connect you with other wonderful St. Louis-based support!
Compassionate Counseling St. Louis provides specialized anger management and anxiety therapy in St. Louis for kids, teens, and college students and support for their parents. We work in Clayton, MO and serve kids, teens, and college students throughout St. Louis City, St. Louis County, Ladue, University City, Town and Country, Webster Groves, Creve Coeur, Kirkwood, Richmond Heights, and Brentwood.
