School Anxiety Therapy
When your kid has school anxiety, it can be OVERWHELMING, no matter how it looks.
Does your small child have a lot of separation anxiety? Is your teen expressing a lot of anxiety-driven anger? Is your new college student having panic attacks during the first week of school?
Anxiety can look different in everyone.
Some kids have that classic anxiety response while others are showing those hidden signs of anxiety. As a parent, though, the big thing you notice is that something seems off - something that wasn’t so off during the summer, and something that feels a little familiar when you think back to prior school years.
Image credit: PAN XIAOZHEN @zhenhappy
How to deal with school anxiety
When you’re dealing with school anxiety, you need to have a two pronged approach: managing it at home, and managing it at school.
Managing school anxiety at home:
Build relaxation skills
When it comes to managing anxiety, the biggest tip is to ensure that your child or teen has a really robust coping skills toolkit. The more skills, the better! Make sure to be building up breathing, muscle, and mindfulness relaxation tools - and practice them before you need them.Identify triggers
What sets off your child’s anxiety? What are their anxiety triggers? Is it the leaving home part that’s scary? The getting called out by the teacher part? The social piece? The separation piece? We need to understand the problem before we can solve it.
Create a game plan
Once you’ve identified a good chunk of their anxiety, figure out what is changeable, and what is not. What are some solutions to the identified problems, and what are ways that your child can deal with the anxiety (see: relaxation skills above!) when it comes up for them? We can’t control what other people do or how they respond to us - we can only be in charge of ourselves.
Managing school anxiety at school:
Collaborate with decision makers
Because our sphere of influence doesn’t always include the school setting, it’s important to bring in the decision makers who can help with managing the school anxiety. Who’s there at drop off? Who’s there for the midday meltdown? Who do you most like at the school - the principal, the counselor, the teacher? Check in with them and see how they can help support your child with their anxiety, while also sharing any particular clues about your child’s anxiety elevator getting higher. Remember, many people, including teachers, forget that anger can be masking anxiety - so if you have a kid with anxiety-driven anger, you’ll want to share that info.
Schedule check ins with your child and with the team
Don’t assume that school anxiety is a fix it and forget it kind of problem! Make sure you’re scheduling regular check ins with the school team to see if things are improving, or not. And get your child’s perspective, too. After the first two weeks of school, is their anxiety feeling bigger or smaller? Have they identified new stressors? Are there wins that they can celebrate?
Don’t be afraid to change the plan
If the anxiety isn’t getting better - and may in fact be getting worse - you’ll want to give your anxiety management behavioral plan a fair shot, but don’t be afraid to try something new or take something out. If the deep breathing in the car isn’t helping, what else can you do to relax on the way to school? If your kindergartner is still refusing to leave the car during drop off, maybe we need to ask the teacher if they can bring in a lovie from home. If your highschooler is still freezing in the classroom, maybe it’s time to look at setting up regular appointments with the school counselor - or getting a referral for an out of school anxiety therapist.
School anxiety is hard on everyone.
It’s not fun to be the parent worried about your child, and it’s certainly not fun to be the person experiencing the school anxiety. The GREAT news is, you’re not alone. Tons of people experience situation-specific anxiety, and school is a big prompting event.
By coming up with a plan, and bring supporters on board, you can turn this around and help your child succeed at school even if they’re feeling anxious.
And if these 6 tips aren’t enough, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
Our anxiety therapists specialize in child and adolescent anxiety, and we’ve all got a lot of experience in the school struggle. In fact, many of our therapists previously worked in schools, so we’ve got the firsthand knowledge you need to dig in and solve the school anxiety problem.
We’re here and we’re ready to help - so, let’s chat!
Curious to hear more about counseling for you or your child? Compassionate Counseling St. Louis provides specialized anxiety and anger management therapy for kids, teens, and college students. 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. You can set up your free phone screening to see if we’re a good fit for your needs right on our website.
