Back to School Anxiety: Support Don’t Minimize

Ah, August. The weather finally becomes a little more tolerable for sweaty giants like myself. Back-to-school sales become impossible to avoid, kind of like how the Blue Jays have been avoiding putting runs on the scoreboard.

For parents, August often means shopping lists, new shoes and trying to remember what a school bedtime looks like. For kids, though, it often means something else entirely. The fear of returning to school. Transitions are hard.

Think back to graduating, starting a new job or moving to a new city. Even as adults, those changes can bring excitement mixed with uncertainty. Now imagine having only a fraction of the coping skills and life experience you have today. That’s where many kids are as September approaches.

They’re wondering who their teacher will be, whether they’ll have friends in their class, where they’ll sit at lunch, if they’ll fit in or if they’ll be able to keep up. Those worries are real, even if they seem small to us. You may notice more frustration, more tears or shorter tempers. It probably isn’t your spaghetti sauce or the vegetables you cleverly hid in dinner. It’s more likely all those little worries finding somewhere to escape.

As parents, our job isn’t to eliminate every uncomfortable feeling. It’s to help our kids move through those feelings. Listen before you solve. Acknowledge their fears instead of dismissing them. Then help them reframe the situation, instead of turning their fear into fuel for your bulldozer of their obstacles.

Didn’t get the teacher they hoped for? That’s a chance to learn how to adapt. None of their best friends are in their class? It might be an opportunity to make new ones. Life rarely lets us choose every circumstance, but it always gives us opportunities to grow.

Change is uncomfortable, but it also builds confidence. Sometimes the greatest gift we can give our kids isn’t removing every worry or concern. It’s reminding them that they’re capable of handling what’s on the other side, with your support and their resilience.

 

 

Jeremy McCall is a married father of 3, a social services case manager, and known as “The Dadfather”, being the founder and Past President of Dad Club London.