1. Manage your own concerns first
Kids have an incredible radar. They easily pick up when their parents are stressed or anxious and it increases their own distress, conscious or unconscious. The first step in decreasing the anxiety your child or teen is feeling is to lower your own. Take a few minutes and discuss your concerns with your partner, a friend, extended family member or counselor. Write these down and then strategize responses or to-do action items to each one by creating an “Anxiety Decelerator Plan.” This ADP will help you feel like you have some control. For instance, if your child needs more support than they received in the spring, one of your action items should be to contact the school adjustment or guidance counselor and set up a meeting.
2. Identify their worries
In order to reduce the frequency or intensity of kids anxiety we must first know what’s causing it. Being worried, thinking and environmental triggers can all set children and teens off leading them down the rabbit hole. But, we want to stop this tumble.
During your weekly or twice a week check-in meetings (which are a must), explore with your child what feels uncomfortable or uncertain to them about returning to school or their day-to-day experience. Write these down together and pick one fear to address first and when its volume is lower, then pick another and so on. Working on one issue at a time is not only more manageable, but will allow you to make progress faster. Remember, people can really only change one thing at a time.
3. Consider prior successes
When kids are anxious, they experience amnesia about times in the past when they overcame obstacles.
Talk to your child about a situation or two from the previous school year when there was a challenge that they dealt with successfully. What happened? What did they rely on inside of themselves to do this? Did anyone assist them? and write down their responses.
