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Dear Miriam,
My daughter is getting very nervous in anticipation of starting the new school year. She’s returning to the same school and nothing is really different, but her anxious anticipation threatens to ruin the end of summer vacation. What can I do both to help her and to make the rest of the summer tolerable?
Signed,
Nervous New Year
Dear Nervous,
I’m absolutely positive that your daughter (and you) are not alone with these feelings, so if nothing else I say is helpful, at least you know there are a lot of empathetic people out there. With that in mind, my first suggestion is actually just to talk to people in real life about this. You’ll likely find many people with shared experiences. Depending on her age, your daughter may be unlikely to want to express these feelings to her friends, but if she’s willing, she may find lots of peers who share her anxieties as well.
To get through the time you have left this summer, plan a mix of activities that combine fun distractions with actual school prep. Make sure you have things to do to pass the time and look forward to during each remaining day of vacation to take advantage of summer. Then also make sure your daughter feels fully prepared with school supplies, clothes, shoes, a backpack, a lunchbox, and whatever else she may need. Get back to school haircuts, go over her activity and after-school schedule, plan fun breakfasts for the first week of school, or other similar plans that might help to set her mind at ease.
At a calm and unemotional time, see if you can get your daughter to share any specific concerns. There may be some potential to talk to a teacher or administrator in advance to address concrete questions. If the anxiety is more free-floating, it could still be helpful for you to give the school counselor a heads up about your daughter’s feelings going into the school year. Especially because she’s returning to the same school, the same adults will hopefully be around to help the year get started on the right foot.
And then you just have to wait it out. The day before the first day might be rough, but likely once she’s actually there and sees the building and the kids and the teachers and remembers the routine, she’ll be fine. She may occasionally go back to these feelings on Sunday nights or after vacations, but the big anticipation will be in the past and may even help provide a roadmap to help manage these smaller transitions. If, though, the anxiety continues past the first couple of weeks of school, it could be worth further conversations with your daughter and her teachers to see if there’s something going on at school that needs to be addressed, and then potentially with her pediatrician to see if she might need some more support in managing her anxiety.
Be well,
Miriam
