Helping your child overcome back-to-school anxieties: the right way and the wrong way
by Mira and Charles on September 4th, 2009A lot of kids are very anxious when school begins. They are afraid they won’t make friends or that no one will like them. They are afraid of not doing well. They are afraid of the teacher. But kids’ fears are endless: one kid is afraid of the janitor, another of the cafeteria, another of arithmetic.
And there are a lot of reasons for these fears. Maybe it’s a new school. Maybe they have an allergy or disability. Maybe they’ve had bad experiences in the past. And sometimes it’s all a mystery: it’s hard for them to say what they’re afraid of or for anyone to understand where this came from.
The question is, What should you as a parent do about it?
The biggest mistake parents make is using what we call Glib Reassurance. “Oh, honey, that’s silly. You’ll be fine. You’ll see: the kids will like you, you’ll do great, and I know the janitor won’t eat you. So don’t worry. Okay?”
Of course parents who say something like this mean well. They really do want to help their child overcome her anxieties.
But this kind of reassurance just makes the child feel silly for sharing her fears. It doesn’t make the fears go away.
Here’s how to do it right.
There are four simple steps that go by the name LARC: Listening, Acceptance and empathy, Reality, and Coping. Let’s go through them one by one:
1. Listening. Do not rush to reassure. Instead, ask your child questions to get him to open up about his fear. If he says he’s afraid the other kids won’t like him, ask him why. Give him plenty of opportunity to go into all the thoughts and feelings and experiences that go into his fear. Your goal: for your child to feel you really understand him and accept him and for him to know that you really want to listen to him.
2, Acceptance and empathy. Show your child that it’s okay for him to feel the way he does. You could say something like, “Oh my, sweetie, I’m so sorry you feel that way. It would be awful if the other kids didn’t like you. I once knew a kid who didn’t like me and it was very uncomfortable.” Now let’s make one thing clear. Of course you are NOT validating his fear that the other kids will pick on him. But you ARE validating his sense that if WOULD be lousy IF the other kids picked on him. You ARE validating that feelings like this are no fun. Why would your kid ever open up to you if he got the sense that his feelings were stupid? Your goal: for your child to feel safe telling you about his problems and troubles.
3. Reality. If you want your kid to trust you, reality is way better than reassurance. Reassurance is “No one is going to pick on you.” But your kid knows already that that is just not true. You lose credibility. Reality is “That’s very unlikely to happen, and if it does there are lots of things we can do to stop it.” So just state the reality of the situation as you understand it without any sugar coating. Think of it like this. If you were afraid of flying, which would you find more helpful: someone in authority saying, “Don’t worry—you won’t crash” or someone saying, “Statistics show that your chance of your airliner crashing are about one in eleven million”? The latter probably carries more weight with you, and in the same way reality will probably carry more weight with your child. Your goal: for your child to feel you are more credible and for him to feel that his hope that he’ll be okay is on solid footing.
4. Coping. The best gift a parent can give her child ISN’T that everything will always be nice and wonderful. The best gift is for the child to have a sense that the world in generally safe but if bad things happen (and from time to time they do) she would be able to cope. So when dealing with your child’s fear, when you get to this step, ask your kid what she’d do if what she was afraid of came to pass. If her ideas are at all decent, support them. Suggest other tactics. Brainstorm options. Role play scenarios. Give your child the best tool kit you can for coping with every aspect of her fear. Your goal: for your child to get the confidence that comes with having specific coping strategies and for her to develop a sense of herself as someone who copes.
Needless to say, the LARC approach works beautifully with all fears, not just with school-related fears.
We don’t have to wish you good luck with this because we know it works. But we would LOVE to hear from you about how it worked for you. And of course if you had any questions about how to implement it, please let us know.
The LARC approach works with kids of all ages. (Actually, it works equally well with adults too!) For more suggestions on how to develop a relationship with your child, you’ll find plenty of suggestions in the award-winning Parent/Teen Breakthrough. This book is targeted at parents of kids ten and up, but the approach is important and useful with all kids.
© Dr. Charles Foster and Mira Kirshenbaum
