Positive Parenting: Managing and supporting school-based anxiety
Taking the stress out of back-to-school in Limerick
Feeling worried or anxious is a normal part of life. These feelings can be helpful, by keeping us alert and safe from harm, or they can be unhelpful when they become overwhelming, by preventing us from doing what we want or need to do. Anxiety presents when we expect something bad may happen. When the brain detects a threat (real or imagined), it triggers a fear/anxiety response. This response, often referred to as “Fight; Flight; or Freeze” activates the body to prepare for the threat. This results in the physical symptoms such as rapid heart rate; shaky limbs; sweaty hands and butterflies in our stomach.
Worry and anxiety in relation to school is common among many children and young people. Young people can feel worried about school for various different reasons such as; making friends or fitting in, finding schoolwork challenging, difficult relationships with teachers, and so on. School-based anxiety can present in a variety of ways for children. These can include; fight responses like aggression and behavioural outbursts; flight responses like skipping class or daydreaming; and freeze responses like stiffness and numbness. These symptoms are typically more prevalent on weekday mornings and are absent at weekends and holidays, when there is no school. Sunday evenings can be difficult as the dread of Monday morning sets in.
While worries are part of life and learning to deal with these challenges is important, sometimes these school-related worries can get so big that they can lead to avoiding school altogether. School refusal/avoidance happens when anxiety causes such a high level of distress that the person cannot go into the school at all or struggles to remain there for the full day. If we choose to avoid something that makes us anxious (i.e., attending school), it gives us temporary relief in the short-term (i.e., we don’t have to face our fears right now). However, this avoidance can create a negative loop whereby the feelings of anxiety increase in the long-term, and make it exceedingly more difficult to face these worries the longer they are avoided.
Depending on their developmental stage, children differ in their capacity to manage and regulate their emotions. When children experience a big emotion such as worry or anxiety, the amygdala (the emotional part of the brain) takes charge and overrides the prefrontal cortex (the logical/thinking part of the brain). When this happens, children’s ability for problem-solving or rational thinking has diminished as their emotions have completely taken over. As children’s brains are still developing during school-age, and this continues all the way into early adulthood, it is much more difficult for children and young people to self-regulate during an intense emotional experience.
Children benefit hugely from supportive adults in their life, who understand their behaviour in terms of the emotional needs that they may be trying to communicate i.e., recognising that emotional outbursts before school are likely to be an expression of anxiety. Young people feel most supported when these experiences and emotions are understood and validated in a genuine way. They will benefit from their caregivers co-regulating with them during times of difficulty; by providing them with opportunities to express their emotions; and by feeling listened to and heard. By co-regulating with your child, and validating their emotions, you are communicating to them that you understand that what they are feeling is difficult and you will manage it together. It is only when your child has become regulated in their emotion, that you can then start to problem solve together.
For further guidance on school attendance issues, go to the resources page of www.limerickservices.ie and download Working with your Child to Address School Avoidance.