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Back to School Tips: How to Support a Child’s Emotional Wellbeing

As summer winds down and the new school year approaches, many parents are feeling a mix of excitement and anxiety. The back-to-school transition can be challenging for both children and parents, with new routines and academic demands adding to the stress.

To help you navigate this period and support your kids’ emotional wellbeing, we’ve rounded up some of the top back to school tips from LifeSpeak experts. From easing fears to supporting kids from LGBTQ2S communities, they’ve got suggestions to make this transition a little bit easier.

Find creative ways to help with anxiety

We need to be creative about how to help anxious children transition back to school. Depending on the age of your child, you can use puppets/lego/stuffies or drama activities to “act out” going back to school. Go through the details of the day. Start with waking up, move to putting on the backpack, and end with waving goodbye. This will help to normalize the experience and ease the transition. Children build resilience when they act out scenarios in a safe environment, especially when done with a parent or caregiver.

From LifeSpeak resource “Ask the Expert Series: Overcoming Back-to-School Anxiety“, featuring Allison Villa, Registered Psychotherapist and Relationship Expert

“It’s so difficult when our child doesn’t want to go to school, but encouraging them to go is building resilience.“

Create a safe space to share feelings

One great way to ensure that your children are having good mental health is to be able to talk to them about the need to express our emotions. And sometimes our kids will talk to us about our emotions. But sometimes they prefer to keep it private. They don’t want to share their secrets with us. And that’s OK. It might be hard for us, but what’s important is that they don’t just solely keep it inside and bottled up or only get advice from peers who don’t always give the best advice! Help them identify somebody else that they can talk to. Is there a special aunt, a grandparent, a teacher, a school counselor? Can you give them the text number for Kids Help Phone or some support line for children’s mental health where they can text anonymously or get them to speak to your GP or a counselor? The most important thing is that they talk and express their feelings.

From LifeSpeak resource “Supporting Your Kids When They are Dealing with Anxiety or Depression“, by Alyson Schafer, MA Counseling, Parenting Expert and Author

Help with reframing and refocusing fear

If we plot emotions on a graph, we could say that we have 4 quadrants, defined by the amount of nervous system activation (high energy or low energy) and by the amount of fear we feel (afraid or safe). Anxiety would fall in the quadrant of high energy and fear. Interestingly, there are other emotions that we feel that also are activating, like excitement, delight, or astonishment. The difference between these is whether or not you also feel afraid.

Anxiety and excitement might feel very similar in the body. You might have butterflies in your stomach, sweaty palms, feel jittery, and find it difficult to sit still.

Sometimes, reframing anxiety as excitement can be really helpful:

You have a presentation tomorrow? — That’s really exciting!
You’ve been chosen to be the lead in the school play? — That will be fun to prepare for.
You’re going to start at a new school tomorrow. — Meeting new people will be really interesting.

You can show kids where emotions sit in this graph. Of course, someone else might experience an emotion in a different way, with more or less energy for example. An activity to do with kids could be to draw a circle with four quadrants and ask them where their emotions currently are, and where they would like to be. Bringing some clarity and language to what they are experiencing, and helping kids recognize that they have some measure of control over their own experiences can be empowering.

From LifeSpeak resource “Helping Kids with Anxiety (And Grown-Ups too!)“, by Jennifer Snowdon, Yoga Teacher and Buteyko Breathing Educator

Back to school tips: Acknowledge separation anxiety

Question: My child (7 years) cries every morning before school saying he doesn’t want to go, can he please stay home, etc. It breaks my heart, but I act tough and try my best to reassure him. I did speak to his teachers, and they said he seems to be coping well in school. I don’t really know if that is true. He tells me he is sad all day until I come get him at the end of the day. Any advice on how to help him?

Answer: It’s so difficult when our child doesn’t want to go to school but encouraging him to go is building his resilience. It sounds as though he has separation anxiety about leaving you in the mornings and then once he gets to school, he’s able to settle. You can do things to build a “bridge” between you and him while he’s at school such as planning what you’ll do together when you pick him up from school. You may also write him a note and put it in his lunch bag. Giving him the message that you believe him and know this is hard but that he can do it is really important. You may also have a school counselor (most schools do), and you could ask him/her to monitor and check in with him to have another person he can go to for support if need be.

From the expert live chat “Back to school! Building resilience to overcome stress and anxiety“, with Sharon Selby, MA, Registered Clinical Counsellor, Certified Parent Facilitator

Provide a healthy lunch

How can you actually prepare a healthy lunchbox for your child? First, we want easy to eat, “grab and go” meals because for most children, lunch time is only about six minutes. We have to make sure that our kids, once they’re seated, have the ability to eat quickly.

Also, you want to focus on choosing foods for the lunchbox from each of the three food groups. Those would be grain foods, fruits and vegetables, as well as protein foods, things like pasta, wraps, tortillas, pitas, bagels, and vegetables like carrots, peppers, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes and my favorite snap peas, fruits like berries, apples, pears, peaches and frozen mango, and even protein foods such as black beans or chickpeas, perhaps leftover meat or chicken tofu cubes, nut free spreads and soft and hard cheeses. They’re all great options to put together a balanced lunch.

From LifeSpeak resource “How to prepare a good boxed lunch for school”, by Nishta Saxena, Registered Dietitian and Nutritionist

Be mindful of homework for a child with executive function deficits

Make sure your child’s homework is not taking longer than the teacher intends it to. Make sure your child takes breaks when their attention starts to decline. They should get up and move around, or maybe have a change in scenery or eat a snack. If your child tends to be mentally or emotionally exhausted after school, decide whether the benefits of homework really outweigh the stress it creates. If not, request homework accommodations to ensure that they have enough time to recover before the next school day. Over time, use scaffolding to teach them to cope with homework little bit by bit. There are no hard and fast rules that work for all kids, so be flexible and creative. For example, maybe your child needs to have the TV on to make homework bearable enough for them to get through it.

From LifeSpeak resource “What can I do to help my child focus on homework?“, Dr. Megan Smith, C. Psych., Clinical Child and School Psychologist

How to support kids who might be bullied at school because their parents are part of the LGBTQ2SIA+ community

Question: What is your experience with kids with gay parents getting bullied or made fun of by kids at school who haven’t been educated about the LGBTQ Community?

Answer: Children get bullied for any form of difference. It’s going to happen. There’s no way to prevent bullying altogether. The instances of bullying over sexuality have dropped massively since I was a young person coming out. I was bullied every day from kindergarten through to university. That doesn’t happen as much today. It still happens, just not as frequently. The good thing is that your child will have support from other children who have LGBTQ2+ parents, siblings, friends, etc. The other good thing is that most schools have absolutely no tolerance for LGBTQ2+ bullying now. So if it gets bad, get the school involved and they will deal with it.

From LifeSpeak resource “Talking to your kids and coworkers about the lgbtq+ community“, featuring Michael Bach, Founder and Chair of Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion

Navigating the back-to-school transition can be challenging, but with the right strategies and support, you can help your children thrive emotionally and academically. From managing anxiety to creating safe spaces for expression, these expert tips provide practical guidance for fostering resilience and wellbeing in your kids.