Helping children anticipate and manage anxiety as the new school year begins

Psychologist Tamar E. Chansky and health experts highlight practical strategies for parents to help children face anxiety during the back-to-school season, fostering resilience through expectation, reflection, and gradual exposure.

As the new school year gets under way, many children settle into one worry only to find another waiting in line. A child may start September anxious about making friends, then move on to a class presentation, a school trip or the social pressures of the lunch hall. The point, psychologist Tamar E. Chansky argues in Psychology Today, is not to stop every anxious thought from appearing, but to help children expect that anxiety will sometimes show up and learn how to respond to it.

That approach matters because anxiety often feeds on uncertainty. Rather than treating a worried thought as a fact, Chansky encourages parents to help children separate themselves from the feeling, name it and examine what it is saying. A child who says, “I’m so anxious” can be guided towards a more useful question: what is the worry predicting, and does that prediction actually hold up? The aim is to shift children from being overwhelmed by fear to becoming observers of it, able to test rather than automatically trust it.

Health organisations make a similar case for a calm, practical response. The Mayo Clinic Health System says parents can help by validating a child’s feelings, breaking fears into manageable parts and challenging unhelpful thinking. The American Academy of Paediatrics recommends coping tools such as positive self-talk, deep breathing and gradual exposure to feared situations, while the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention notes that persistent worry, avoidance and physical symptoms such as headaches or stomach aches may signal a more serious anxiety problem. Cleveland Clinic also stresses that anxiety in children is common and can respond well to cognitive behavioural therapy, with medication sometimes considered when clinically appropriate.

Chansky’s advice on “fact checking” worry fits that broader guidance. She suggests asking children whether a fear is really a fact, inviting them to give anxious thoughts a “second opinion” and, where useful, letting them imagine how a trusted role model might view the situation. That kind of reflection can be paired with rehearsal: a dry run for a class activity, a partial visit to a new setting or another small step towards the feared experience. The idea is to find a challenge that is difficult enough to matter, but not so overwhelming that a child wants to quit before learning they can cope.

Taken together, the advice points to a simple but demanding message for families: do not wait for anxiety to vanish before moving forward. Help children understand what they are feeling, test the story worry is telling and practise approaching feared situations in small, steady steps. For many children, that is how confidence grows.