How school can cause anxiety – and how you can help your child survive

A school-aged child said to me: “It’s so bad I don’t really want to wake up in the morning.” 

Another claimed he hated school, then added: “It’d be OK if no one was there, only me and you and the teachers.”

A third said he was worried about bullies and how long his life would be.

Considering children love learning stuff and are curious and imaginative – plus they like being sociable and should be looking forward to a long, happy life – this is damning evidence.

Not evidence that schools are bad. But evidence that not every school has the ability to be the sort of place a particular child might want to spend long hours in, with their friends, happily learning.

school2

As an ex-teacher, I've long thought that those three children's comments sum up the main problems of school anxiety quite well:

  1. Children (like adults) have different ways of, and preferences for, learning – and a "one size fits all" simply doesn’t suit some of them. Large class sizes in the UK don’t help the teacher to vary the learning methods to suit a child. Many may try – but perhaps are thwarted by National Curriculum demands and paperwork.
  2. Some children simply happen to be more sensitive to noise, bustle and the constant timing/pushing on of activities, while others simply need to be much more active in between shorter times of mental work.
  3. Bullying is rife, despite whole-school policies intended to stamp it out.

Anxiety around these issues is the main area where you can really make a difference.

So let's look at these three areas of school life from the anxiety perspective.

1 Different preferences for learning in school

Adults are well aware that they have different ways they prefer to learn. We can use other ways but have a preference. 

If your child’s anxious about school, you may find out they’re struggling to take in the material. Leaving aside innate brain power – because we have no control over that – you can talk with your child about this when they’re calm and communicative. 

Find out how a lesson happens.

Be curious: “I’m sure lessons have changed a lot since my day…” sort of approach. Get them to tell you what a typical English or Maths lesson looks like. “OK, so I’m sitting in your classroom filling in this worksheet, and finding it hard haha… What happens next when the teacher says stop?” 

Just get a feel for how learning is supposed to take place. Your child will enjoy telling you if you listen curiously and believe them and show understanding. No discussion at this stage!

You may find learning is more about moving around, talking, sharing, discussing. Or you may find it’s watching the white board and then filling in a worksheet on their own. Maybe it’s about looking something up on a laptop or device.

Is there a pattern or is there variety?

Some children thrive when they’re shown visually how to do something and involved in asking questions so they understand.

Others prefer to be told what to do and how to do it and be left to concentrate and get on till it’s done. Older children in this group may prefer to read it up in a book.

Yet other children need the moving around, social, doing bit to help them grasp the topic.

Many schools will use all sorts of methods. But if your child’s struggling, try to get a feel for lessons over a week and see if you think your child would learn better by other methods.

According to how old your child is, you can sketch out the different ways of learning and discuss it with them. This webpage may help you first.

Mind you, you’ll have seen how your child learns best at home during lockdown (or not!), so you have some information anyway.

four learning styles graphic

One thing you can then do is discuss your findings with your child’s teacher. See if a different approach can be incorporated into their day. No one gets their preferred way all the time, but some of the time it may be possible. That way, anxiety about going to school can be lessened.

The other thing you can do is talk with your child about what they’re finding hard. Then think of a way to go through that topic with them in their preferred learning style, and have a go with them. 

This is likely to at least prove to them they’re not being dense or slow but struggling to learn in a way they don’t find easy. Realising it’s not them but the method will raise their self-esteem and resilience. All good ammo against anxious thoughts.

And if they know they can make up lost learning at home from time to time, they will survive school more easily.

2 School atmosphere issues: sensitivity to noise or the need for a more active day

With 30-35 children in a class, some children simply don’t thrive in a classroom situation, however good the teacher is.  

There will be bustle and noise that their ears find really hard to cope with. They find movement around them especially distracting. Playtimes grate on their tolerance levels. Dinner times  can hardly be tolerated. This is particularly so with some children on the autism spectrum. But others, too, can be more sensitive. 

At the other end of this invisible scale will be children who simply need to move and let off steam more often than they’re allowed during the school day. Some people say it’s mostly boys. But girls, too, can find it difficult to spend the day seated in class with few breaks. They need to move so they can then quieten down and learn.

In the olden days the class would be made to get up regularly to recite times tables, or do running on the spot or jump around to keep warm! This at least gave an opportunity to release the build-up of energy.

If your child falls into either of these groups of children, and is therefore anxious about the whole school environment, then it’s time to talk to the school so that a solution can be found.

This recent news article makes for an interesting read about noise and learning.

Maybe your child can be allowed to work with a friend for a while, somewhere quieter each day.

Maybe the whole class can be calmed by having an action game more often – the teacher may not have known that this will improve concentration. 

Unless you have several children of a similar age, or a ready supply of local children to socialise with after school, pulling your child out into home education is not necessarily the best option. But you can think and plan whether that's possible within your circumstances – before telling your child about the idea!

For the time being, help them cope by having a small comfort article in their pocket or some other plan. Sometimes you hearing them out is enough to start the improvement.

I'll be writing more about these tactics soon and also about home education options in the UK.

3 Bullying provokes anxiety and lessens a child’s attachment to school

If your child is anxious about school bullying, do have a read of my bullying page. 

Recent (as yet unpublished) research by Krystal-Jane Verasammy among children who were in counselling for bullying showed interesting results. One was this: the children said they’d benefitted from 

  • understanding, 
  • supportive listening, 
  • receiving empathy and 
  • being acknowledge or prized as a worthwhile person.

An important aspect of this finding is that parents are in a perfect position to offer this to their own child. You can find help for supportive listening on my strategies pages.

Another important thing I read recently in an academic paper (I don’t actually advise you to go read it!) threw up another factor you may want to take into account. And that is that frenmity exists. Children are often bullied by people they also consider their friend. 

How damaging to trust is that! How complex for your child to deal with. 

Your child goes to school and faces the unknown each day – will their friend be "friends for ever" today or tease and torment them deliberately in front of others for their own gain?

I found this to be true when conducting lunch-hour drop-ins in a school counselling service. The children fell in and out of friendship so often it was dizzying. But the need to have friends meant they endured it. And the anxiety about what would happen next was eating away at them. 

That’s anxiety for you, though – always based on thoughts about the future resulting from what’s happened in the past.

I also read an interesting book about bullying written for Spanish parents.

The author told her readers that the English have the phrase “bull in a china shop”. The words "bull" and "bullying" lack any similarity in Spanish, so she explained to them that when a bull comes into a china shop it smashes something precious to the owner.

That's a brilliant idea for two reasons. 

It illustrates how your child needs to

  • recognise what is precious to them, and
  • take up bullfighting (metaphorically!) to protect it.

So, why not firstly discuss with your child exactly what is happening?

Help them draw an image of it, talk about it, and define what matters most to them that they want to keep undamaged (their "china"). Help them use a bull image if they like drawing.

Then, secondly, work out a strategy to help them feel more confident in protecting that precious thing at school.

Being heard, understood, empathised with and acknowledged for the beautiful person they are (remember that research up top?) will immediately calm your child down from a state of anxiety. Then they can think about school bullies and work with you on a "bullfighting" plan.

Having a plan also strengthens their self-esteem. And in that light, do check out the specific help on my bullying page for practising posture and attitude. That's a huge help for relieving school anxiety about bullying – even bullying by friends.

Negative thoughts about school that cause anxiety

If your child brings up negative thoughts about random aspects of school lessons that are worrying them, try helping them to invent a more positive version of the thought. 

Have a few minutes of fun with this set of examples. It will help your child to see how their thoughts affect how they feel about school and how they might change them to be more helpful. 

negative thoughts to make positive

You can find another practical activity (involving a windmill!) about how thoughts affect feelings here. What you're aiming at is a child who is happy to be in the classroom, learning, socialising and thriving – like this!

child grinning holding a "I am OK" placard

And what about performance anxiety in school?

Reading out loud in class and sitting tests are two big concerns of anxious children.

Here is a way of helping your child alter the experience. It’s a long set of bullets. Try to get it all in your mind before helping your child to run through it?

  • Get your child to remember the worst occasion when they felt anxious about a test or reading in class.
  • Ask them to find the OK moment before the anxiety kicked in, and the relieved moment after it was all over.
  • They’re going to watch a film of themselves from the first moment to that “all over and done with” moment.
  • But first they have to imagine watching themselves sitting on their favourite sofa and turning on an imaginary TV.
  • Tell them to imagine watching that film on that TV, from before the bad anxiety memory to just after it when they’re OK again.
  • They must remember to watch themselves watching the TV – like a dual image.
  • Get up and walk round and relax.
  • Then eyes shut again and repeat their watching of themselves watching the film. But this time it’s going backwards, starting from the end scene, and it’s going to be in black and white and crackly like an old movie. So everything walks or moves backwards, like on rewind!
  • When they get back to the start of the movie, walk round and relax again.
  • Next try replaying the old, crackly black and white movie forwards – while still watching themselves sitting on the settee doing the watching. They should feel a bit detached – and perhaps bored!
  • Ask them how they feel about that original old test or reading anxiety now.
  • Get them to choose a couple of feelings they want to have about tests or reading out loud in future.
  • They then watch the movie again but while feeling those two things – maybe confident or relaxed. Whatever.
  • Finally they imagine the next time they have to “perform” and mentally run through a movie about how it might be while keeping those feelings in their mind and body. This sets it in the brain, ready for when they have to.

If your child’s school anxiety starts turning into school phobia (which is merely a more extreme form of anxiety), do have a read of my phobia page for some other thoughts and strategies.

What if it's just "returning to school" that's the problem at the start of term?

There's a mass of media concentration on anxiety and depression in our children at the thought of going back to school.

So what’s changed for our children? Why are there so many articles in the press and online right now dealing with the stress of going back to school? If you’re to believe what you read, anxiety is apparently overwhelming our children at the thought of a new term.

I've written a blog post about this topic. Have a read to see some ideas on what might be causing the stress. Plus discover the LEARN way of responding if your child is experiencing start-of-term nerves.

And here's a book to prompt discussion about school anxiety, especially after the 2020-21 pandemic...

Worry Rhymes for School Times is written by Edinburgh clinical psychologist Elaine Smith and available from her website and elsewhere. There is some help but there are numerous rhymes (rhymes, yes, but pretty free-flowing and covering many school issues) and questions after each for discussion with your child.

cover of worry rhymes book

And a big PS about anxiety and play times

If your younger child is anxious, they need to play. That's how children learn about life and solve their own problems and find out that they can manage. 

I'm not suggesting you set up anything at home like this school has (nor harass the teachers to provide it at your child's!), but if you want to see some ideas for letting children play and learn, have a look at this YouTube video.

It shows a 45-minute playtime at St Michael's Catholic Primary school in Ashford. Something in it might inspire you about what a child can use in play that isn't just routine plastic toys.

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