Rebeccah Silence explains how school anxiety peaks around 5th grade when kids worry about peer acceptance and fitting in. She offers three conversation starters: ask how they want the year to feel, identify their biggest challenge, and ask what would make them proud of themselves. Watch their reactions, not just their words.
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For a big event like the first day of school, how early can anxiety show up and what does it look like? Yeah, it can show up anytime. That's the thing about anxiety, right? We don't see it coming. But in the summer, when there's a little more downtime and time alone with ourselves, kids can start to get scared about back to school as early as now. What does it look like? Like, tell me what a kid with anxiety about school would look like. So often we don't realize as parents, at about 5th grade, kids don't care anymore about fitting in with us. They're hyper-focused on fitting in with their peers. I was. So that's the number one number one anxiety trigger. Got it. Is, are my friends gonna keep me in the friend group? Are they gonna reject me? Are they gonna abandon me? Yeah. Am I fitting in? Mm-hmm. Is so important. And the problem with that is we don't want our kids thinking about, who do I need to be to fit in? 100%. We want our kids knowing who they are. Yes. And knowing how to stay true to themselves. That's the important teaching moment there. I got it.
Some parents can find it hard, right? And challenging to start that conversation. 'Cause you're like, you don't wanna put it on edge.
You don't wanna be too much. Yeah. What would you suggest to start it? Okay. So here's how I want you to start your conversation about back to school with your kids. I want you to ask them, how do you want the school year to feel? Okay, start with that. How do you wanna feel at school? And then you really wanna pay attention to your reactions. All right, just side note, because your kids don't wanna upset you and they wanna give you the right answer. And they don't wanna lie. Right, but we want your kids coming to you. So the second two questions are, all right, what is going to be your number one challenge? And what is going to make you proud of yourself? Oh wow. Okay, so how do you wanna feel? What is your number one challenge going to be at school and how can we get ahead of it, right? And then really focusing on what would make you proud of yourself this school year. Start having those conversations because you want your kids to come to you.
Yeah, you want, yeah, you want them to trust you. I also like how you're like, instead of what would be the biggest problem, the word challenge. Yes. Something to overcome, something to be proud of. Right. Vocabulary matters when you're— Oh my gosh. Right, and the energy of it matters. Yeah.
