School Anxiety
(Information for the following article provided from Overcoming School Refusal: A practical guide for teachers, counsellors, caseworkers and parents)
Anxiety is a normal part of life that every person deals with. Anxiety is the anticipation of a future threat and affects one in seven people. What triggers our anxiety is different for every person. For most people, once the trigger has passed, so too will the anxiety. However, for some, anxiety can impact their day to day function, sometimes preventing them from succeeding in regular day to day tasks, like coming to school.
How can you tell if your child has anxiety?
There are many signs of anxiety and each child can display this differently. If your child is often looking for reassurance, having difficulty sleeping, or displays avoidance of tasks or places they may have anxiety. Most commonly though is the child communicating psychosomatic symptoms such as nausea or headaches which occur before doing what they don’t want to do, which pass once the “threat” is taken away.
What does school related anxiety look like?
80% of school refusers suffer from anxiety. These children can often get ready for school, however, struggle to get out of the car. When they get home, they are often moody and have emotional outbursts. School refusal is absences from school not only over an extended period of time, but also periodic absences, repeated missed classes, and general tardiness. The difference between a child that is truant and a school refuser is that refusers are genuinely distressed.
How does school anxiety develop?
A fear of school can be triggered by a number of elements including, change of timetable/teacher, recent illness, friendship issues, issues at home. At the moment the necessity to isolate for extended periods can also cause distress when it is time to return to school. Lack of structure and routine, lost contact with friends, no extracurricular activities can all contribute to school anxiety.
How will infrequent school attendance affect your child?
Frequent absences can have both short term and long term consequences on your child.
In the short term, frequent absences can lead to a decline in their academic performance, fractured peer relationships, reduced confidence and family disharmony. Long term consequences include employment difficulty, mental health concerns and poor peer relations.
What can you do?
It is important to understand that every time you allow your child to stay home, you are reinforcing their anxiety and thoughts that school is something to be feared. Your child can sense your own stress and emotions so show them that you are confident in them and believe that they can push through their anxiety. Also, listen and validate how they are feeling, do not minimise their emotions.
Here are some helpful tips for managing school refusal:
Reassure them that they are safe.
Establish if there are any triggers or incidents that have occurred that are making it more difficult to attend school.
Go through their day with them, identify any concerns they have and talk through them.
Contact the school about their anxiety. Their house coordinator, homeroom teacher and counsellor are able to work with your child as well.
Take the pressure off them at home, don’t talk about their grades or what they are struggling with but identify what they enjoy about school and focus on the positives in their day.
Use consequences and rewards. Set up clear goals for your child and when they have reached their target, they are rewarded. Make these rewards relevant to your child's interests, for example, extra screen time, later bedtime, an outing. Have a predetermined consequence for when they do not achieve their goal. Ensure that you are strong and stick with the boundaries set with this system. Make sure they are part of the decision making process when it comes to rewards and consequences. This will give them ownership and some form of control over their choices.
If your child does stay home, do not reward them by allowing them to stay in bed with their ipads.
Missing one day a week of school adds up to two months of the entire school year. By supporting your child during difficult times and teaching them strategies to cope with their anxiety, rather than taking their trigger away from them, you are going to enhance their resilience and confidence.
If you have any concerns regarding your child, feel free to email me (donnetta_trannore@rok.catholic.edu.au) and we can discuss how best to support your child.
Dee Trannore
Counselling Coordinator
