Beat The Back To School Blues; How To Help Your Child Nail 2019
Let’s face it, not all kids are maths or English geniuses. That’s ok. But for those who struggle with these subjects and other subjects, the looming start of a new school year is triggering waves of anxiety and stress across the country.
If 2018 was a less than stellar year for your child academically, chances are the problem with the subject is not the problem.
It is the negative emotional attachment to the subject that is the problem. As parents, we can head off the spiral of negative emotions even before our kids step foot into the school grounds.
If you have a child who freaks out when it comes to maths or English; like totally loses the plot and you’re left scratching your head not knowing what is going on, there are ways you can help your child.
Behind every learning difficulty, there is a negative emotional experience.
It could be someone has told the child they are stupid or hurried them up or they’ve missed one crucial aspect and can’t keep up.
To ensure they can move on, you must get to the root of the problem.
This means asking more questions – as parents. It is not good enough to say we are too busy, because we’ll end up with a generation of young people who cannot do the basics.
As parents, we have to be detectives; to not take ‘fine’ or ‘I’m ok’ as answers. If your child is struggling with a subject at school, it takes a little bit of digging to get to the real reason why.
The start of a new school year is a stressful one for many kids especially if they are moving from primary to high school and if they struggle with learning. As the school term approaches, you may start to see signs of anxiety and stress or illness or belligerence and defiance. After all, the last place a kid with learning challenges wants to be is at the place that makes them feel deficient or a failure.
What you are seeing is the fight or flight in action. But it’s not enough to fight the enemy or run from the enemy, we need to teach our kids how to deal with their emotions. Most kids want help, they want to feel their pain is acknowledge and they want help to feel better.
This is where Parent PI comes
It’s not just about asking any old question; it’s about how you frame the question. There is little point in asking your child how they are. We are conditioned to respond we’re ok. As Parent PI, frame the questions positively and open ended.
Questions like: What can I help you with today? What is happening with you today? How did you sleep? I can see you are feeling stressed, what can I do to help you?
It is fine balancing act asking the right questions and not plying them with questions. If they are not sure of what they need, suggest they go away for a little while and come back when they know.
It is important as the parent to not go down the rabbit hole with them because you don’t want them dwelling on how they are feeling, and you do not want to add to their anxiety.
A technique to help
When it comes to helping an anxious child return to school, it’s vital to help them recognise what they’re feeling and to acknowledge their pain. It is easy to dismiss their pain – after all, we all have things going on – but teaching our kids how to manage their emotions and to ask for helps them to learn responsibility, resilience and persistence.
1. Acknowledge the pain – when you notice your child is starting to ramp up the stress as the school year approached, ask questions to get find out how they are feeling. This helps the child name the pain; so, they recognise it for what it is.
2. Where do they feel it – ask the child where, in their body, do they feel the pain. It may be a tummy ache or a stiff neck or clenched fists. This helps them become aware of the physicality of what they are feeling so when it happens again, they can act.
3. Name the reason for emotion – Talk to them about why these emotions happen – why are they’re feeling this way. It could be because they don’t want to fail English again or be seen as the kid who can’t do maths. This helps devalue the emotion and changes how they think about the situation. This means you can start to set your child up for success. Knowing what emotional roadblocks are in place around certain subjects means you can work with the teacher or a tutor from the get-go.
4. Blow it away – the Balloon exercise is a good one to help the child get the emotion out into space. Get them to imagine a deflated balloon in their favourite colour, then take a few big breaths in and blow into the balloon the emotion they are feeling as it expands. Then ask them to get a big needle and pop that balloon so the emotion is blown away from them.
This is a great exercise they can do by themselves when they start to feel anxious.
No one wants their child to hate going to school. A few well-placed questions can help you get to the reasons why and may be the key to helping them nail their subjects this year.
Article by Zoe Buckley. Zoe is a teacher, musician, and artist. I completed my Bachelor of Education as a mature aged student in 2006 and have taught in schools from primary through to university. For the past 10 years, I started working as a tutor one on one with children and adults who have learning difficulties. I work with organisations such as Life Without Barriers, Ronald McDonald Learning Program and numerous schools, colleges, and universities. During my tutoring sessions, I noticed that students who struggled with a subject also had a negative emotion attached to the subject. This led me to pursue further studies on how the brain works.
