7 Ways to Ease Back-to-School Jitters

What you can do to help your little student feel better about the coming school year.

Even if you don’t know exactly why your child is anxious, here are a few things you can do to help him or her feel better about the coming school year:

• Talk about your first-day-of-school experiences. If you don’t remember, have your kids ask their grandparents what they remember about your first day of school. “It almost doesn’t matter if the experiences were positive or negative,” Cohen says. “It’s sharing them that’s important because it makes your child see that this happens to everyone.”

• Don’t assume your child is anxious. Physiologically, there is little difference between anxiety and excitement, Cohen says. Just because you remember being anxious about school doesn’t mean that your child is. Asking about the bus 100 times could be enthusiasm instead of anxiety.

• Make sure your child knows at least one person at her new school. If your child is starting kindergarten this year, get a class list from the office and arrange a couple of playdates with kids from your child’s class. Knowing that there will be a familiar face at school helps to ease first-day jitters.

• Visit the school and do a test-run of the route to school. This helps to minimize the fear of the unknown.