How parents can help kids deal with back-to-school anxiety

(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

Elizabeth Englander, Bridgewater State University

(THE CONVERSATION) As a child, I had a great deal of anxiety. If you’ve ever seen me speak in public, that might surprise you. But anxiety among children is extremely common and affects almost all children, to varying degrees.

During pre-pandemic times, researchers noted that as many as 7% of children had a diagnosable anxiety disorder that disrupted their everyday functioning. In addition, 20% had a tendency to feel anxious that didn’t rise to the level of a clinical disorder. And all children feel anxious at some time or another.

Most researchers have found that anxiety in children increased during and after the pandemic. Lockdowns that isolated children from their peers and interruptions to their routines may have accounted for the findings in these studies.

As a researcher who’s studied children’s mental health for decades, I know that predictability helps prevent anxiety in children. Predictability means things going along as they’ve always gone: sleep at night, up in the morning, cornflakes for breakfast, off to school, activities in the afternoon, dinner with the family. In Louise Fitzhugh’s children’s novel...