Healthy Tips Video: Reducing Back to School Stress

Video Transcript

Hi, I'm David Roark. I'm an outpatient therapist with Owensboro Health's Employee Assistance Program, located in the Healthpark. As we move into the month of August, we're approaching one of the most stressful times for kids and parents, and that's back to school. So we have a few tips here to make the back to school transition a little less stressful and a little more productive.

Five Tips for Reducing Back to School Stress

Discuss Schedules

The first tip in back-to-school preparation is sitting down with your kids and discussing what the schedule will look like when they return to school. You can discuss such things as homework time. Now, I do suggest not doing particular times, like 7 p.m. or 5:30, but doing situational times, such as after dinner or before dinner. And you can also talk about what game time will be like or what device restriction may be imposed once school starts. A good thing to also do is start putting these limits and times in schedules in a little bit before school starts, maybe two to three days, just so your kids can get acclimated before the new year begins.

Visit the School

A second tip for back-to-school preparation would be, if at all possible, visit the school, especially if it's a new school to your child. Show them where their classroom would be. Meet the teachers. Get familiar with that space, particularly if your child has anxiety or is nervous about beginning school. This could be a big help and get them at least a little bit of comfort in knowing what their surroundings look like and knowing where they will be going when they begin.

Select a Workspace

Our third tip for back-to-school preparation would be, beforehand, select a workspace for your kids, with you and them together going and picking out a spot that would work well for them and letting them personalize that area, so they'll know they'll have a place to go that they can do their homework in a productive space.

Include Kids in Back-to-school Preparation

Another thing we can do as parents is to include our kids on the back-to-school preparation, which would be things such as letting them help pick out their backpacks, letting them go for a back-to-school shopping for clothes and even looking for foods and items such as that they can pack for their lunch. Now, some kids may not like the clothes shopping, and they may not like the backpack shopping. But they would like the lunch shopping and vice versa. Either way, these are things that we can have them include in and to help get them a little bit more excited about maybe some positives in going back to school.

Check-in With Them

The fifth and final thing that we can do to reduce stress and anxiety about the back-to-school transition is to make sure that you're processing with your kids about any stress or anxiety they may have. One thing you can do that would work quite well is even setting up a check-in time for, even if it's just a few minutes a day, that you guys will come in, talk, see if there's any issues. That way, your kids will know that if they do need to talk about something, there's a built-in set time.

So those are a few tips and helpful things that we can do for back-to-school stress that I hope help. And we'll talk to you next time.

For more on this topic or additional resources, contact the Healthpark Employee Assistance Program at 270-688-1547.