By Michelle Beaumont, DBT Fellow.
The start of a new school year brings excitement, fresh opportunities, and a noticeable increase in anxiety. Even children who generally enjoy school may become more emotional or overwhelmed as the first day approaches- worrying about making friends, finding classes, meeting new teachers, keeping up academically, or simply facing the unknown. For some children, anxiety shows up physically, through stomachaches, headaches, trouble sleeping, or changes in appetite. Others become irritable, seek constant reassurance, or insist they simply can't go to school. As a parent, it can be hard to know how to respond- you want to acknowledge your child's feelings without letting anxiety make every decision. This is where DBT skills can help.
1. Understand Anxiety, Avoidance, and Accommodation
Anxiety is the mind and body's natural response to uncertainty or perceived danger- racing thoughts, muscle tension, nausea, or the sense that something bad is about to happen. Avoidance is what we do to escape those feelings: refusing to get dressed, asking to stay home, skipping a presentation, or relying on a parent to speak for them. Accommodation happens when caring adults unintentionally help children avoid anxiety- allowing repeated absences, answering the same reassurance questions over and over, contacting teachers instead of encouraging the child to communicate independently, or removing every situation that feels uncomfortable.
These responses come from love and a desire to reduce distress. Unfortunately, they also teach the brain that avoiding anxiety is what keeps us safe. Avoidance offers immediate relief, but it prevents children from discovering they can cope- which makes anxiety stronger over time. Ask yourself: Is my support helping my child build coping skills, or helping them avoid anxiety?
2. Check the Facts
Anxiety often treats predictions as facts. If your child says, "I'm going to eat lunch alone, and everyone will think I have no friends," slow the conversation down instead of arguing or reassuring right away:
Checking the facts doesn't eliminate anxiety, but it helps children separate what's actually happening from what anxiety predicts- and it encourages problem-solving over panic.
3. Practice Opposite Action
Sometimes fear fits the facts- active bullying or another genuinely unsafe situation calls for problem-solving and advocacy, not exposure. But when the situation is safe, and anxiety is exaggerating the danger, Opposite Action can help: doing the opposite of what anxiety urges.
If anxiety says: stay home, avoid the classroom, or let someone else handle it. Opposite Action might look like getting dressed for school, walking in, and asking a teacher a question, or staying through first period. The goal isn't to stop feeling anxious before acting- confidence usually develops after acting, not before.
4. Build Confidence Through Gradual Exposure
Exposure means repeated practice approaching what anxiety wants to avoid. Many people assume exposure means throwing someone into the hardest possible situation and forcing them to deal with it, but effective exposure is usually more thoughtful than that- planned, gradual, and challenging enough to create learning without making the situation unmanageable. For a student starting a new school, that might mean reviewing the class schedule, visiting the school beforehand, practicing the locker, walking the building, or meeting a teacher before entering on day one with a coping plan in place.
Each step teaches the same lesson: I can feel anxious and still handle this. Encourage children to stay in the situation long enough to notice anxiety rise and fall on its own- escaping the moment it spikes reinforces the belief that they can't cope. Small, repeated experiences build confidence far more effectively than waiting for anxiety to disappear first.
5. Support Without Accommodation
One of the hardest parts of parenting an anxious child is knowing when you're helping and when you're accidentally strengthening the anxiety. Support builds independence; accommodation builds avoidance.
Support looks like practicing what to say before a conversation with a teacher, helping create a plan for managing anxiety at school, or walking a younger child to the entrance while encouraging them to go in on their own. Accommodation looks like speaking to the teacher every time, promising immediate pickup whenever anxiety appears or letting anxiety decide whether your child attends school.
The question to ask: Is this helping my child become more capable of handling future challenges?
6. Validate Feelings Without Reinforcing Avoidance
Validation means communicating that your child's feelings make sense, not agreeing with every thought or allowing every behavior. If your child says, "You don't understand, I cannot go to school tomorrow," an invalidating response is "You're being ridiculous, everyone has to go." An overly accommodating one is "Okay, you don't have to go." A balanced response sounds more like: "I can see how overwhelmed you feel. Starting school brings up a lot of uncertainty, and that's hard. I believe you can do this, and we'll take it one step at a time." Children need to feel understood and to hear that the adults around them believe they can cope.
7. Putting It All Together
The night before school, your child says, "I'm not going tomorrow." Instead of arguing, work through the skills together:
1. Validate: "I can see you're really anxious."
2. Check the facts: "What do we know for sure right now?"
3. Identify the urge: "What is anxiety telling you to do?"
4. Apply Opposite Action: "What would moving toward school look like?" Maybe it's packing the backpack, getting dressed, or walking through the door.
5. Support without over-accommodating: "I'm not going to call you out of school because you feel anxious. I can help you make a plan, help you get there, and remind you of the skills you can use if anxiety shows up."
Breaking the day into small steps is far less overwhelming than facing the whole school year at once. Often progress doesn't have to look calm; it looks like taking the next step despite feeling anxious.
