How to Deal with Back to School Anxiety
This post may contain affiliate links and CorporetteMoms may earn commissions for purchases made through links in this post. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Let’s have a check-in, readers… how are your own anxiety levels doing as kids start heading back to school? How are your kids’ anxiety levels doing? (When is/was your kids’ first day back, and what is your community doing to assuage anxiety, i.e., mask mandates and so forth?)
My own kids are on a kind of weird schedule because one of them is at a private school, so one starts today and one starts later. We are a bundle of nerves. I know my guy wasn’t able to sleep last night, and I was doom scrolling until well past my bedtime.
{related: how to help your kids manage anxiety}
How I Help My Kids Deal with Back to School Anxiety
My kids, in general, are balls of anxiety before school starts, and so I’ve learned over the years to fill the week or two before school with a lot of FUN but exhausting things. Trips to the zoo! The pool! Museums! Playdates! Let’s go kayaking!
This year I was pretty good at actually doing all this. I’ve also tried to rein the kids in from their summer sleep schedules back to their school sleep schedules, although that is a losing battle with summer light.
How I’m Dealing With My Own Back to School Anxiety
Because my son’s birthday is this week, we also have family in town, which is further splitting my attention and making me feel less inclined to do self-care things.
But I’m trying to be gentle with myself — give myself the gift of sleep, try to also enjoy the moments with my kids with all the activities, and generally do self-care things like getting into a good book and exercising.
I know Oster’s approach has been controversial, but I really was soothed by her recent Substack post (“How Should I Think about School & Child Care Now?”) about controlling what you can control and making a framework for decisions for yourself as a family — what metrics you will base decisions on, what measures you will take when those metrics are met. It’s helpful!
Regarding your decisions for the fall, Oster suggests first asking yourself, “What would I do about this choice (school, child care, something else) if I knew my kid was completely protected from COVID?” and then trying to arrive at a benchmark by considering this: “What would you do if you knew your child had, say, a 20% chance of getting COVID-19 at school or child care? … Would you send them? What if it was 50%? 80% 10%?” Next, she suggests, look at the data and consider the actual risks.
{related: self-care ideas for working moms}
Readers, how are you dealing with back to school anxiety — either for your kids or yourself?
We’re back to school in person, thankfully with masks in our district. I’m feeling less anxious about being in school and more anxious about my kids being out in the very unmasked community. Unvaccinated transmissions are soaring in our area, and while kids haven’t been heavily affected YET, I also feel like it’s only a matter of time.
We had in-person school last year, fully masked, with few incidents, which gives me some comfort even though Delta may be a game-changer.
Unfortunately my first grader caught COVID at his daycare summer program the week before he was supposed to start school. He’s missing the first two weeks and I am so upset about the situation. He desperately needs the structure and socialization of school, particularly after a 3/4 virtual K year. Now his first grade experience is also screwed up. I’m not worried about academics but missing the weeks spent on learning the schedule and expectations and building relationships is just the worst thing for this kid. All because Delta is rampant here and everyone has decided the pandemic is over – no masks, no distancing nothing. Parents are “welcomed” back to the classroom. It’s a disaster waiting to happen and the only silver lining is now my kid (hopefully) has some immunity. Ugh.
I think I’m channeling my anxiety into buying lots of back to school items and items for our upcoming trip at Target, and then also packing way ahead of time for this trip. That’s normal, right?
Well I looked at Boston University epidemiology predictions that 80% of school kids will get Delta, many within the next 30 days, and we are homeschooling this year. I’m so upset to be leaving the workforce, but my kid has risk factors and we aren’t messing with it. Very privileged to have a homeschool option, but after 18 months of virtual school with 2 WFH parents, my family is going into this school year already running on fumes.
I don’t trust Oster’s approach at all. Everything she is saying is based on pre-Delta data. For some families the risk metrics are still tolerable, but Delta is about to rip through under age 12 population and I’m not sure all the experts have fully considered what that means, even if less than 1% are likely to face severe complications. For example, I would pull even healthy kids from high risk outdoor activities and not be risking any hospital visits over the next 90 days. The pediatric healthcare workforce is going to be distracted by Covid and the RSV wave and have less capacity for the usual kid emergency healthcare. I’m not sure they can surge care in hotspot areas the same way they can for adults and there is no way to predict right now where the hotspots will be. With Delta infection rates being so high, even some highly vaccinated communities are going to get unlucky.