5 ways to help children with school related anxiety

This week is Children’s Mental Health Week (it runs from 3 February – 9 February in 2025). I myself suffered anxiety related to school as a child, starting in late 2002 when I was in Year 6. My parents took me to see our GP and explained how I felt sick on school mornings. Unfortunately, I was pretty much accused of just trying to get out of school. However, this wasn’t the case and my parents knew it. I was a bit of a geek and loved school! Retrospectively, I realised it was actually down to anxiety surrounding the 11+ exam and the transition to secondary school the following year. 20ish years later, I’ve seen my daughter worry about various school-related things and have tackled these with some of my own strategies as well as advice from online. You can help your child/ren by using these expert-backed strategies to help overcome the anxiety-provoking challenges they face:

1. Watch out for signs

Is your child moody, had a change in behaviour or started complaining about physical ailments? Have they been having more time off school? Are there any patterns to when this is occurring? Do they seem down and not enjoying their normal activities? Have their grades gone down? These could all be tell-tale signs that something is up. Ask staff that work with your child to monitor this too and if the behaviour persists or worsens, consider seeking professional help.

2. Reframe problems into learning opportunities

We’ve all messed up on a test at some point in our lives. However, children often have to learn to be resilient and will see their low score as a massive failure. They may call themselves stupid and decide they hate that subject. They may even have anxiety about attending school when that subject is being taught or when they know there will be a test. The key is to reframe what they perceive as a failure as an opportunity to learn by asking questions such as what went wrong and what they could do differently next time.

Psychiatrist Dr. Sham Singh explains “Problems should be discussed with the child: what went wrong and how it can be solved brings problem-solving skills along with building resilience. This builds a positive mindset in children to celebrate small victories, reflect on how they have improved, and [helps them] feel confident to face challenges in the futureā€.

3. Praise their efforts

Praise your children for trying hard, not just when they get full marks in a spelling test or an A on a maths paper. This will help to build their resilience and confidence.

“Instead of saying “Well done on getting an A”, try “I’m really proud of how hard you worked on this” or “I noticed you didn’t give up when it got difficult”.

Dr. Singh

4. Do homework in 20 minute chunks

I’m sure I’m not alone in having a child who gets frustrated and upset with homework when she’s not understanding it or getting things wrong. Doing homework in 20 minute chunks helps children to not get so overwhelmed, making them more likely to accept constructive feedback rather than taking it as brutal criticism. You could try pairing it with mindfulness and/or breathing exercises before, after and with 5 minute breaks in between. This will help to keep the situation calm and hopefully allow your child to let go of any frustration about the homework in a healthy way.

5. Build their emotional intelligence

If a child is having problems with maths and it’s affecting their mental health, getting them maths tutoring isn’t going to help the whole problem. Yes, they should improve at maths. But what about the next thing they find hard? It’s important to work on your child’s emotional toolbox. Tutoring isn’t available for everything in life, after all. Help them learn to recognise and manage their feelings in a healthy way and check in on how they’re feeling regularly.

Dr. Singh says “Teaching children to handle their feelings effectively brings in long-term gains, especially from an academic perspective. This provides them with emotional intelligence that helps them deal better with interpersonal relationships and stress. All these skills also help them academically by keeping the child focused, pushing through challenges, and maintaining a balanced approach toward studies and personal wellbeing.”

Disclosure: I hope this article will help you to help your child manage their anxieties surrounding school. Thank you to Explore Learning and Dr. Sham Singh for this expert guidance (information from a press release, this is NOT a sponsored post).

Cover photo by MChe Lee on Unsplash