Anxiety at School – How to Build Brave by Building Their Village.

Boy reading

For our kids and teens, a school year will bring new adults into their orbit. With this, comes new opportunities to be brave and grow their courage – but it will also bring anxiety at school. For some kiddos, this anxiety will feel so big, but we can help them feel bigger.

If anxiety is a felt sense of threat, the antidote to this is a felt sense of safety.

This can be strengthened most powerfully through relationship. A felt sense of relational safety is critical in reducing anxiety at school and building brave behaviour in all children.

‘Relational safety’ in this sense means feeling welcome, seen validated, cared for, valued. The questions to ask are:

  • Do they feel seen, cared for, valued, by the adult in the room?
  • Is that adult familiar, warm, welcoming?
  • And because children are always looking to their primary important adults (parents/carers) for signs of safety: Do they (the young person) believe that we (their parent/carer) likes and trusts that adult?

There is a primal, instinctive reason for the importance of relational safety for all of us. We haven’t survived for as long as we have because we’re the smartest or the strongest or the most powerful. We’ve survived for as long as we have because we’ve worked together. We feel safest when we are ‘with’. This is how it is for all mammals, not just the human ones.

What’s important of course, is that the ones we are with feel safe to be with. For children, felt safety with an adult might take time. This is no reflection on the adult. The adult beside them might be the safest, warmest, most loving adult, but that doesn’t mean a young person will feel safe straight away.

This is also instinctive. It isn’t safe for children to follow every adult that comes to them, so a felt sense of relational safety might take time, and that’s okay.

As long as they are actually safe, we can help grow their felt sense of relational safety by nurturing their relationship with the important adults who will be caring for them, whether that’s a co-parent, a stepparent, a teacher, a coach.

There are a number of ways we can do this:

  • Use the name of their other adult (such as a teacher) regularly, and let it sound loving and playful on your voice. ‘Oh I wonder what Miss Smith is having for breakfast today.’
  • Let them see that you have an open, willing heart in relation to the other adult. ‘I really like Mr Jones. I’m excited for you to get to know him.’
  • Show them you trust the other adult to care for them (‘I know Mrs Smith is going to take such good care of you.’)
  • Facilitate familiarity. As much as you can, hand your child to the same person when you drop them off.
  • You know how lovely it feels to hear someone speaking beautifully about you behind your back? It goes a long way to building trust in the person who said it. To facilitate this between your child and the teacher, ask your child’s teacher to share anything positive your child does. It might be weekly or fortnightly – whatever works. Then, share that information with your child, ‘Mrs Wilder told me that you worked really hard in maths today. I loved that she noticed that about you.’ Then, share anything positive your child says about the teacher, with the teacher.

It’s about helping expand their village of loving adults. The wider this village, the bigger their world in which they can feel brave enough.

For centuries before us, it was the village that raised children. Parenting was never meant to be done by one or two adults on their own, yet our modern world means that this is how it is for so many of us.

We can bring the village back though – and we must – by helping our kiddos feel safe, known, and held by the adults around them. We need this for each other too.

4 Comments

Alicia

It’s nice to finally see its ok talk about anxiety and depression and to put in perspective what it means, and that reaching out as a parent or just struggling yourself that people are more accepting, and that there is help and tools to help. No more hush hush or negativity toward someone struggling.

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Mattering is about feeling valued and feeling like I’m doing something that adds value. It doesn’t have to come from grades or schoolwork, and for so many kids it probably won’t. There are so many ways to help kids feel seen and valued that have nothing to do with schoolwork, but which can work to engage them in schoolwork. Little things make a big difference. 

We also have to let our teachers know how much the matter. They are the greatest key to ‘mattering’ (or unmattering) in our schools and for our young people.♥️
If we want to meet their learning needs, we first have to meet their relational ones. If we want them to be open to learning, they first have to open to the adult they are learning from - and they won’t be open if they don’t feel seen, safe, and cared for. It’s not always easy, it’s just how it is.♥️
You know what's lovely? Aside from Sundays and sunshine? …
Sales. 

You know what's even lovelier?
Sales that are 25% off books and resources designed to help kiddos feel bigger, braver, and calmer.

For a short time, we’re taking 25% off books, plushies, courses, posters, and a bunch of tiny treasures that can help build courage and calm in kids and teens.

With the end of the financial year just around the corner, it’s the perfect time to top up your toolkit — or quietly replace those resources that have shimmied away while you weren’t looking. (We see you. We've been there.)

This one is for you. And the young ones in your life. Actually, this one is for everyone.

Happy shopping!
We know there are too many kids struggling right now, including those from loving, responsive families and in loving, responsive schools. 

One of the places these struggles will show themselves is at school, even in the most loving responsive ones. Sometimes these struggles show themselves with a roar, sometimes with nothing at all.

Too many kids are feeling no sense at all that they matter. They don’t feel they are doing something that matters, and they don’t feel that they matter to others.

Too many of them will go weeks at school without hearing their name in a way that makes them feel seen, cared for, and valued.

Too many of them are showing up at school but are noticed more when they don’t, even if only by the unticked box beside their name.

For too many kids, we are asking them to show up when they don’t feel like they have anything to offer, or anything at all to show up for. Why wouldn’t they struggle?

This week I had the greatest privilege of speaking to a room of 300 school well-being staff about how to support all children, how to catch the ones who are struggling, and what we can do to buffer, protect and heal all young people at school.

If you are a parent of a young person who is struggling, I want you to know that schools are working hard to hold them, lovingly and safely.

I know there are also many parents who haven’t had this experience, and your children haven’t got what they need. I know that. I want you to know that change is happening. I want you to know what I see when I work with the wellbeing staff at these schools. They care. They really do. They are so invested in supporting your children, seeing the child behind the student and showing up big for all of them. The work is happening. There’s a lot to do, but it’s happening.

Yes we need more resources, and yes more people, and yes we’re asking more of our schools and teachers than ever, and yes the world is asking more of our kids than ever, but the work is happening.

Thank you to the Department of Education Queensland for working with me, and thank you to the wellbeing staff, teachers, and leadership who are giving everything they can to be there for our children. You matter.♥️

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