How Parents Can Help Kids With Back To School Anxiety in 2021

For kids, going to school has never felt more uncertain than it does in fall 2021, as they enter their third school year affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Will they be able to keep going to school or will their school shut down, as some already are? What if they get COVID, or what if they bring the Delta variant home to siblings too young to be vaccinated? Will they be okay?

Now more than ever, parents need to know how to help their kids navigate all the usual school stress, plus deal with the fear and uncertainty they face during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Kids are stuck in a ShouldStorm

Kids were already facing unprecedented pressure to excel in school at all costs, placed on them by the ShouldStorm: a culture of criticism and perfectionism in parenting that pressures parents and kids with all the things they should do or they will miss out in life. The ShouldStorm tells kids they must succeed, but they must at the same time be happy and comfortable. It provides no guidance on how they should do both; then the ShouldStorm makes kids feel terrible when they fail at one or the other. And this ShouldStorm did not go away when the COVID pandemic hit-if anything the pressure on kids only got heavier.