Ep 244: Helping kids with back-to-school anxiety, with Lynn Lyons

In this episode, Dr. Jessica Hochman welcomes back anxiety expert Lynn Lyons, to discuss how parents can help children navigate back-to-school anxiety.

Lynn explains why reassurance isn't always reassuring, why parents often talk too much when children are anxious, and how simple changes in our language can build confidence instead of fear. Together they discuss what to say when a child doesn't want to go to school, when anxiety becomes a reason to seek professional help, and why learning to tolerate uncertainty is one of the greatest gifts we can give our children.

Whether your child is starting kindergarten, changing schools, or simply feeling nervous about the first day, this conversation offers practical, reassuring advice you can use immediately.

Lynn Lyons is a psychotherapist, author, speaker, and one of the nation's leading experts on childhood anxiety. Be sure to check out her podcasts, Flusterclucks and Quarter-Life: Your 20s Are a Mother, for more practical advice on anxiety, parenting, and resilience.

Your Child is Normal is the trusted podcast for parents, pediatricians, and child health experts who want smart, nuanced conversations about raising healthy, resilient kids. Hosted by Dr. Jessica Hochman — a board-certified practicing pediatrician — the show combines evidence-based medicine, expert interviews, and real-world parenting advice to help listeners navigate everything from sleep struggles to mental health, nutrition, screen time, and more.

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Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

Hi, everybody, and welcome back to Your Child Is Normal, host Dr. Jessica Hochman. So today's guest is one of my favorite returning guests, anxiety expert, author, and podcast host Lynn Lyons. If you've ever listened to our previous conversations, you already know why parents love her practical, humorous, and evidence-based advice. Lynn has spent decades helping children and families manage their anxiety, and with many kids heading back to school, I thought there couldn't be a better time to talk about one of

parents' biggest concerns: 0:26

back-to-school anxiety. In this conversation, we talk about what to say when your child is nervous, what not to say, why reassurance isn't always the most helpful response to anxiety, and how we can help our children build confidence instead of accidentally feeding their fears. Lynn shares simple phrases that parents can start using today. Explains why our own tone matters so much, and reminds us that feeling nervous isn't something to get rid of or eliminate. It's something that we want kids to learn to handle. So whether your child is starting kindergarten, middle school, high school, or simply feeling uneasy about a new school year, I think you'll find this conversation both reassuring and incredibly practical. And if you're enjoying your child as normal, I would be so grateful if you could take a moment to leave a rating or review. It really helps more parents discover the show. Now onto my conversation with anxiety expert Lynn Lyons. Lynn, I'm so excited you started a new podcast since I talked to you. Yes, actually. So it's an offshoot of Fluster Clux, and it's called Quarter Life. Your 20s are a mother, and it's basically my younger son who just turned 26 the other day gathers questions from his 20 year old peers, and then he asks me the questions, and then I dispense the advice, which he jokingly says has been going on for years anyway. We've just formalized it. Yeah, I'm guessing you must be enjoying it so much. It is so much fun, and he's really funny too. So I like listening to the podcast after we do it, just because I like hearing what he has to say. He's really quick, and then you know I do fluster clutch with my sister in law, and my brother produces that. So we're all just this podcast family, and how's it going? Is he enjoying it? Yeah, yeah, I think so. He is really good at meeting all the deadlines and coming up with great questions. He's a little frustrated, I think, because his friends aren't listening to the podcast as much as he would like, which I told him. You know what? My when my first book came out, like my family. Other than like I think my mom read it, but other than that, nobody read it. So don't get your feelings hurt. Yeah, it's a good life lesson right there, for sure. And tell me again, what is the podcast name? The new one is called Quarter Life. Your 20s are a mother. I like the name of it too. Yep, because I'm his mother. You are his mother, and then congratulations! You just are now a mother-in-law. You have a new title. Yes, I do have a new title. My older son got married just a few days ago. It was amazing. She is fantastic. They started dating when they were seniors in high school, and it was a beautiful wedding. The wedding was fantastic. The music was fantastic. The speeches were fantastic, and we just had such a great time. Sounds like a dream. I feel like yeah, with weddings and big events, I try not to get my hopes up too much because you know something's gonna not go the way you expected. But it sounds like everything went just as planned, which is wonderful. Yes, everything went as planned, and I said when I was doing my talk, among other things, that if I had to create a daughter-in-law, that would be a good match for my son. This is what I would have picked. That if there was any horse that my son could hitch his cart to, she is the horse that I would want him to be connected to. So, yeah. What's wonderful, and I'm so happy for you. You deserve it. So I'm glad you have a. Oh, thank you, Jessica. So glad you have a good daughter-in-law. I me too. Yeah. So I wanted to bring you on to talk about back-to-school anxiety. You know, every year, come like July, August, I get a lot of questions from parents. They're telling me about how nervous their kids are to start school, and so I thought it would be helpful just to sort of go through some scenarios and talk about how parents can help their kids. Yeah, I'm happy to. I'm happy. I get the same kinds of questions. Yeah, what's interesting is that kids that get really nervous about going back to school tend to get nervous about a lot of things. So going back to school is just one of the things that they get nervous about kids that are more flexible and that kind of go with the flow. School doesn't create for them as much anxiety or nervousness or worry because they've got some of the skills that we want to teach the anxious kids. The non-anxious kids and the non-anxious parents have those skills already. In the bucket. Now that said, a certain amount of nervousness and you know anticipation and anxiety is totally normal as you're getting ready to start school. So it doesn't necessarily mean there's something wrong, particularly if you're going to a new school or if you're going from elementary to middle or you're starting high school or whatever. So there's a huge range of normal. That's what I really want to emphasize with parents. No, that's great. And I'm reflecting back when I was in elementary school. I remember when there was a big day where they would announce what teacher you got, and everybody would like, and you were riddled with nervousness. Who are you going to get? Were you going to get the bad teacher, the good teacher? And ultimately, it it works out. But yeah, I agree. There's a lot of normalcy to being nervous before school starts, and to figuring out how to manage, like you say, when things don't go exactly as you had planned. So we have all these life experiences where we get to practice managing when things, you know, you hit a little speed bump, and oftentimes not getting the exact teacher you want, or being separated from your best friend because she's in one class and you're in another, transitioning to a new school-all of those things are really good practice for how we manage when things don't go as planned. Which, of course, is the opposite of what anxiety wants. Anxiety wants to know exactly what's going to happen, and we need our kids to have practice so that they can problem solve. They can see they can handle something, all that stuff. It's all grist for the mill. It's good life practice. It is, yeah. Okay, so what I thought would be helpful because I think as parents we want to help our kids in the best way, but sometimes we don't know what words to use, and we might feel like the words that we're using aren't as helpful as they could be so. Let's say a child comes to their parent and they start complaining about a stomach ache, and they say they're nervous. They don't want to go to school. What are some words or phrases that parents could use to help them?

Okay. So rule number one: 6:54

words and phrases you want to keep them to a minimum. So across the board, I will tell you this is a truth. Parents talk too much. You just need to stop talking so much, just zip it. And so you want to validate. You want to acknowledge that they're nervous, so you can say something like, "Oh, I totally get that. Yeah, this is something new, so you feel a little nervous because you don't know how it's going to go, and then you stop, and then you talk about how you're going to go to school. So you don't need to analyze, examine, get into all the details. You don't need to say why are you feeling this way. Like, tell me what's going on inside. The more attention you give it, the bigger that it gets. So we got a little phrase in this business: "What you focus on, you amplify. And as soon as you start to get, "Oh my gosh, what's wrong with my kid? They pick up on that. So you, of course, want to say, "Oh my gosh, you know, "Oh, I get it that your stomach hurts, and then you say, "So let's figure out how we're going to get through the first day of school, or let's pack our lunch, or let's keep moving. When parents get bogged down in trying to figure everything out and have conversations, I was talking to a colleague of mine who's an ADHD guy. You probably know him. Yes, you do. I think it was Mike McCloud actually, who was on my podcast and your podcast, and he's so funny. He said that all these parents grew up during the era of Full House, in which after every problem, you went up to the bedroom and sat down on the bed and had a heart to heart. He's like, no, especially with kids with anxiety and with kids with ADHD, less words are better. So you validate and you say, "I get it. I know that this is tricky, and then you talk about how you're going to move on. You're making me feel better because my daughter, a couple of years ago, we switched her elementary schools, and she knew about a year ahead of time that she was going to be switching schools. And we heard about it a lot that year. How she was nervous. She's going to be switching schools, and I felt guilty that I wasn't spending enough time talking with her about it because I knew that eventually she was going to make the switch and was going to be okay. But I did feel quite a bit of guilt that I didn't spend more time reassuring her and validating her. Well, but that's the message that parents get a lot right

now: 9:18

is that you know every behavior is a bid for connection, and everything that kids say we have to understand. And it all-what is the emotion behind what they say? I just did a little thing about this phrase, root cause, that drives me crazy. People like we have to get to the root cause, and I say no, just cause, right? There's no root cause, just cause. It's like skill set. Just say skill. We have to say skill set. So you did the right thing by validating and saying, "Yeah, I bet you're nervous, but I bet you're also going to be able to handle it. And let's keep moving. The idea that more talk is better, that we have to process everything, that everything they say. Or that they talk about, or that the experience is just worthy of exploration. Oh my gosh, that's why parents are so exhausted these days. Just give them a kiss and go. You got it, buddy. Get on the bus. I'll see you at the end of the day. Yeah, not everything has to be a big deal. Correct. You're making me feel so validated when you say the root cot, that term that the term root cause is your favorite, I completely agree with you. Well, the thing about anxiety is that it's really not that mysterious, and I've talked about this with you before. Is that anxiety wants certainty and comfort? It wants to know everything. Are there a lot of reasons that anxiety shows up, not a lot to be honest. Like, could it be from trauma? Of course. Could it be because temperamentally you're a more sensitive kid and you feel things deeply? Yes. Could it be because your parents are talking to you about the dangerous world all the time? Yes. But it's not all that complicated. So once we step back and say it really is okay for you to feel uncomfortable as you move into new things, then it doesn't have to be so complicated and so mysterious and so deep and so tremendously threatening that parents get pulled into it. It is okay if you feel anxious. It is okay if you feel worried. We don't have to examine it. That's a great point, and I find that I meet different kinds of parents. They have different strategies. And one style I want to ask you about is the parent that is always that is always telling their kids it's going to be fine not to worry. So if a child voices a complaint, something that they're nervous or anxious about. The parent just says, "Don't worry about it. You can be fine. What other words or phrases could a parent use in that situation? So that can either be that's an interesting parenting style, and it can fall into two camps. One is that it's dismissive, right? Like, look, you're fine. Your tummy doesn't hurt. What are you worried about? Your brother went to this school. You're going to go to this school. So sometimes it sounds like the child is getting no validation and is just being dismissed, and we don't want that. On the other hand, offering reassurance of you're going to be fine, everything's going to be okay. I talked to your teacher. She's really nice. Do you remember last year when Amanda started school? She was nervous, and so her mom packed her lunch with some magic rocks, and I've done that. Like then you get into this reassurance thing. You wanna find the middle lane, which is give them that validation. I get it, and also then say I think you'll be able to figure it out, or we learn from experience, or one of my favorite is you can't know everything ahead of time, but I bet you'll learn as you go. So really, normalizing that when you step into school, this is the mistake that parents make. Those reassuring parents is they think that everything has to be discussed and figured out and planned and reviewed ahead of time, so we want to validate and say, "Yeah, you'll you'll do okay. You know, like you got it, but not get so into the pre planning and the pre talking and the conversations. So you'll be fine. Not my favorite phrase. More like you can handle it, right? It's okay if you feel nervous. I get it. Sure, of course, that's normal, and I bet you can handle it. And that gives kids the message that it's okay that they have these feelings, and that life is about stepping into things and figuring them out, not everything ahead of time. I try that technique in my office all the time, especially before kids get vaccinations, and I can tell they're nervous. I'll say yes. It's going to be hard. It's going to hurt for a little bit, but I know you can handle it. I know you've got this, and it's amazing how that phrasing you can see it in their face. That really does reassure them. I feel like it does work to validate them, and then also acknowledge and give them a vote of confidence. That's right, because kids are looking to us to get some, for one, sometimes information, but also they're looking to us as adults to say to them, "I have faith in you, right, or "I I believe in your ability to handle this. What oftentimes when we're anxious and when parents are anxious, they don't do that very well. So they feel like they have to get all this information, do all this planning, talk to the teachers, etc. The message that the child is picking up is, my mom or dad doesn't really trust that I'm very capable. They won't let me out of their sight. They have to talk to the teacher. They're emailing all the time. There's so much discussion about what might happen, and kids don't really articulate this. They don't turn to their mom when they're in third grade and go,"Gosh, you really must think that I'm not capable of managing anything. But that's often what happens, and so parents need to recognize. That all of the talking and planning and reassuring is really consistently giving your kid the message that they're not able to manage things unless you do it for them, or you're nearby, or there's an extraordinary amount of talking and planning. You want to say to them, "I think you can handle this. I believe in you, and that's what helps kids keep moving. Oftentimes, I'll find a parent that wants to intervene when their child gets the teacher that's known as being the hardest, worst, most difficult teacher in the school. I hear it all the time. The parents will go to the principal. They'll ask to make a change, and I'm curious. I understand that they're well intentioned. They want to help their child, but what do you think about that? How should parents think about it if and when their child gets a teacher that is not their desired teacher? So unless the teacher is like, I have heard stories of parents have been like, "Oh my God, this teacher is terrible, and then the teacher gets fired midway through the year, right? So I'm like, oh, I guess it was. But really, what you're saying, what a parent is saying, is my child needs to have the perfect fit. And I work a lot in schools. I work a ton with teachers and with school counselors. They really do try and create classrooms where there's a good fit, and there are sometimes where it is good for a child to have a certain teacher because she understands this blah blah blah, or this child, this teacher is known for being able to handle a kid who blah blah blah, or this this child this teacher is really good with energetic boys, and this kid is whatever. As soon as a parent steps in and says this isn't a perfect fit, then you are setting up that child to believe that because for one, if the change can't be made, right, setting that child up to believe that their situation is untenable, that it is so bad. This teacher is so bad. Or being separated from your best friend is so dire that my parent has to step in and make a change. I think that from. I mean, did you ever have a bad teacher like in elementary school, Jessica? Of course. Yeah, I did too. I had some great ones, but I my third grade teacher was a clunker, and I-that's a great word. You could use it if you like. I had to get through that year, and my mom actually was a third-grade teacher at the same time, and my mom was not happy. But I had to get through the year. I had to learn how to manage. I had to learn how to adapt, and that's to me that's real life. Learning how to maneuver your way through personalities that are difficult and challenging, because we're not going to go through life where everybody is a perfect fit with your personality. Correct, and the same goes when you get your first job. Like I'm sure when you were in medical school, when I was doing my training, I had supervisors that were great, and I had supervisors that weren't so great. In my first job, I had one boss that was certifiably nuts. Right, it's one of the reasons I went into private practice. But I had to adapt and adjust. I had to figure out how to manage with less than perfect circumstances. Now, remember, I work with a population that's generally anxious because that's what I specialize in. So the parents that I see, they probably learn pretty quickly not to come in here and be like,"Hey, I'm going to call the teacher and change the classroom, because I really feel like that sets a child up with this idea that things need to go smoothly, which is what the anxiety demands. The other piece of advice I give is that when kids are starting a new school, like when your daughter was starting at her new school, even just if they're starting the same school, even if they have the teacher that they love, the first few weeks of school after a summer break are pretty exhausting, and so they might come home and they be whiny. They might come home and be hungry. They're tired because they just went from summer to thinking and going back to school. If you can help it, don't email the teacher. Don't call the principal. Don't show up for at least two weeks. Let them settle in. Let them figure out their routine before you go in and start demanding this, or complaining about this, or being anxious about this. Again, I will tell you, I work with schools all the time. Schools know the parents that do this. They know the parents that are coming in hot on day two because the bus driver was grumpy. So let things settle down a little bit. Give your kid the time and the space to find their way a little bit. That is incredibly helpful for them. Again, these are life lessons. You're giving your child the message that they can handle it, which they can. That's right. Yeah. So they come home and they go, "I hate." Where I have to sit at lunch, they make us sit in assigned seats, and the kid that sits next to me chews with his mouth open, and so you might say like,"Well, that sucks, right? That's all. You don't have to be like,"Well, let me call and see if we can get your your seat changed, and maybe I'll call that mom and tell her that Bobby needs to close his mouth when he chews. Right, just be quiet. Let them figure it out. We don't need to be so involved, particularly at the beginning. I agree with you. I think unless there's extreme circumstances, your child's safety is involved, or they really are miserable. I think letting things settle out, giving your child a vote of confidence, maybe giving them advice if they ask for it, but otherwise, yeah, I think backing off a little bit is a good thing. One of the things that I talked about in a podcast, I'm sure, yes, I know I did, is this concept called interviewing for pain, which you may know as a pediatrician, right? So, the more that we ask kids, you know, does it hurt? How bad was that? We know that a parent's perception of a child's pain is more impairing in their functioning than the child's perception of their pain, and so when we're talking about maybe not physical pain, but your child gets off the school bus or comes home at the beginning of school and says, "Like, oh, I had a terrible day. Then it is really helpful if the next day, when you greet them getting off the bus, you don't have this dire look on your face. How was your day? Was it that terrible? Was anybody mean to you? Did you eat your lunch? Did the teacher listen to you? And sometimes I have to tell parents. This is actually a pretty good little tip. Don't even ask a question. Make a statement. So your kid gets off the bus and just say,"Oh, I am so happy to see you, and then shut your piehole. Stop talking. Yeah, they will fall right into that trap. Can you imagine? You come home at the end of the day, you're tired, and you've got this mom that's like, oh, right. It was so awful. Let me make you a snack and talk about how terrible it was. All of that is modeling. You give him love, and then you let him handle it. Yeah, it's so true how important our mental state is. As you said, what we think about amplifies and grows. And so, if you constantly are thinking about the bad teacher you had or the bad day at school, you're going to think more about it. You're going to perseverate more about it. It's ultimately not helpful. Well, and it also feels good to kids if they had a rough day or they're tired. It feels good if they get home and they just get slimed with all this empathy and validation and that kind of stuff, that feels good to them, but it's not necessarily what they need. And a lot of times, with kids that are anxious and even kids that have ADHD, too much talking and too much empathy does not help them figure out what to do next. It does not give them the opportunity to problem solve and to manage and to get through things, so kids become really almost expecting that when they get home, if they complain, they'll get a lot of attention, they'll get a lot of goodies, they'll get a lot of empathy, and it feels good in the short term. And I'm not saying you know dismiss your kid again because people will say somebody just said to me well if I had to choose between an anxious parent and a neglectful parent I'll choose an anxious one I was like well why are you only giving yourself those two choices that's pretty that's not so great so people say well if I have to choose between being dismissive of my child and giving them empathy I'm going to choose empathy. It's not a binary choice here, people. Give them a little empathy, and then help them figure out how to problem solve. Yeah. No, I think what you're saying makes so much sense to me. What you're saying really resonates. Yeah, you said initially validate their feelings, and then at a certain point, it's good to move on. It's healthy for them. That's right. To have you move on. That's right. That's right. And that's a good thing when we look at anxiety and depression too. One of the real cognitive patterns, one of the cognitive characteristics of that kind of disorder, is rumination, which means you get stuck in going over things over and over and over again. And I talk about people who ruminate are people who tell the same stories over and over and over again. They just go from friend to friend to friend, or from therapy session to therapy session to therapy session. If you teach your child that the way to manage to keep talking about something over and over and over again, you are actually training them to ruminate, which is not a good pattern in terms of long-term mental health, you want to problem solve, you want to move on, but staying in that sticky place of going over things not good. Yeah, it's a little counterintuitive, but when you think about it, it's so true because I'm thinking my kids will fight, and sometimes I'll want to talk with them about it. Go over the. And my husband's like, let's just let's move on. This is not helpful. Let's just move on to the next thing. Let's change the subject. Yeah, and that ability to say, okay, you had a fight, it happens. We don't have to pick it apart. We don't have to analyze it. And now let's just move on to something else, so that our brains and our bodies can move on to something else, is a really really good skill to teach your kids. It's good in marriage too, by the way, to have to be able to start fresh. Yeah, I mean, you've been married a long time. I've been married a long time. You get in stupid arguments about stupid things, and you don't need to discuss and process and go over every single. Sometimes you're just hungry and tired, or sometimes your husband is getting on your nerves, so you just go for a walk. It's really okay. My mom says a line that I think about all the time. She says,"It's better to be loved than right. It's so true. Yeah, yeah. Terry Real says he's a great couples therapist, and he says you can either be right or you could be married. Yeah, that's good. That's right. So I thought it might be helpful to walk through a couple scenarios that I think might be helpful for families. So one scenario that comes to mind is parents ask, "What can I do to help my child prepare for the beginning of school? So is there anything that you would recommend doing ahead of time, like visiting the school or planning a get together with a friend that's in their class. Anything in particular that you would recommend parents do to help prepare their kid that is on the anxious side? Yes. So some information is really helpful. Just like if we're starting a new job, you'd probably go and visit with people or find out where you're supposed to show up on the first day. And schools often do a good job with that. You have move-up day or visiting day or something like that. So all of that is great to get information. And remember, we want to differentiate between treating something as if it's this urgent emergency versus problem solving because you're stepping into something new. That's an important distinction to make, particularly for anxious families. So, yeah, go and visit the school when everybody else is visiting the school. Getting together if you have friends that are in the same class, maybe they have a get together. There are certain rituals that are helpful for kids to do to help them transition from summer into school, so we used to go back to school shopping. That was a big deal in our family. We went to this department store called DNL or Sage Allen in Connecticut, and that was kind of a a big deal. You would go and pick out your new lunchbox for the year. That was a big deal. Maybe you went and got your school supplies. So those kinds of rituals to help sort of move in that direction are really helpful. Again, don't talk about it all the time, and the tone that you take as you're preparing for school is probably much more impactful than what you actually do to prepare for school. So I'll give you an example. So a mom or a dad says,"Hey Joshua, there's a visiting day at school next week. They said they're going to have the school open on Monday and Tuesday. Let's go and check it out. We'll bring your schedule. We'll go and look and see where the stuff is. It'll be kind of fun, and then maybe afterwards we'll go get an ice cream. And Joshua goes, "Okay. Whereas an anxious parent would be like Joshua, look at it. Very important that we go and look at the school. I want you to be able to know where you're going. That's really going to help you feel better because I know that if you go into the school and you don't know where things are, that could really trigger your anxiety. So we're going to go and make sure that we put in every. It's just the intensity of the tone, and so when you're talking about school and preparing for school, as playful and nonchalant and ordinary as you can be is really helpful. The more gravity that you put toward anything, makes it feel more grave. You have the same thing, I'm sure that kids come into your office to get their vaccinations, and there's a parent who's like, "Okay, look, Dr. Hochman is very lovely, and it's not going to hurt, and it won't take long, and you'll be okay. I'll be right here, right? It's like she's going in for brain surgery, and you have other parents that are like,"Okay, come on, your turn, go in. You got to get your shots. Let's go. And think about your tone, the way that you're talking about the circumstance. Anxiety likes to promote things to an emergency that are not an emergency, and so the more that you talk about it in this way, that I hope everything goes okay, the more you're just ramping your child up for sure. It is so true that tone matters. There's so many scenarios I can think of where the more lighthearted we could be, the easier it makes life. Yeah, just ordinary, you know. And I know there are times like your kids haven't gotten to this point yet, but when they're going to get their driver's license. They're super nervous about that. There's a lot of pressure. They want to get their driver's license, and of course, we're going to treat it with a little bit more of oh, this is a big deal. But there is a difference between saying oh, okay, you're going to go get your driver's license, and oh, I hope you don't fail. But versus you know what, go do the best you can. And if you fail like me, I always say to kids, I hit a car during my driver's test, and look, I'm a successful human being, so it's really about about letting kids know that it's okay if it doesn't go perfectly, and that you're there. You're there. And by the way, when you mentioned your example with hitting a car, I think when you tell your kids a story, a personal story, I find that also really helps relieve their anxiety. If you share a story about when they went to school and you were nervous and things didn't go as you wanted, but it ended up okay. Kids love that stuff, and if it can even be a little funny too, when I'm talking with kids and I'll say, "Oh, well, I you know I went to go take my driver's test and I said, 'Are you nervous? And I'll go, 'Yeah, I'm so nervous. I go, 'I was nervous too, and then also, I hit a car, and so then the second time that I went back, I was super nervous, and they're like, "Ha ha! Then you hit a car. I mean, it's just it's just like saying like this is life. It's okay. It's not dismissive. It's not negating that they have feelings. It's making room for them, and us being able to tolerate their distress, tolerate that things don't always go as planned. That's what we want kids to learn. When we think about anxiety prevention and depression prevention, because those two things hang out so much, the main skills that I'm always talking about is the ability to do things when you don't feel like it. Hugely important, and also the ability to manage problems as they come up, rather than avoid them or make them into emergencies. Things happen in life all the time, unexpected things, things we don't like. Being able to tolerate that allows your kids to keep moving forward. Yeah, and they really do watch what you do and what you say, and so I think the more you can role model that for them, that will really help them gain that skill to tolerate uncertainty. I was talking, and I'm sure I gave this an example in one book that I wrote because it stands out in my mind. Watching a really anxious mom get ready for her first day at a new job, and how she handled that, and how she talked about it, and how much she prepared for it, versus a non-anxious parent who was nervous about the first day, but didn't treat it like an emergency, didn't overtalk about it, was able to say like, "Oh my gosh, you guys! I'm so nervous. I hope I like the people I work with. I'm not going to bring tuna because it's going to stick up the office, and that would be so embarrassing. So being able to model that, yes, this is uncertain, and I feel a little nervous, but I'm going to step in and handle it. There are so many opportunities for parents to do that. When we look at the way that anxious Parents model the world and how they contribute to anxiety in their kids. They very often speak pretty catastrophically about their own life and about their own circumstances and about what they have to go and do. And you really want to pay attention to how you're talking about your own life in front of your kids, and it makes a huge difference. Yeah, my daughter is in the 10th grade or entering 10th grade. She just took her first AP test, and she was so stressed out about it. Yeah, and so I told her when I was a freshman, I took an AP test. I was in honors biology. I didn't study properly for it, didn't pass the test, and I said, "Look, I went on to a career where I'm in medicine, and I had to take more biology, and it worked out. And that story she said made her feel relieved. So my failure actually was beneficial in some way. That's good because she saw what she saw. She didn't just hear about your failure; she heard about your failure followed by your resilience, she heard that. Okay, if you fail something, what do you do next? I hit I hit the car in the parking lot. What did I do? Well, first I cried a lot, and then I had to schedule another test three weeks later, and I went back. And so we want kids to know that they can step into new things. We want them to step into new things because that's how the brain learns that you can handle things, and the more that we protect kids from stepping into those things, and you know, like maybe I don't know, maybe your parents were like, "Oh, I don't know, Jessica's got to take this AP, like I don't know, she's good enough at biology to take this AP class. Maybe they thought that they kept it to themselves, right? But when you failed the test, they didn't tell you you couldn't have a career in medicine. They didn't freak out. What did they do? Nothing, actually. My mom told me about how she didn't pass geometry, and that was helpful. Right, right. Thanks, mom. So yeah, right. So it's really thinking about what are the skills. We want kids to learn, and we know that anxiety is not about building skills. It's about avoidance. It's about creating certainty. It's about this myth that your child is going to feel comfortable and feel happy and feel satisfied all the time. And we really have to let our kids, as hard as it is, they have to fail sometimes. They have to feel uncomfortable. They're going to get their hearts broken. They're going to be disappointed. They're going to get cut from the team. They're going to have a teacher they don't like. They're going to have a kid in their class that drives them crazy, and all of these things give you the confidence. Right? Confidence doesn't come from your parents telling you're fabulous. It's nice that they think that. Confidence comes from you doing things, and building up that resilience, building up that capacity to keep going, even when it doesn't feel so good. Absolutely. Now, there's one piece of advice that I've given in the past, and I'm curious if you would give the same advice because I'm thinking maybe not as I think this through. But for kids that are nervous before starting school, I've told parents to run through the day with them, talk about what the day would look like, what breakfast will be like, who's going to take them to school, visualize what you're going to wear, the friends you're going to talk to, who's going to pick you up from school, and the thinking was to help paint a picture of what the day was going to be like. Maybe that'll help lessen the anxiety. But now I'm thinking as I talk to you, well, what if the day doesn't go that way? What if you know I told them mom's going to pick you up, but actually grandma picks you up? And you know, wondering maybe painting the picture for them isn't ideal because things might not always go as planned. Yes, you're correct. I would not paint a picture full of specifics, because anxiety is like I have to know exactly what's going to happen. So you paint the picture, and you're like, and you're going to have pizza on the first day. Well, then they get there and they don't have pizza; they have bologna sandwiches. The thing you might want to say is, you know, here's how the day is going to go. It's going to be full of things that you totally expect, and it's going to be full of things that you totally didn't expect. So at the end of the day, I want you to come home and tell me about three things that happened that were totally surprising to you. So you're normalizing the uncertainty. Yeah, I mean that's my favorite homework assignment to give to families is at the dinner table. What was the unexpected thing of the day, and how did you handle it? And so instead of saying let's practice the day and make sure that it goes exactly as planned because that will make you feel better, I want to say let's think about here's what we know. I have this whole thing where I say what you know and what you don't know. So here's we know that the bus is going to come and pick you up, and that here's what I think is going to happen. I think you're going to get to your classroom, and you know that Joey's in your class, and you know that you're going to have hot lunch that day, and you know that the bus is going to bring you home and drop you off here. That's what we think is going to happen, but there's going to be all sorts of things throughout the day that are going to happen that you had no idea were going to happen, and I can't wait to hear about those things. It totally normalizes that unexpected things happen, and it takes away what is very much an anxious family pattern that we have to have things planned. The opposite of anxiety is being able to manage when things don't go as planned. That's the opposite. Yeah. Now another scenario that comes up quite a bit is, it's the first day of school and a child has a meltdown, a tantrum, and they refuse to go to school, and their sibling has to get to school, you have to get to work. I'm just curious, what would you do in that scenario? What would you say to the child in that moment? Because I feel like that scenario, that situation, can definitely throw parents off, and they don't know what to do. Yeah. So I would be surprised if there's a child who never had any of those symptoms before, and never was avoidant, and the parents weren't accommodating at all, and then all of a sudden they refused to go to school and threw a big tantrum. It would be surprise me if that just came out of nowhere. If it comes out of nowhere on the first day of school, and you're like, "We've never seen this before, there's not much you can do in the moment. You're in survival mode. Do what you can. If it happens and you know that this is a pattern, because my job is to interrupt patterns, and most people live in patterns. The main thing you can do ahead of time, a little preparation, is to pull out that worry and give it a name, and expect that it's going to show up. Predict that it's going to show up. So you know a kid who tends to have a little bit of difficulty when they're starting new things. Maybe this has been a pattern. So you're going to pull the worry out. You're going to name it Pete, and you're going to start talking again, not in that serious tone like I hope Pete doesn't show up, but in that tone of like, oh, we know Pete's going to show up, and what's Pete going to say? Pete's going to say you can't go to school. Pete's going to say you have a tummy ache. Pete's going to say this is the worst idea ever, and we're going to say hi, Pete. Thanks for sharing. We knew exactly what you're going to. Do and you're going to say to your child, Pete's not the boss of us. We knew Pete was going to show up. We knew Pete was going to make you feel scared and nervous and make your tummy ache. Pete, that's what you do. We're still going to school, and you keep moving. Do not talk too much. Keep the child back from school. Put all these accommodations in place. You got to be really matter of fact about it. But I'd be surprised if that comes out of nowhere. Generally, there's been a pattern that's shown up along the way, and Pete's been running the show for a while. Pete's been lurking in the background, saying what you can do and what you can't do, and that's when parents really have to work on how much they're accommodating the worry, yeah. I love that advice. I love personifying the worry that shows up because it's true. Pete's there, and we got to tell Pete, you know what? Today's not the day. We got to get to school. Yeah. Hi, Pete. Yeah. No new news here. Thanks for sharing, Pete. And again, you can be a little playful and a little silly with it. That's why I like it so much because it's silly. And as you say, anxiety does not do well with humor. Does not likes to be treated seriously. Likes to be held in the emergent category. It likes to be treated with seriousness. And yeah, the more we're like, oh, Pete. And again, you validate. I get that Pete is powerful. I get that Pete makes you feel things. You really do have a tummy ache. I get that, and we're going to school because I know you can handle it. The message has to be consistent, simple, consistent. Talk less, and keep moving. Keep moving, and just more on the on the topic of accommodation. I'm so glad you talked about how it's not in our interest to accommodate our kids, especially when it comes to things like going to school. The situation comes up not infrequently where kids do refuse to go to school, and parents end up letting them stay home, or the child calls them from school and says, "Come pick me up, and the parents pick them up, thinking that they're helping their child. They think that they're making them feel better because they're in an uncomfortable state, and they want to relieve that. So, in your opinion, is that a mistake? Should parents ever let their child refuse to go to school? You know, and at what point, if they're really having a hard time, should they seek the help of a professional? So, it's not my opinion. It's backed up by decades of research-that we know that when parents accommodate the anxiety, the anxiety gets stronger, and we know that avoidance begets avoidance. And one of the things that I see happening all the time, and I tell parents this because it gets their attention: the more your child avoids participating in life, including school, the more likely it is that they're going to become more isolated, more lonely, and sadly more depressed. Because social interaction and feeling as if you are meaningfully engaging in your life is one of the key preventions for people getting depressed as they get older. So when we set up this pattern of if you feel uncomfortable, we're going to let you check out, we're going to let you stay home, we're going to let you avoid, you're really setting things up to be problematic farther down the line. Now here's the thing: sometimes parents and schools have to work together to figure out how do we make school doable for a child who maybe has a learning issue, who maybe is having some social struggles, who maybe does have some sort of physical illness? You've got a kid with cerebral palsy that needs some accommodations to help them manage the day. So we start where the child is, and we want to provide a supportive environment in which they feel like people are hearing them and understanding them, but still putting them in the situations in which they should be in. So avoidance always works in the short term. If you've got a kid who doesn't want to go to school and you let them stay home, that's gonna feel fabulous. They're going to love that. Generally, when kids stay home over a period of time, their sleep schedule gets really wonky really quickly. So, especially middle school kids, they're staying up until three in the morning and they're sleeping until one. They stop doing their academics in a way that involves participation with other kids, so maybe they're a smart kid and they can get the work and they can do it at home by themselves, but they're missing out on collaboration and group work and cooperation and all that kind of stuff. The longer your child stays out of school, the harder it is for them to get back into school, and I am very, very clear with parents that you should not be working with a professional who is advocating avoidance as the main strategy to help your anxious child. If you are going to see somebody, and it could be a pediatrician like you, you would never do this, Jessica. But there are plenty. Who do, but if you're seeing a counselor, if you're going to a therapist, if you're going to an OT, if you're going to a naturopath, if you're going to a shaman, and that person is saying the best thing for your child is to stay out of their life, I would go see somebody else. The way you know that you probably need some professional help is if it is really hard for you to follow through with the things that in your heart and in your parenting brain you know are necessary. So if you are like, oh, I really want my kid to go to school, and we set it up, and every Monday we think it's going to happen, and then he gets upset, and I cave, or I promise my husband I'm not going to go pick him up when he texts me, and then I cave. That means that you need some more support. I've said this before, Jessica. You know this. I don't work with kids alone in my practice. I don't. I work with families, and I do a tremendous amount of work with parents because they're the ones that need the help and the support and the language to interrupt the patterns and to model things differently. It's hard when your child is struggling. It is so hard to hold the line to keep steady. So if you feel like, oh my gosh, there are things I should be doing, I just can't follow through, then get some help and go to somebody who works with parents who's qualified and licensed. Don't go to a coach that got their certification in parent coaching over a weekend. That drives me crazy too. Go to somebody who specializes in anxiety, and who can really give you the support that you need. This thing is not complicated. It's just really hard and it's really sneaky. It's true. I'm thinking there are so many times where I drop my kids off at preschool, and it's my own guilt that would make me think twice about you know maybe keeping them home a little longer or skipping out on the day, and it was my own guilt. Oh, I'm working too much. That's why they're upset that they're going to preschool. But really, the truth is, the more you stick to the routine, the more you send the message that this is good for you. You're gonna have a great day. All is good. All is well. Oh, you're gonna play art today. You're gonna play with little Johnny. Oh, your teacher's coming that you like. What a fun experience. Yep. More you do that and you stick to the routine, it really does serve them well and sends a message that they can do it. The thing that's interesting also sometimes with kids who are not going to school and who are having difficulty, is that the kids are in charge, their anxiety is in charge, and we really, in general, I don't know if you've noticed, we don't put third graders in charge of a lot of things, right? They're not the ones driving the bus. They're not the ones, as a chef in a restaurant, right? They're not capable of handling the responsibility of whether or not they should be coming out of their bedroom. The adults need to step up. They need to support and love and warmth and humor, but really clear, consistent expectations. Low demand parenting. This idea that if your child is struggling, it means you have to lower the demands-that's a that's a thing now. There is no research to back that up as an effective way to help kids function better in the world. It's so true. I think parents-we have become afraid to say no. We are afraid to see our kids sit with uncomfortable feelings. But the truth is, as you're pointing out, it's good for them. It's healthy for them, and it's part of life. And as my grandmother used to say, "What's easy now is hard later, and what's hard now is easy later. If your child doesn't get practice handling the things in third grade, they're going to be really ill-equipped to handle the things in 11th grade, and that is a lot more difficult to deal with. Now, just to end with some words for parents to remember: if their child is expressing anxiety about going to school next week, the message we should say to our kids would be, "What? I get it. It is hard. Starting school is hard, right? It's a transition. I understand how you feel, and I know that you'll be able to handle it. Pay attention to your tone, parents. So I want you to have a tone that says you can handle it, and I want you to talk 85% less. You do not have to process every feeling that your child has, and you do not have to feel as if it is your job to make everything perfect when they start school. Let them figure it out. Love them, support them. A little bit of validation, a lot of confidence, consistent message over time. Lynn Lyons, you are such a gift. I'm so happy to have these conversations with you. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I am always happy to come on the podcast, Jessica, and I love your podcast. You get some great guests. I've told you that before. Thank you. Well, you're in my in my top top favorites. Oh well, that's very nice. I recommend your podcast. I look and see like what topic you have, and I give them to my clients all the time. This is such a good topic for you to listen to. This is such a good conversation for you to be a part of. So I so appreciate what you do. Also, well, coming from you, that is a great compliment. So thank you so much, and I can't wait to be a new fan of your latest podcast. So looking forward to that. Yeah, yeah, it's good. It's good. It's it's fun for sure. All right, thank you again. You're welcome. Thank you for listening, and I hope you enjoyed this week's episode of Your Child Is Normal. Also, if you could take a moment and leave a five star review wherever it is you listen to podcasts, I would greatly appreciate it. It really makes a difference to help this podcast grow. You can also follow me on Instagram at Ask Dr. Jessica.