Episode 321 Transcript
Hello, it is Rachel and welcome to episode 321 of your Parenting Long Game. As I’m recording this, another school year is right around the corner. And while there can be a lot of excitement about the school year, there’s also a lot of anxiety and dread, both for our kids and for us. So, as the school year gets closer, you may see behaviors that are often symptom of anxiety and worries and discomfort at the thought of a new school year.
So, for example, your kids may have more meltdowns and defiance and disrespect about little things that may be unrelated to the school year, but their behavior, moods, and attitudes just get worse. They may be specifically saying they don’t want to go to school. They may be having trouble sleeping, or they may not want to go to sleep because it’s when they lie their heads down at night that All of these scary thoughts pop into their minds.
They may be asking a lot of questions, especially, “what if…?” For example, “what if I don’t know anyone? Or what if my teacher hates me? Or what if my teacher calls on me and I don’t know the answer?”
And you may also be feeling things too. You may want summer to be over and your kids back in school, but you may be dreading the rush and the stress that the school year brings. You may not know if your teacher’s child will be a good fit and what emotions you’ll be dealing with on a daily basis if they’re not a good fit.
You may also be worrying about the morning routines that you know haven’t gone well in the past, worrying about the power struggles over homework and other school related issues, worrying about the after school meltdowns, because you know what may be coming.
The reality is that kids do have to go to school, and both kids with big emotions and parents of kids with big emotions, we feel things strongly and are impacted by these changes and transitions… but it doesn’t mean these changes and transitions and new situations have to control our kids or us.
In fact, we can learn to be in charge of these situations rather than being so affected by them. We and our children can notice, “yeah, I’m feeling a little nervous. I noticed that my body’s more tense, but I know what to do about that.”
A big part of Long Game parenting, and anyone in my programs has heard this over and over, is recognizing when we sense something is a threat and reducing the threat, calming our nervous system down and not letting our emotions have as much power over us.
I’m going to give you a general process for doing this, but if you want to discuss your situation and how I can help you improve things for your child and your family, I’m happy to jump on a call with you to talk to you about what’s going on for you and how I can support you through my programs and my services.
On the show notes, I’ll have a link to a call that you can set up with me. There’ll also be some free resources, including a summary of this episode and other items that will help you as you are raising a child with big emotions. All of that can be found on the show notes at rachel-bailey.com/321. Though if you do know you want to set up a time to talk to me about how we can work together, there’s a specific link for that on my website. That’s rachel-bailey.com/work-with-rachel
but again, that link will be on my show notes as well. For now, I want to give you an overview of one process that I’ve talked about before on this podcast, but it’s really relevant right now because it helps to reduce the threat of change or the threat of new situations or really any situation that your child worries about.
And while I’m going to specifically apply this to the beginning of the school year, you can use this process for any situation, again, that brings up a lot of feelings for your child when they think about it happening.
So the process I’m going to teach you is related to what I call the four P’s of handling anxiety. So as I said, when we’re addressing these big feelings that kids have and that we have, our goal is to reduce the threat of a situation.
Because once we sense something as a threat, that’s when we go into fight or flight and all of our unhealthy coping mechanisms come in. That’s when you see the meltdowns and the defiance and the not wanting to go to bed and the what if questions. All that has happened because your child has sensed a threat.
And human brains are wired to think that things like change and uncertainty are threats or bad. Our kids are especially aware of these feelings and of their nervousness when they don’t know what’s going to happen.
They’re aware of it and they feel it very strongly. When they don’t know what’s going to happen, their brain usually jumps to the thought, “bad things will happen, and I don’t want to handle it, or I won’t know how to handle it,” and it creates this problem or threat.
But because we are human beings, we have the capacity to notice and manage these thoughts. We can notice this is happening. We can think about our thoughts and we can teach our brains that even when things change, even when there is unknown, we are safe. It is not a threat.
We can teach our kids to be aware of that voice that is saying bad things will happen and I can’t handle it, to be aware of that voice and tell it, Hey, I know what is likely to happen in that new situation, but even if I don’t know what’s going to happen, I can handle it. I will be okay.”
Believing that we can handle something, even if it’s new, reducing that threat is the opposite of anxiety.
So let’s go through the four P’s of the process that does help to reduce the threat and reduce the anxiety.
The first P stands for predictability. We can reduce the threat of a situation when we know what to expect. Yes, our brain doesn’t like the unknown, but there are a lot of ways to reduce the unknown these days. Obviously, your child’s school probably has a situation where they can meet their teacher, but think about this too. If your child is going into their classroom, have them come home and draw a picture of it so they can feel a little bit of mastery over what the classroom looks like.
And if you’re allowed, wander the school a little bit. Look at other classrooms that they’re going to be in. If you’re allowed, go play on the playground. Help them experience what it’s going to be like to be in their school.
With older kids, you probably are able to walk their schedule a few times. I know I have done this with my child who has entered middle school and now my child is entering high school and we have walked through the schools and we’ve gone into as many classrooms as we could.
You can also go online and look at bell schedules, look at pictures of teachers in case the teachers aren’t in the classrooms, look at the pictures of their teachers, including their teachers for resource or specialty classes like art and music. Let your child take as much charge as they can over becoming familiar with what things will look like.
When I’m helping parents whose kids have anxiety and when I’m helping my own child with anxiety, I’m usually trying to teach my child to answer questions like what is going to happen? What will it look like? For how long will things go on? So again, what will happen during the school day? What does the school look like? How long are classes? What is the order of classes? When you do this, it tells the brain, “Ah, I know what’s going to happen. This is not a threat.” So they go into school with more predictability and more familiarity.
That’s the first P in the 4P process. The second P is power. We know our kids like to have control over situations. They like to feel like they have a little bit of power. And uncertainty strips them of this feeling that they have some power. They feel like the situation has more power than they do, which creates a threat in their brain.
So what we want to do with our kids is figure out what power they do have. In this case, what power do they have in the beginning of the school year? So, think about things like this that they do have power over. They have the power to come up with a plan for what they’re going to say to their teacher or their friends.
You could say to your child, “are you going to walk up to your friends or will you wait for them to come to you?” Or if your child doesn’t know anyone, you could say, “do you want to say hi to some new people? How will you pick the people you want to say hi to?”
These are questions that give them a sense of power because all of the control is within them of who they walk up to and who they choose to talk to. That is all up to them. And you can even use what I call the language of control and say, “Hey, this is your choice. I want to hear what you want to do” and emphasize to them that they do have some power.
Now, other things they have power over. They also power over the last thing they say to you when they get out of the bus or out of the car. So you can say to them, “Hey, what do you want our goodbye ritual to be?” They have power over that. I know when my kids were younger in preschool, they had the kids gently push parents out of the classroom. That gave the kids a sense of power as they were saying goodbye to their parents, and I know they really appreciated it.
So that’s a little ritual that they can create that also creates some predictability, by the way, but they have the power to choose what they’re gonna do when you leave or when they say goodbye to you.
Another way to help them feel powerful is to give them a job. It’s great if a teacher can get involved and say to them, “Hey, when you walk in the classroom, this is your job.” But that can’t always happen because teachers have a lot of kids. So you could give them a job. You could say, “Your job is to tell me how many kids are in your class and how many names start with each letter of the alphabet.” Obviously, that’s dependent on your child’s age, but you can give them an age appropriate job that gives them something to do, that gives them a sense of power, and it also makes sure their focus is on something different than their nerves.
So again, this second P is to give them power, have them recognize where they do have power, they can be in charge, where they have some control that reduces the threat.
So we’ve done a P for predictability, for power, The third P is for a plan. What you want to do is make a plan for situations where they won’t have power, especially ones where they may know already that they are nervous.
So again, the brain doesn’t like to not know how things are going to go, but your child can make plans for how things are going to go, including plans for when they don’t know what’s going to go wrong. Now when I’m teaching plans, I always use what I call when then statements, which could also be if then statements.
So when this thing happens, then I will, so you’re going to have your child fill in the blanks. When I don’t know anyone, then I will blank, and you’re going to help them decide what the action is. You could also use, if I don’t know anyone, then I will blank, but the idea is for them to come up with plans so they know how it’s going to go, and again, they feel more in control and less of a threat.
So again, it could be, when I don’t know anyone, then I will decide who I’m going to walk up to and what I’m going to say. Now notice that the control is on them, not what the other child says. We always want to bring it back to what is in their control. Now, for others, if they’re going into a school and they don’t know anyone, it may make them too nervous to walk up to people, so they may want something to focus their attention on so they’re not worried about not knowing anyone, that everybody else is talking and they’re not.
So, again, if everyone else is talking and I have no one to talk to, then I will… And maybe your child just needs to name all of the characters in their favorite book as many times as they can and then report back to you how many times they were able to do it.
Another example of a when then or an if then statement is, if your teacher calls on you and you don’t know what to say, then you will decide ahead of time what to say. Maybe what they want to say is, “I’m not sure right now.” So there, if then would be, “if my teacher calls on me, then I will say, ‘I’m not sure right now.'”
So they’re putting these together ahead of time. All of the things that they’re nervous about, they’re solving for ahead of time.
Now you can also make a plan for something that happens that they haven’t prepared for. And what you can say is, “if something happens that you haven’t prepared for. Write it down or draw a picture of it or try to remember it. And the first thing I’m going to do when I see you is ask you about it.” So they are writing it down. It doesn’t matter what happens. They’re just remembering that they can talk about it later. That still gives them a plan, even if they don’t know what they’re nervous about.
Now the last P, the fourth P, is about practicing because by the time a child is anxious, their fight or flight response has already kicked in. And when humans are in fight or flight, we default to the behavior that takes the least amount of energy. One of the main goals of the fight or flight response is to conserve energy. So it’s always going to do the easiest thing. It’s going to default to the behavior that it is used to.
So we want to make these new behaviors, these when, then statements, these if then statements, these reminders that they have control. We want to make that automatic for them. We want that to be easy for their brain. And that comes from practice. So they’re practicing the if then plans or the when then plans so those plans do not take any thought. They’re now more automatic.
So how do you practice? Well, role plays are ideal, but I want to suggest when you role play, sure, let them play the role of themselves, walking up to a friend or walking up to someone they don’t know, but also you want to let them roleplay other roles. So switch roles so they get to be the other students and you get to play your child’s role and have them critique you. Say, “did I do a good job doing what you’re gonna do?”
So they’re looking at it a little bit as an outsider. When you do that, it increases their sense of power over the situation. It’s another more unique and novel way to role play and practice. And they also increase a child’s predictability because they’re going over in their minds what might happen over and over.
Now, other ways to practice should depend on your child’s interest. So maybe they could draw out a scene if they like to draw, or they could talk it out, they could tell a story, or they could put on a play for you using themselves as characters or using objects like stuffed animals as characters.
They could also watch movies or shows or read books where characters are going back to school and they are critiquing how those characters are doing and what they would do instead. So there are a lot of ways to practice this, but I will tell you the more you practice this, the less anxiety you have because every time you practice you are reducing the threat. But it does take a lot of practice in order for a child to automatically go to that behavior or that when then statement in the moment.
So the four P’s again are predictability, power, and Plan and practice. Remember, all of these P’s should be simplified, so I give you a lot of examples, but you want to simplify this for your child. Our goal is to reduce the threat in their minds.
Their brains naturally will see a threat in a new situation or in change because the brain craves status quo, needing to know what’s going to happen. But the brain isn’t as in charge as they think it is. We can talk to our brains. We can recognize what our thoughts are and say, “thank you brain for trying to protect me, but here’s what I’m going to do.”
We are not controlled by our thoughts, and we are not controlled by our feelings. We can teach our children to reassure their brains that they are going to be okay. So they can get to the point where instead of thinking, “Oh my gosh, that’s gonna happen, and I don’t want to deal with it, and I can’t handle it.”
They’re gonna think, “hey, I know what’s likely to happen in that new situation, but even if I don’t, I can handle it.” this threat reduction reduces anxiety, and teaching our children how to do this is long game parenting.
Now, I did give you a lot of ideas today, and if you really want to get to know your child better and what is going to support them in the long run, I would be happy to talk to you about your situation and how I can help you through my services and programs. You can go directly to a link on my website, rachel-bailey.com/work-with-rachel and set up a time to speak with me. You can also find that link and other resources including a summary of this one and the four Ps on my website at rachel-bailey.com/321. Thanks for listening and I’ll see you again soon.
