Let’s face it parents, back to school season has been HARD.
Ok, maybe it hasn’t been hard for you, and if so, I am deeply and honestly happy for you. Go read another article. Or stick around and prepare yourself for next year, or the return-to-school season after Christmas, or the year after that. Or your next kid. Or just stick around and commiserate with your fellow parents that have it – at least this time –a little or a lot rougher than you do.
Back to business; back to school season is hard for many of us because it is an emotionally-laden time. Both us and our children experience the full spectrum of emotions over a single day, days, or weeks of September: excitement, worry, relief, sadness, anxiety, fear, and exhaustion/ overwhelm. Then most of the day(s), our children are with other children (and adults) who are also feeling the full spectrum of emotions in a relatively confined environment.
This means a lot of activation (think: excess energy) in our bodies, where we feel emotions, and in our minds, where we attempt to make sense of our emotional experience. Back-to-school time is an exhausting, overwhelming experience because of the sheer volume and intensity of these emotions, the change of pace and scenery, and also because it can trigger our own unresolved experiences with school, separation, and everything in between.
What Do Triggers Look Like for Parents?
The word ‘trigger’ is widely used in self-help literature and the mental health profession. We often think of a trigger as something that provokes an emotional reaction in us – bad traffic on the way to school, for example, triggers anger and our road rage. We can, however, more deeply understand this word when we look at the etymology and meaning from a therapeutic perspective.
A trigger is not just an emotional reaction; it is also unresolved energy in the body and mind. The root of the word trigger literally means to ‘tug’ or ‘yank’. In other words, triggers are things that take us out of the present moment and pull us back to a moment that is unprocessed, or unintegrated into our sense of Self. Looked at in this way, triggers are not just getting mad about traffic (although we can still understand them this way); they are also potential signals about experiences we have had that still need resolution or integration. For example, maybe that anxiety about traffic on the way to school is pointing to something deeper.
Back-to-School Anxiety: Managing Our Own Triggers as Parents
As both a parent and a therapist, I know firsthand that back-to-school anxiety, relating to any aspect of this experience, doesn’t just belong to our kids. We, as parents, carry it too. Each of us likely had our own experience being separated from our parents, multiple times, as young kids. Each of us has a lifetime of memories in educational settings – some for better, and some for worse. Educational trauma has had a real impact on many of us; schools can be places of bullying, judgement, comparison, and other emotionally-laden experiences. This is particularly true when we think about school environments 15, 20, or 30 years ago when we experienced them. Schools have evolved, but have we processed their impact? For many of us, that answer might be no, and so attending to ourselves when we are triggered by our child’s experiences at school is an important dimension of any back-to-school anxiety our kids might be facing as well.
Simple Ways to Manage Triggers
Here are a few strategies you can try when you think that your emotional reaction doesn’t match the intensity of the moment in front of you. In other words, am I triggered because this is truly an intense situation, or am I triggered because this is a reflection of something unresolved in me?
Feeling sad because your child is crying with the teacher when you have to leave to go to work is an example of a trigger that makes sense; of course you would feel distress when your kid is in distress. Feeling extreme anxiety, sadness, or grief when your dropping off your child is a sign that this trigger may go deeper and need some support from you, a close friend, community leader, or therapist.
- Pause Before Reacting
When you feel your trigger flare, give yourself a moment. Even three deep breaths can stop stress from snowballing into yelling or rushing. Even better if you can walk away and come back in a minute or two. - Name It to Tame It
Saying to yourself, “I’m stressed because we’re running late” helps you separate the situation from your identity as a parent. You’re not “bad” at this—you’re just under pressure. - Model Coping in Real Time
Kids are watching us more than we realize. When they see us breathe, reframe, or attune to ourselves in a stressful moment, they learn healthy ways to handle their own anxiety. When we communicate to them what we are feeling (“I am feeling sad right now, but its not because of you, it’s because of something I was thinking about. I love you”) we also model acceptance of the full range of our emotional experience. - Prepare Where You Can
Some triggers can be eased with planning—like packing lunches the night before or laying out clothes. It doesn’t solve everything, but small systems reduce morning chaos. Maybe you need 5 minutes of breathing before that morning coffee, or 5 minutes of silence in the car to drop-off. Some triggers you can’t prepare for, and that’s ok too.
How Parents Can Manage Anxiety: Giving Yourself Grace
Back-to-school transitions are hard, and it’s normal to feel anxious, overwhelmed, sad, or uncertain in yourself. The important thing is noticing when your stress is running the show and gently steering it back by attuning to yourself and your own experience. Your child doesn’t need perfection—they need your presence, your calm, and your willingness to repair if things get messy. Kids need your ability to show up, again, and again, when you inevitably mess things up, learn or grow, or decide to try and do something a little differently than yesterday.
So this season, as we help our kids manage back-to-school, let’s also be kind to ourselves. Managing – and exploring – our triggers with curiosity and compassion for our own experience is one of the best gifts we can give them.
