Helping Your Child Reduce Stress During the School Year

Many kids experience academic-related stress during the school year. As a parent, there are a number of things you can do to help your child feel more comfortable and at ease at school so that they can spend more time enjoying school and less time feeling anxious and stressed out.

Start Early

Once school lets out for summer, many kids get more physical exercise. What about exercise for their minds? Just because school is no longer in session, that doesn't mean that academics need to fall to the wayside.

Create some simple lesson plans for your kids to work on during the summer that review the things they learned during the previous year at school. For younger children, simple counting, sorting, reading, and spelling exercises can be done as they play, which will keep the lessons fun and interesting for them. Older kids can benefit tremendously from nature walks and museums, where they can actually teach you a thing or two about science, history, and art.
Another option for learning during the summer is the road trip. It doesn't necessarily need to be a cruise to the Bahamas to be fun and educational for the entire family. Just visiting a nearby city that has interesting and historical attractions can keep the mind working and your children learning during the summer.
The main point of reviewing what the child has already learned is to keep that information fresh in their minds so that when school starts again in the fall, they don't feel as though they have forgotten everything.

Encouragement and Overdoing It

There is a big difference between encouraging your child to do well academically and pushing them to be perfect. If a child feels that they must achieve perfect grades in order to win the approval of their parents, it often leads to undue stress and pressure, and the child may decide that there is no point in even trying if they know they can't get that A+.

Encourage your child to do the best that they can. Let them know that you are there to help them if they need help understanding an assignment or project. Make it clear that their best effort is much better than nothing at all, and that you will still love and support them even if they fall below the A+ mark.

Learn Your Child's Style

Every child has individual learning styles. Some prefer to have material read or verbalized to them. Others learn better when reading to themselves. Still others need visual aids. Some are more hands-on learners. Ask your child how they best extrapolate information, and use that method when assisting them with school work. This is especially important if your child is unable to learn in the way that is most comfortable for them at school. The last thing you want your child to do is feel left behind because the learning material isn't being presented in a way that they can wrap their mind around it.

Keep an Open Door Policy

One thing that will surely keep your child at ease during the school year (and in life, in general) is the knowledge that if they have anything at all they need to talk about, they can come to you with it. Children and teenagers alike have things that weigh on their minds that can interfere with their ability to focus on academics. If they know they can get those things off their chest from time to time, their stress levels will lower considerably.