Episode 3: Navigating Back to School Stress Together

Um, so in addition to these aspects of the new school year starting, um, for some, worry and anxiety can ramp up.

And you and I recently held a workshop at Chatham Community Church for parents and teens to sort of talk about going back to school and, in particular, the stress and the worry and the anxiety that some students experience this time of year.

Yeah.

Um, that workshop was absolutely amazing.

For anybody who ever sees Elizabeth's name at a workshop, run, don't walk.

Sign up and register.

She put so much thought into it, and it was a good balance of, um, fun and laughter, but did address the serious topics of the anxiety and, and worry, uh, and uncertainty that both parents and children face, and it was great for the parents and the kids to work together to talk about strategies to overcome that anxiety and fear.

Yeah, and because we enjoyed that workshop so much, we wanted to bring it to you via this podcast because-

Mm-hmm

... not everybody can make a Monday night workshop.

So we're gonna do our best to convey what we talked about at the workshop and include tools in the show notes for you to then try at home, uh, yourselves.

One of the, um, really interesting things that I have come to learn is that the ba- back to school stress is actually recognized as a common psychological challenge, and even the American Psychological Association describes back to school time as overwhelming and that fear of the unknown, even for new teachers, of new classmates, academic difficulty, all these things, they're a major driver of anxiety.

Mm-hmm.

So if you are a parent or a grandparent who's listening and you resonate with any of those, you are not alone.

We actually had some great conversation about this at the workshop, and the parents and kids both were very kind of eager and ready to talk about some of this stuff.

So for parents and kids alike, it is, it's stressful.

For parents, it's all the roles that you have to be.

You have to still be a good employee, a good neighbor.

You wanna be a good parent, and you wanna be a good, uh, cheerleader to your kid.

It can be really stressful because we too only have 24 hours in our day.

And the kids also talked about how certain stresses can sneak up, like, "Well, I have to make sure that I'm getting enough sleep, and I'm doing all the schoolwork and the studying that I have to, and I have homework, and I have these different sports that I wanna try, and now I have to get my volunteer hours in because I'm trying to build my college application," all of the things that can creep up, that when you really put it all on the table, like, wow, I see why people are stressed-

Mm-hmm

... and overwhelmed.

Yeah.

Yeah.