Students may suffer from stress as the return to school approaches, and may experience some symptoms such as stomach pain and diarrhea due to the stress and anxiety that accompanies their transfer from one school to another. What are the tips that can help the student to move from one school to another and to be less stressed?
Dr. Craig Suchuk, MD, a psychologist at the Mayo Clinic, says: School is one of the most important places where students learn and grow intellectually, socially, and emotionally. Despite students’ strong desire to return to a healthy school environment, change can be challenging. There are also individual differences between students, which makes them not react to change in the same way. A student may realize that the next school year will look different from previous years. The first step to helping him transition is to maintain a healthy mindset and focus on the positive and away from the negative. High school students may find that their emotions fluctuate between enthusiasm and anxiety, and although they may support change, the closer the moment of change approaches, the more likely they are to feel stressed.
Basic tips..
Dr. Craig recommends that parents, especially the mother, sit with the child and try to find out what makes him anxious regarding going to school. Is he worried regarding making new friends? Isn’t he worried that the homework will be difficult? Is there something new that worries him, like a change of classroom? Sometimes, just talking regarding these details and expressing the tension in words helps a student who is feeling nervous.
Talk to the child regarding the parents’ own experiences of moving to another school and the anxiety they had and how they overcame it. When you do this, the child will know that he is not alone in this situation, that it is OK to be nervous, and that there are ways to work around this tension.
The doctor advises looking for opportunities to facilitate the boy’s entry into the back-to-school routine, such as talking to the school administration regarding his concerns. And encourage the child to be flexible, and to have the knowledge that it is possible to change his feelings throughout the year.
Tell him that he may not feel comfortable at first to relieve stress. Students need to feel reassured. For anyone who feels anxious, it’s common to be irritable, lost or sad. Sleep problems, physical stress, and anxiety can occur.
Mental health management tips
Dr. Craig has put together some tips to help manage your children’s mental health and ease their transition into this school year:
Establish and maintain a daily routine: Students should be helped to get up and go to bed at the same times each day as much as possible.
Try to stick to a healthy diet and focus on physical activities, as a healthy body helps maintain a healthy mood and thinking.
Get support through friends: help the child get to know some friends who may also transfer to the other school, and encourage him to communicate before school starts to help all of them feel more confident.
Constant optimism: sticking to a positive attitude regarding moving, and encouraging the child to do the same.
Relax and learn new stress management skills: prompt the boys to explore how relaxation, mental focus or other techniques for managing stress, such as yoga, can calm the mind.
Awareness and support: You must identify the causes that lead to persistent fears or anxiety, and continue to talk to the child regarding them and find ways to solve them.
Dr. Craig concluded that there are some people who have more significant mental health problems, so if you think that one of your children needs additional sources of support, you should speak with a psychiatrist or other health care professional to identify local sources of mental health support.