Is my child worried about going back to school?

In September 2020, after the long period of school closures in the UK, I recorded a couple of quick videos to help parents settle young children back into school. Often children don’t tell us directly when they are worried about something – it tends to come out indirectly via their behaviour. And asking direct questions isn’t always effective at getting a coherent response about their worries or feelings from a young child. So, here are a couple of ideas for how you can gain insight into whether your child is worried about the return to school and what they might be worried about.

Whether your child is returning to school after a summer break or after a longer period of absence, you might find these ideas helpful for opening up dialogue and understanding your child’s concerns. Each video is just 3-minutes long.

Observing play to find out what’s on your child’s mind:

Using books to raise issues about school:

You might also find it useful to read this post from the same period: Helping children settle back into school post-lockdown.