3 Tips for a Confident Start to the School Year

The summer before fourth grade, my mother swallowed hard as I confidently led her through the hair product aisle at CVS. At my insistence, she bought a giant vat of hair gel, and, reluctantly, some temporary hair color.

I got picked on and left out a lot in elementary school, so I was worried—terrified even—about how things would go in fourth grade. I was determined to take matters into my own hands. They’re not going to pick on me if I have cool spiky hair like the guys in NSYNC, I reasoned. And they’ll have to notice if I dye it green.

The unknown can loom large over a new school year. Kids have lots of questions like: “Will I like my teacher?”, “What if this year is way harder?”, and “What if I don’t get along with the kids in my class?”

A little bit of anxiety is normal for kids. Especially if they’re headed to a whole new school. It shouldn’t be a cause for alarm, and we want to help them work through those feelings and walk into school feeling confident.

Without needing hair dye.

Here are 3 things you can do:

💭 Remind them of ‘past wins’

Trying to suppress anxious thoughts rarely works. It’s more effective to try and replace them with positive thoughts.

If you’re lucky, your kid has a great source of confidence they can turn to for positive thoughts like: all the things that went well last year, the new kids they met and befriended, the things they learned, the way their teacher helped them. Work together on a list of favorite memories and ‘proud moments’ from last year. It’ll help them imagine what they want this year to be like and give them the confidence that something good is around the corner. (If last year was really horrible for your kid, skip this strategy.)

👀 Look for opportunities for them to be in control

With all this change and nervousness, plus the whiplash of going into a structured school day from a more freewheeling summer, kids can get just plain testy in the first few weeks of school and you’ll feel it at home. (Breakdowns in the evening are so common that there’s a formal term for it: The “after-school restraint collapse.”)

In those moments where a kid’s world feels out of control, it’s helpful to give them something (appropriate) they can control. If you’re still doing back-to-school shopping, could you give your older elementary schooler a budget and let them buy some things themselves? Could they help you plan and shop for school lunch ingredients this week? Can you let them choose whether to do their homework before or after dinner, as long as it gets done?

💪 Reinforce a growth mindset. 

Kids are very perceptive, but they don’t have a lot of perspective. If the first few days of fourth grade are bad, then the whole year feels like a bust. If they do poorly on their first test, they’ll start worrying they’re destined to flunk. If they’re slow to warm to their teacher, they’ll never like him.

You can help remind them that the first few weeks of school are going to be tough, that it will get better, they will get better, and they have some control over the situation.

Some things you can say:

• “Sounds like this new year is challenging. Challenging is good! It means your brain is growing stronger.”

• “The point isn’t to figure it out all at once. It’s to do the best you can, learn as you go, and figure out a way to get it right over time.”

• “The year’s off to a tough start but just because it started that way doesn’t mean it’ll stay that way. Things change and you can help change them. Let me know if you want to brainstorm some ideas to try.”

If your kid’s having trouble adjusting to the new school year—which is normal—I hope it lasts as long as my new hairstyle did. (About a week… turns out having hair like Lance Bass, but neon green, wasn’t an instant ticket to popularity like I’d hoped.)

And if there are any questions you have about confidence heading into the new school year: just ask! You can reach me at [email protected]