Top Tips to support your child’s wellbeing on their first day back to school
After the challenge of the busy summer holiday, parents are now facing a new challenge in ensuring their children feel safe, supported and ready to go back to school. Here are some tips from us to you to help children’s wellbeing on their first day back and onwards into the term!
1.Teach your child to practice gratitude
Starting to encourage your child to practice gratitude around their school day can have a profound impact on their wellbeing. Help them start or end their day reflecting on the things they’re grateful for. On the morning on the first day back this may take some assistance, ask if they’re looking forward to seeing their friend? To their favourite subject? This daily habit can shift negative feelings such as anxiety to positivity.
Another way to consistently teach gratitude is to help your children start journaling. Sit with your children after school, for a couple of minutes every day to write about what they’re grateful for during the school day. Writing can be tough for some children, so they can also make a collage, compose a song or draw. Ask them to journal about being grateful for: something fun that happened today, a classmate they've reunited with, a conversation they enjoyed or an interesting fact they learnt. You could also encourage them to draw a happy moment from their day.
Using Stix to help: Our Mindfulness of the heart activities can help teach your children to appreciate and be grateful for the present moment. Activities such as Ball of Light teach them techniques to focus on gratitude in the classroom and on compassion for their classmates and teachers. During the activity, children visualise a ball of light that symbolises feelings they feel grateful for- safety, warmth, love and self-worth. They feel this throughout their whole body and are encouraged to share it with classmates. This leaves them in a place to really consider what they are truly grateful for, leading to a real enjoyment of their school days!
2. Getting to grips with new emotions
It is important for children to learn about new emotions and stresses that come with the new school term. Since these emotions can often be new and unchartered, children need to observe and understand what they are feeling. As such they can then find ways to respond to these emotions without becoming overwhelmed or reactive.
Emotions your children might feel on their first day back at school can be wide ranging, varying from anxiety, fear and confusion to excitement, joy and optimism. It can be difficult for them to understand or express these feelings. So, discussing and labelling these emotions with them is a major step in improving their mental wellbeing at school. There are many techniques to help children get to know their emotions, from the five-point scale to the zones of regulation, which we discuss in our emotional regulation blog.
Using Stix to help: By using visualisation techniques such as 'thought bubbles', 'surfing emotions' and 'painting colours into the rainbow', the Stix activities build children’s understanding of how thoughts and emotions arise. They teach them how to label and manage strong emotions that they might feel on their first day at school and avoid self-criticism.
The Bubble Popping exercise, for example, could easily be completed before or after school. During this exercise children visualise distracting thoughts and emotions as bubbles - for example, if they think things such as ‘will I make friends’ or ‘am I stupid?’, they can reframe them as thought bubbles floating in the air. They are then be encouraged to pop these bubbles of emotion. This is easily adaptable to real life school situations, leaving them able to distance themselves from negative emotions. Find out more about our mindfulness of thoughts and feelings activities here.
3.Celebrating small successes
The first day back at school can feel daunting for children. You should present the first days back at school as being full of small victories to build your child’s confidence and sense of accomplishment. Finding their way around their new classroom, remembering their supplies, completing a spelling test or simply getting through the day with a smile can all be portrayed as successes.
You could consider creating a ‘success jar’ to which your child can add a note of something they’re proud of every school day. Over time, this can become a visual reminder of their achievements and a motivator and confidence booster.
Facing challenges and building small victories should be rewarded. Knowing they have something enjoyable to look forward to can make the day seem less overwhelming. You could create a tradition on Fridays to have a takeaway pizza or a playdate after a week of small successes. Traditions such as these can provide stability, which can be reassuring for children facing the unknown of starting a new school year.
Children can include completing their daily mindfulness activity as one of their small victories, encouraging them to continue to build on their journey. The Stix app rewards children for regularly using the remotes with new characters and streaks.
4.Be an example
Finally, remember that children often learn by watching the adults around them. Model the behaviours you want to see in your child when they face the challenges of the new school year. Such as approaching new challenges with optimism, talking to them about what you’re grateful for, and openly communicating your own feelings and struggles so they can see they are normal and relatable situations to go through. When your child sees you managing your own emotions and celebrating small wins, they’re more likely to adopt those habits themselves.
We have had many amazing messages from parents talking about ‘Stix time’, where they will practice mindfulness together as a family at a certain time during the school week. ‘Stix afternoons’ has also been a coined phrase by schools that are currently using the remotes to improve concentration during periods of the day where kids usually lose concentration, so if you know what that feels like at home - e.g. at homework time - then maybe it's time to get some Stix!
By incorporating these tips into your routine, you can help your child feel more confident, supported, and ready to tackle the new school year. Remember, it’s not just about getting through the first day—it’s about setting the stage for a successful and fulfilling school year ahead.