CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – As all the school systems in the area will be back in class by Tuesday, August 12, including Albemarle County and Charlottesville that start the 12th, a UVA Health child psychologist has offered a number of ways to help children going through anxiety about the start of school.

Greene and Madison counties go back to school Tuesday, Aug. 11, and Charlottesville, Albemarle, Fluvanna, Louisa, Nelson, Augusta, Waynesboro, and Staunton all go back to school Wednesday, Aug. 12.

That means every area school system will be back in class by Wednesday.

“I think about both excitement and anxiety around back-to-school as developmentally normative,” said Emily T. O’Gorman, PhD, Assistant Professor of Developmental Pediatrics in a UVA Health reporters’ conference call. “So especially in kids, who are younger, or who have a bigger transition coming up, like going to middle school to high school, I would think of it as a developmentally typical experience.”

She said the anxiety is not a sign that anything’s wrong, but just a sign they’re paying attention to something new.

While “subclinical back-to-school anxiety” is common across all age groups, the drivers are different across the age groups, according to Dr. O’Gorman.

“Younger children, like preschool to early elementary, would more often experience anxiety around, like, the separation from a caregiver,” she said. “And then as children get into later elementary school and adolescence, the social drivers, academic pressures show up more.”

Across all age groups, Dr. O’Gorman said, “Changing schools or moving, having a friend move, those kinds of things would tend to bring up more of that back-to-school anxiety.”

Dr. O’Gorman said there are strategies to help across all age groups.

“We want parents to listen calmly, we want parents to validate the emotion, and also reinforce the child’s ability to cope, even if or when they’re anxious,” said O’Gorman. “So I’ll often tell parents that the formula for supporting an anxious child is acceptance plus confidence. If we leave one of those pieces out, we’re missing a very important piece of the support.”

“So in practice, this might sound like, I know your stomach hurts, and you feel nervous, I also know that you’ve got this. So it has that acceptance or validation of the feeling, but also the confidence that they can handle it.

One line to draw, she said, is keeping as non-negotiable the expectation the child will attend school.
“Anxiety in general is driven by avoidance, and when we let kids avoid doing something they’re anxious about we take away their opportunity to learn that it’s not so bad, or see that even if it is just as bad as they thought, that they’re still capable of getting through it,” she said. “So, we want to keep the expectation that the child will go to school.”
Some of the things families can do in the days leading up to the first day of classes include rehearsing the morning routine, visiting the school, and/or meeting the teacher, according to O’Gorman.
“Even things like shopping for school supplies and talking about classes and schedules with them to help them start kind of imagining what the school day and the school routine will be like, O’Gorman suggested.
This weekend is an incentivized opportunity for families to do some of that so-called “retail therapy” with Aug. 7 through 9 the Virginia sales tax holiday.
“With students heading back to school soon, I know many families — like mine — are shopping for this year’s school supplies. Virginians across the Commonwealth can take advantage of savings this weekend,” said Governor Abigail Spanberger. “Particularly at a time when the chaos and uncertainty out of Washington are driving up costs and putting additional strain on families, our three-day sales tax holiday will help families spend less. I am proud that our Commonwealth is offering this important opportunity for parents, families, teachers, and students to get prepared for a great school year.”
For back-to-school, school supplies like notebooks, book bags, pens, pencils and other qualified school supplies $20 or less are tax exempt.
The weekend also adds sales tax exemptions for hurricane and emergency preparedness products like portable generators $1000 or less, gas-powered chainsaws $350 or less, chainsaw accessories $60 or less per item, and other specified hurricane preparedness items $60 or less.
It’s also a sales tax holiday on EnergyStar and WaterSense product $2,500 or less.