Easing First Day Fears

Consider the following scenarios. You’re transported to the Pleistocene era, hunting for sustenance when suddenly, you become prey yourself – a massive predator has spotted you and begins to stalk.  Or, your commercial flight encounters severe turbulence, plummeting 300 meters without warning. Or you’re minutes away from a career-defining interview when your car sputters to a complete halt. Or you’re five years old, stepping into an unfamiliar school building for the very first time. Or you’re a teenager attending a new high school for the very first time. 

While these scenarios might seem worlds apart and completely unconnected, they trigger remarkably similar physiological responses. The primitive fear centres in our brain are not great at distinguishing between facing a prehistoric predator and walking into a new classroom for the first time. When our fight or flight responses takeover, thinking shuts down, and we intuitively decide whether to run or fight. In adults this process is one thing, but in young developing brains it is something else; in young minds stress responses can significantly impact development.

Unfortunately, a new school year can be stressful for children and parents often underestimate the emotional weight of going to a new school environment for the first time. 

Consider your own experiences. Imagine returning to work after two months of unfettered freedom – days filled with friendship, play, and leisure. Returning to work after a break is hard enough but a transition after two months would challenge most adults, yet we expect children to navigate it seamlessly.

For young students, especially those entering a new environment, this adjustment can be overwhelming. When combined with other life stressors – family changes, relocation, loss – the cumulative effect can be particularly challenging. Relatedly,  while we are unlikely to encounter large predators during our day-to-day interactions, there does appear to be a modern-day stress epidemic.  

The concept of stress, while often taken-for-granted and something everyone seems to know something about, remains remarkably complex. Today’s bookstores overflow with self-help volumes promising stress relief – a simple search on Amazon yields close to 100,000 titles on the subject, while Google presents an astonishing 1,020,000,000 results for ‘stress management’.

Prior to the turn of the century, the World Health Organization predicted that stress-related fatalities would rank second only to cardiovascular disease in Western nations by 2020. That statistic appears to have been realised although it is difficult to tell as stress is not generally noted as a cause of death. However, it can be a contributing factor to many leading causes of death and can lead to early death in several ways. Yet despite this prevalence, most adults – particularly parents – lack a fundamental understanding of stress’s mechanisms and its profound impact on children. A bit of an exploration of what actually constitutes ‘stress’ may help provide clarity and some insights into alleviating stress in children and young people.

Stress manifests in two distinct forms: absolute and relative stressors. Absolute stressors represent universal threats – an earthquake, for instance, threatens everyone equally. Relative stressors, however, depend on individual interpretation – a transit strike might devastate a commuter while barely affecting others. Relative stressors typically embody one or more key characteristics: novelty, unpredictability, threat, or a perceived lack of control. While absolute stressors trigger our most intense physiological responses, they remain rare. The more common relative stressors, when significant enough to provoke a physical response, can prove equally problematic. 

When we perceive threat, our hypothalamus initiates a cascade of chemical reactions, releasing powerful hormones that trigger our primitive fight-or-flight response. This evolutionary survival mechanism, virtually unchanged since humanity’s dawn, now activates in response to a vastly expanded array of modern stressors, such as a missing an interview or going to school for the first time. For developing minds, this presents a particular challenge – the brain continues its maturation well into the third decade of life, making young people especially vulnerable to stress’s effects. 

We often fail to recognize or dismiss children’s stress responses, assuming they’ll simply ‘get over it’. However, consider the first-day classroom through a child’s eyes. This is an environment rife with novelty, unpredictability, perceived threats, and situations beyond their control. This relative stressor can severely impact cognitive function, learning capacity and behaviour. 

Cortisol, a primary stress hormone, illustrates this mechanism perfectly. Recall your last heated argument – that moment when emotion overwhelmed reason, leaving you later wondering why you couldn’t articulate your thoughts clearly. Neuroscientists term this ‘downshifting’ whereby elevated cortisol levels impair cognitive function as the brain prioritises survival over higher-order thinking. For a stressed child in school, this biological response can effectively halt learning until cortisol levels normalise. Long term stress can be even more problematic. 

Chronic stress in childhood correlates strongly with various psychiatric and health issues including depression, suicidal ideation, eating disorders, substance abuse, and obesity. Emerging neuroscientific research suggests that stress hormones can impair normal brain development, particularly during crucial maturation periods. Children, with their developing brains and limited coping strategies, prove especially vulnerable to these long-term effects. However, there are things we can do! 

As parents prepare their children for academic transitions, the goal should be minimising the four key stress triggers: Novelty, Unpredictability, Threat, and loss of Sense of Control (N.U.T.S.). This preparation should begin well before the first school bell rings. 

While summer holidays offer valuable freedom, gradually reintroducing structure can ease the transition. Parents can start instigating routines to help their children get ready for the impending schedules of the school day. Familiarisation visits to the school, meeting teachers, and locating essential school facilities can also help to significantly reduce anxiety.

Parents can gather detailed information about daily school schedules and expectations, sharing this knowledge to demystify the experience. Once school begins, parents must remain attuned to potential stressors, recognising that children’s perspectives on stress often differ markedly from adults. Open communication becomes crucial, as does the understanding that stress manifests differently in each child. 

Remember, healthy social and emotional development underlies not just academic success, but lifetime physical and mental well-being. This should motivate parents, and teachers alike, to do everything possible at home and at school to ensure that children feel safe, secure, loved and able to get help when they need it.

Furthermore, children often model their stress responses from observing those around them, so it’s also important for parents  and teachers to maintain calm and demonstrate effective and positive coping strategies when they are experiencing stress. In the end, the goal isn’t to eliminate stress – an impossible task – but to help our children develop resilience and coping mechanisms, reducing the likelihood of going N.U.T.S. in the face of life’s inevitable challenges. 

Dr Michael Nagel is an Associate Professor at the University of the Sunshine Coast where he teaches and researches in the areas of child and adolescent development, behaviour and learning. He is the author of more than twenty books on educational psychology and child development.