Supporting your child if they're struggling to settle back at school

You may expect your child to have some anxious feelings and nerves at the start of the school year, or after a half term or end of term break. But what if your child is still struggling to settle in school, despite having been back for several weeks?

In this article, we’ll look at:

how you can support your child by helping them share what is causing them to struggle
how talking to the school can help
some strategies you can try at home.

Support your child to explain why they’re struggling

The first thing is to understand why your child is struggling to settle in school. Perhaps something is going on in school. Maybe something outside of school is on their mind and affecting how they feel at school.

It could be that the school environment isn’t right for them. For neurodivergent children in particular, social and sensory differences could impact various aspects of the school day, like:

bus rides
uniform
moving through the busy hallways
having different classes each day
sitting next to someone different in lessons
having new or different teachers.

Depending on how old your child or young person is, or how easily they can explain how they are feeling, you might be able to find out what’s troubling them by talking to them.

If that’s not the case, here are a couple of other things you can try.

Create a mind map

Try creating a mind map together on a sheet of paper, with ‘school’ written in the middle. Then you can draw lines coming out from that and add the reasons why your child doesn’t feel entirely comfortable.

You might try making gentle suggestions to help start the conversation, like:

“I wonder if you find your work confusing?”
“Maybe you miss your old teacher?”

Depending on how old your child or young person is, or how easily they can explain how they are feeling, you might be able to find out what’s troubling them by talking to them.

Use a RAG (red, amber, green) rating

To understand how your child or young person feels about school, you could get a copy of their timetable or a map of the school, and have them RAG rate it. This means they would use either red, amber or green to show how they feel about an area of the school or a subject. Decide together what the colours mean before they start. For example:

Green = I like this subject/I’m happy here
Amber = This subject is ok/I’m ok being here
Red = I don’t like this subject/I don’t like being here

Then when they’ve finished rating, you’ll have a better idea of what parts of the school or what subjects contribute to their negative feelings.

When you have some idea as to what’s causing your child’s struggles, you can think about how to resolve them. You might be able to identify some specific changes you or the school could make. But you may also have no idea, and that’s where talking to the school can help.

Talk to the school

Keeping in touch with the school can help if your child is struggling to settle. Having a key contact is important. That might be your child’s class teacher, pastoral care leader or SEN Coordinator (SENCO) if relevant. Additionally, many schools are happy for your young person to email their teacher to discuss any concerns, so you could check if this is an option if it’s something your child wants to do.

Otherwise, arrange a meeting with your contact at the school, and explain the situation. You might ask for specific changes if you’ve already thought of something that could help. Otherwise, ask what the school can do to help your child’s specific situation. Then you can arrange a time to check in again to discuss if the changes have made a difference to how your child feels in school.

Take notes during the meeting so you have a record of what you discussed and of any agreed changes and actions.

Things you can do at home to support your child

As well as communicating with your child’s school and seeing what changes you can agree, there are things you can do at home to support your child if they’re struggling to settle back at school.

Make a worry monster

If your child or young person has lots of thoughts and worries in their head, you could make a worry monster together. A worry monster is a way for your child to physically put their concerns aside, by writing them down and popping them into their worry monster. Then you can sit down together and go through the worries to come up with a solution together.

This is a great activity for younger children but you can also adapt it to suit older children. Let your child decide how their worry monster should look and where they want to keep it – some children might want it out somewhere they can see it while others might prefer to hide it away.

A similar concept to the worry monster is for your young person to have a journal where they can write down anything that’s worrying them. Then they can keep it somewhere that suits them – maybe under their pillow.

Each child is individual with regards to what fills their bucket, but if their bucket is full, it can lead to overwhelm.

Help your child empty their bucket

Your child or young person can cope with a fixed amount of stress, much like a bucket can hold a fixed amount of water. Each child is individual with regards to what fills their bucket, but if their bucket is full, it can lead to overwhelm.

Here are some things you can do to create small holes in your child’s bucket, to stop it filling to overflowing:

Remove demands at home where possible: Demands include chores, thoughts and desires, agreements, questions, transitions and the uncertainty of what’s next, making decisions and waiting. Examples might be ‘put your clothes on’, ‘sit here and wait’, ‘we need to leave in 5 minutes’, or ‘would you like something to eat?’. The PDA Society has more information about demands and demand avoidance and taking a low demand approach to parenting.
Ask fewer questions: You may be keen to find out how the school day went when your young person comes home. But if their bucket is very full, they may be unable or unwilling to talk about it at that moment. Try to follow their lead and wait until they’re ready to talk, then limit how many questions you ask.
Be accepting: Your young person may be worried about something that seems small to you, but could feel huge to them. Being accepting of their worries could help to empty their bucket.
Be flexible and adapt if needed: Sometimes things don’t go to plan, no matter how hard we try. Being flexible and adapting plans and expectations when necessary can help stop your young person’s bucket overflowing.
Ask your child or young person what helps them: Ask your young person what helps make holes in their bucket. They may surprise you and come up with great suggestions you hadn’t thought of.

The tips above are useful to bear in mind for all children but can be particularly helpful if your child is neurodivergent.

Find or make a matching object for you and your child

Having small matching objects that you and your child can carry with you during the day can help your child remember you love them and are thinking of them, even if you’re not physically with them. These are known as transition objects.

Make sure your transition objects are small enough to fit in your child’s pocket, pencil case or school bag. Examples could include a small toy or figure, a painted stone, a special coin, or a photo. You could also include a sticky note in your child’s lunchbox or bag with a note, joke or something else your child might appreciate.

Alternatively, you could make something together. One idea is to make a keyring for each of you. Then your child or young person can attach it to their bag to take to school with them.

For more information, see our related articles:

This article was written in collaboration with West Suffolk Neurodevelopmental Support Service. Use our online service finder for SEND and neurodiversity services in your area.

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Supporting your child if they’re struggling to settle back at school