My Kid Said “School Gives Me Anxiety” — Here’s What I’m Doing About It
The text message came in at 11:47 on a Tuesday: “Can u pick me up? I have anxiety bc of school.”
I was at the grocery store, halfway down the cereal aisle, and I just stood there staring at my phone. My son is fourteen. He usually texts in complete-ish sentences, but this one felt different. Not a joke, not a request for a ride because he forgot his PE shoes. This was him using a real word for a real feeling.
I asked if he was sick. He said no. I asked if something happened with a teacher. He said no. Then I asked what he meant, and he wrote: “Idk i just feel really anxious. Can u come get me?”
I left the cart. I told the school office I was picking him up. And on the drive home, we didn’t talk much. He sat in the passenger seat with his backpack on his lap, staring out the window. I kept my hands on the wheel and tried to figure out what to say.
Here’s what I’ve learned since then: school anxiety doesn’t always look like panic attacks. Sometimes it looks like a quiet kid who’s been holding it together all day and finally texts their parent because they can’t hold it together anymore.
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For the first few weeks, I thought the answer was to push him through it. I’d say things like, “You’ve got this” and “Everyone feels nervous sometimes.” I meant well. But my son is not the kind of kid who responds to pep talks. He’s the kind of kid who needs to know there’s an exit.
The turning point was when I stopped asking why and started asking what. Not “Why are you so anxious?” but “What is actually happening at school that makes you feel this way?”
That’s when he told me.
It wasn’t one big thing. It was a hundred little things. The hallway between second and third period is always packed, and he hates the way people bump into him. His math teacher calls on students randomly, and he spends the whole forty minutes rehearsing what he’d say if his name got called. The lunchroom is loud in a way that makes his chest tighten. And on top of all that, he had a history project due Friday that he hadn’t started.
He wasn’t avoiding school because he was lazy. He was avoiding school because his nervous system was overwhelmed from the moment he walked in the building.
That made more sense to me than any label.
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I’m not a therapist, and I don’t want to pretend I’ve figured this out. But I’ve learned a few things that genuinely helped, and they’re not complicated.
The first thing we did was change the morning routine. Instead of rushing him out the door, we started waking him up twenty minutes earlier. Not to do homework — just to sit on the couch with his toast and his phone, not talking, not being asked questions. Turns out, a slow start made a huge difference. He told me later that the rush to get to school made him feel “like I was already behind before I even got there.”
The second thing was making a plan for the hallway. This sounds small, but it’s been huge. We talked about the fact that he doesn’t have to walk in the middle of the crowd. He can walk along the side, near the lockers. He can put his earbuds in with no music playing — just the noise-canceling effect. And if it feels too tight, he can duck into the bathroom for a minute until the hallway clears.
He thought it was silly at first, but the next week he told me he’d done it. “It’s still annoying,” he said, “but I don’t feel like I’m gonna like, crawl out of my skin.”
The third thing was talking to his teachers. I was nervous to do this. I didn’t want them to think I was making excuses for him or that he couldn’t handle school. But I sent a short email to his math teacher — just one teacher, not all of them — explaining that my son gets anxious when called on unexpectedly and asking if she could give him a heads up when she’s going to ask him a question.
She wrote back within an hour: “Thanks for letting me know. I’ll give him a clue before I call on him — like ‘I’m coming back to your side of the room next.’” A small change, but it made the class manageable.
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Here’s what I’ve also had to face: some days still don’t go well. Last week, he texted me again. This time I picked up the phone and asked him to stay. He said, “I’ll try.” And he did — he stayed through the end of the day. When I asked him how it went, he said, “Miserable but I did it.”
That’s not a perfect ending. But it’s honest.
I’m learning that school anxiety doesn’t get “fixed” overnight. It gets managed. It gets understood. And sometimes, as a parent, the best thing you can do is not force your kid to be brave all at once. The best thing is to help them break the day down into pieces that feel less scary.
I stopped asking “How was school?” and started asking “What was the worst part today?” Or sometimes just “What happened at lunch?” The answer is rarely dramatic. It’s “The pasta was weird” or “I dropped my pencil and no one picked it up.” But hearing those small details helps me understand what his daily reality feels like.
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If your child says something like “school gives me anxiety,” I’d say take it seriously. Not as a diagnosable disorder necessarily, but as a real feeling that’s happening in their body and brain. Ask them what specifically feels bad. Not “are you okay?” but “what part of the day feels the worst?” You might get an answer that sounds tiny — the crowded hallway, the lunchroom noise, the feeling of being put on the spot. That’s where you can start.
The words “anxiety” might feel big, but the solutions are often small. A different seat. A planned bathroom break. A teacher who knows to pause before asking a question. A morning routine where no one is rushing. None of that fixes everything. But it tells your kid you’re paying attention, and that the problem isn’t them being weak or difficult — it’s just something you’re both going to learn how to work around.
We’re still figuring it out. Today, I’m packing his lunch a little earlier and reminding him he has that plan for the hallway. He might text me again at noon. He might not. Either way, I’ll answer.
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