After witnessing the downward trend in daily COVID-19 cases, state governments across the country have begun reopening schools after a long battle with the pandemic for two years. Although it was a sigh of relief for parents and education authorities, children are struggling to readjust to their new schedules as many young children have developed social anxiety during the period of online classes. In addition to missing the presence of their parents during school hours, many children hesitate to interact with their teachers and peers.
This social anxiety shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, for the past two years, children have been constantly reminded to maintain social distancing. And now this precautionary activity has turned into an introverted habit for many, moreover, the levels of difficulty have increased for children who already had social anxiety before the pandemic hit the world.
Here are a few tips for parents to ease their children’s back-to-school anxiety and help them readjust to social life:
Reduce expectations, increase understanding
If you are a parent and your child is going through a similar situation, you should start by lowering your expectations of your little ones, understanding that just like any other skill like dancing or singing, social skills also get rusty if we don’t . t practice it regularly. So having expectations of your children will only add to the burden on them.
Once you understand your child’s struggles, you need to increase normal activities in a safe and sensitive manner. For example, you can go to a park with your child and spend some time with other people.
Emphasize the importance of independence in front of your child, and this can be done by practicing short periods of separation. For example, send your child to play with the neighbor’s other children. This exercise should be done with children who are having trouble separating from their parents.
Start talking and communicating more with your children. You have to make them aware of social anxiety. And also, your kids need to know that the feelings of social anxiety they are going through is completely normal.
Read all the latest news, breaking news and IPL 2022 Live Updates here.