Anxiety is rampant nowadays, and for students to overcome it and succeed in the classroom, both outside academic support and at-home strategies are called for.
This is according to Dr. Diana Dinescu’s presentation on managing student anxiety, which our Academic Specialist Korrine Hilgeman recently attended. Before anxiety affects your child’s school performance, it’s important to nip it in the bud using regulation techniques at home and outside academic support, like the support offered by e3 Consulting.
For the past two decades, the educational consultants at e3 Consulting have helped students build the executive functioning skills they need to manage their anxiety. By tending to your child’s executive functioning skills, our Academic Specialists can build healthy coping strategies for your child that will serve them well both in school and further into adulthood.
How Anxiety Can Affect School Performance
Mental health struggles, such as anxiety, can weigh heavily on students, often affecting their school performance negatively.
Dr. Dinescu brings up an enlightening comparison: “Think of anxiety as a parasite. It takes over the brain, and overwhelms other systems.” By other systems, she’s referring to the executive functioning skills that follow us into adulthood.
Anxiety & Executive Functioning
Executive functioning is the foundation of self-regulation, which is often affected by anxiety.
The connection between anxiety and executive functioning can be seen in test-taking struggles and not completing homework assignments. It’s not during the actual test that anxiety is most rampant. Rather, it’s the preoccupation with the test which overwhelms their young brains, which can affect students for weeks leading up to the given test.
In this way, anxiety can create a sort of “paralysis” in your child. To help, she suggests that parents teach their children about anxiety and the science behind it, pulling back the curtain so it isn’t so intimidating. Then, after decreasing their accommodations, coping skills can be introduced to help build that executive functioning foundation.
Wrap-Up: Helping Your Child Manage Their Anxiety
In order for your child to succeed in the classroom, parents can start by working on their coping skills in the household. Here’s a set of steps parents can take at home to give their children the tools to manage their anxiety:
- Validate their feelings and provide confidence boosts
- Make a list of accommodations and choose one to work on at a time
- Spend time on coping skills first, so that your child is in a good headspace
- Help your child manage their anxiety by teaching the science behind it
- Introduce coping skills to build executive functioning skills
- Remind your child that it’s okay to make mistakes, and that progress takes time
How e3 Consulting’s Enrichment Program Can Help
Along with home techniques, an enriching academic support program could help manage your child’s bouts of anxiety.
Through one-on-one coaching backed by a therapeutic approach, your child’s executive functioning will be supported by our team of Academic Specialists. We can also lend a hand with standardized test preparation, professional referrals, and school placement if needed.
San Diego Academic Support for Anxious Students
Are mental health struggles such as anxiety interfering with your child’s school performance? For the past 20 years, the educational consultants at e3 Consulting have helped students quell their anxiety, build their executive functioning foundation, and ultimately thrive in the classroom.
Contact e3 Consulting today to request an academic consultation and get your child the help they need and deserve.
