A week ago, picking out a new backpack felt like an event. Trying on shoes, choosing a water bottle color, counting down the days on the calendar in the kitchen.
Tonight is different. He’s in bed, staring at the ceiling, saying his stomach hurts. He doesn’t want to go tomorrow. Nobody can quite say why the excitement flipped this fast.
That flip is one of the most common patterns families see every August, and it rarely means anything has gone wrong. Nerves before a new school year, or a new school entirely, are the expected reaction, not a warning sign on their own. KidsHeart’s stress and anxiety care team, part of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry in Abu Dhabi and Al Ain, sees this exact scenario constantly this time of year.
Why Nerves Are the Expected Reaction
School asks a lot of a child, even one who genuinely likes school. A new teacher. New classmates, or the same classmates in a slightly different social order. Unfamiliar routines after weeks of a looser summer schedule.
All of that uncertainty lands on a nervous system that’s still learning how to sit with the unknown. A child doesn’t need a diagnosis to feel that. Most children don’t.
How to Tell Nerves From Something More
The distinction isn’t really about how upset a child seems on a single night. It’s about the shape the anxiety takes over the following weeks.
Ordinary adjustment nerves tend to peak right before school starts and ease as routines become familiar, usually within two to three weeks. The child who couldn’t sleep the night before is often laughing about a new friend by week three.
Anxiety worth a closer look follows a different pattern. It doesn’t fade as the routine sets in. Sometimes it gets worse instead, spreading from just the morning of school to most mornings, most weeks, well into the term.
Signs This Has Moved Past Ordinary Adjustment
A few signs, especially in combination and especially if they persist past the first few weeks, are worth paying real attention to:
- Physical complaints, stomachaches or headaches, that show up specifically on school mornings and ease on weekends
- Sleep that stays disrupted well beyond the first week or two
- Avoidance that escalates rather than settles, more resistance in week four than week one
- Withdrawal from friends or activities the child used to enjoy
- Panic-like symptoms: a racing heart, difficulty breathing, or a sense of dread that feels disproportionate to the day ahead
- A child who says school feels unsafe or unbearable, not just uncomfortable
None of these on their own means a formal disorder is present. Together, and lasting, they’re the pattern that separates typical back-to-school jitters from something that needs support beyond a parent’s reassurance.
What Actually Helps in the First Few Weeks
For most families, the ordinary version of this responds well to steady, low-key support rather than big interventions.
Naming the worry out loud, without rushing to fix it immediately, often helps more than problem-solving does. “The first morning is the hardest one, and it gets easier from here” is a simple, honest thing to say, and it happens to be true for most children.
Keeping the goodbye at drop-off brief and calm matters more than it seems like it should. A long, anxious goodbye can accidentally signal to a child that there’s something to actually worry about.
Consistent bedtimes in the two weeks before school starts, and staying consistent once it does, gives an unsettled nervous system one less variable to manage.
When a Proper Evaluation Is the Next Step
If the pattern doesn’t ease, or if it’s severe enough to keep a child home, refuse school entirely, or trigger genuine panic, that’s the point to bring in more than home strategies. A full diagnostic evaluation looks at the whole picture: how long the anxiety has lasted, what specifically triggers it, and whether it’s isolated to school or showing up in other parts of life too.
According to a 2023 national data brief from the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration, hosted through the National Library of Medicine, anxiety is now the most commonly diagnosed mental health condition among American adolescen vts, affecting 16.1 percent, a figure that’s climbed 61 percent since 2016. School-related stress is far from the only driver of that trend, but it’s consistently one of the more common triggers parents report when anxiety first becomes noticeable.
Where the School Itself Fits In
Sometimes the anxiety is tangled up with something specific about the school environment itself, a difficult social dynamic, an unaddressed learning difficulty, or a mismatch between a child’s needs and the classroom setup. In those cases, addressing anxiety in isolation only goes so far.
KidsHeart’s school consultations service can bring the clinical team directly into conversation with teachers and school counselors, so strategies that work in a session actually translate into the classroom. Families in Abu Dhabi and Al Ain working through a genuinely difficult school transition often find this coordination shortens the whole process considerably.
Parents Carry Some of This Too
It’s worth saying plainly: a parent’s own nerves about a new school year are contagious, even when unspoken. Children pick up on tension at drop-off far more readily than most parents realize.
KidsHeart’s parent psychoeducation programs exist partly for this reason, giving parents concrete tools rather than just an instruction to “stay calm,” which is easier said than managed in the moment.
Back to That Bed, Staring at the Ceiling
Most children in that exact scenario, stomach hurting, dreading tomorrow, are laughing with a new friend by the second or third week. That’s not a guarantee for every child, but it’s the far more likely outcome, and it’s worth holding onto on a hard night.
For the smaller number where the dread doesn’t lift, or gets heavier instead of lighter as the term goes on, that’s not a sign of failure on anyone’s part. It’s simply the point where the next step is booking an appointment with the Abu Dhabi or Al Ain team.
Dr. Mohammad Abu Al-izz
Specialist Psychiatrist
Jordanian Board Certification
