School starts next week. You ask your child to try on their new shoes, and suddenly everything falls apart.
The shoes are wrong. The socks feel terrible. They hate their backpack. It’s the wrong color. They hate their school. And if you make them go, you’re mean.
You’re standing there holding the new pair of shoes they themselves wanted you to buy for them, wondering what just happened. Up until five minutes ago, you were having a wonderful day together. How did a pair of shoes become such a big deal?
I wonder what might happen if, instead of trying to make sense of the shoes, we became curious about what might be unfolding inside them.
Because, if anxiety has been building up inside of them, the shoes might take on a bit more meaning. Those shoes are carrying a child toward a classroom where they don’t know where they’ll sit, a playground where friendships feel uncertain, a new teacher they haven’t met, academic expectations they aren’t sure they can meet, or a separation from home that feels much bigger inside than they know how to say.
Sometimes anxiety comes out sideways….all dressed up as something else.
Anxiety Has Many Disguises
It would be wonderfully helpful if our children could simply come to us and say, “Mom, I’m feeling anxious about going back to school. Can you help me process what I’m feeling?”
Most children can’t describe their inner worlds with that kind of clarity. Sometimes they don’t even know that what they are feeling is anxiety.
They simply know that something feels uncomfortable. Their stomach hurts. They can’t fall asleep. They suddenly need to know exactly who will pick them up and exactly what time you will be there. They refuse to talk about school. They become clingy, distracted, negative, avoidant, controlling—or furious over a pair of shoes.
Anxiety doesn’t always look tender, vulnerable and afraid.
This is one of the places where Internal Family Systems offers us such a compassionate way of understanding our children. Anxiety or vulnerability may be somewhere inside the child’s system, while a protective strategy is what the parent actually encounters.
We may meet the protective bodyguard before we ever see the fear.
Perhaps somewhere inside is a part that feels scared about going back to school. It may be worried about friendships or belonging. Perhaps last year was difficult. Maybe school feels noisy, socially overwhelming, or academically demanding. Maybe separation from you feels tender.
Or perhaps something entirely different is stirring - that you might not ever fully understand.
Your child may have no conscious awareness that any of this is happening. They may simply feel the internal alarm of “Something big & scary & dangerous is coming.”
And what we know from IFS is that there’s a connection between vulnerability and protection. When something vulnerable gets activated inside, protectors often rush forward to protect and defend the best way they know how - like a bodyguard would do.
Anger may come forward. Control may come forward. Avoidance or defiance may come into foreground. These protective strategies may be trying, in the best way they know how, to create some sense of safety around something that feels uncertain, vulnerable, or beyond the child’s control.
Of course, anger can simply be anger. Difficulty focusing can have many causes. A stomachache might need medical attention. None of these behaviors tells us with certainty that what is happening inside a child is anxiety.
We are simply allowing ourselves to wonder.
Could anxiety be part of what I’m seeing? What might feel uncertain right now? What might my child be having difficulty putting into words?
Our curiosity doesn’t need a clear answer. It often just needs a little permission to explore.
Stay Curious About Me
There is something deeply relational about approaching our children this way. We don’t have to decode them perfectly. We can simply stay interested in them.
Sometimes we might gently ask, “I wonder if something about school is feeling hard right now?” Or, we might recall a moment when we felt anxious going back to school, or going to a sports event. Externalizing and normalizing anxiety in this way is often very helpful - especially for what Dr. Becky refers to as the “Deeply Feeling Kid” (DFK). Other times, the most helpful thing may be to carry that curiosity quietly inside ourselves.
Our children may not be ready to talk. They may not have the words. They may genuinely have no idea why they just threw their backpack across the room.
And perhaps this is where compassion becomes especially important.
Imagine, for a moment, what it might be like to feel a tremendous amount of anxiety in your body without understanding what is happening to you. Imagine feeling restless, irritable, scared, uncomfortable, or desperate to gain control—and then getting in trouble for the ways those feelings are spilling out.
Something inside the child might be saying:
Stay curious about me. Stay compassionate toward me. I can’t tell you about my anxiety directly. But it is HARD to feel it - and especially hard to feel it all alone.
When we remember that possibility, we may find just a little more spaciousness around the behavior. We may become a little more able to see the vulnerable little one behind the big bodyguard.
Compassion and Confidence Can Live in the Same Moment
Compassion for our child doesn’t mean that we give in to everything they ask for or request. We can remain curious about what might be happening underneath the behavior while also offering the calm, caring limits our children need.
If your child throws the shoes, hits their sibling, screams hurtful words, or tries to control the entire household, a limit is still necessary. And the energy underneath that limit matters.
We can hold a boundary while holding our good feelings for our child at the same time.
We can communicate, through our words, our facial expressions and our presence: “I’m not gonna let you hurt me / your sister. I’ll help keep everyone safe. And I’m staying with you. Because I care.”
There is something powerful about a child discovering that their biggest feelings do not have to rupture the relationship. Their anger doesn’t make us disappear. Their fear doesn’t frighten us away. We can remain sturdy enough to offer both warmth and structure, compassion and confidence.
Of course, this is often where our own inner systems become activated. A child’s desperate need for control may awaken a part of us that wants to regain control immediately. Their avoidance may touch our fear. Their anger may touch our own, vulnerable and scared one inside. Their distress may awaken the part of us that desperately wants to make everything better.
Those parts of us deserve compassion, too.
This is the territory we’ll explore more deeply in the next Self-Led Parenting LIVE: what happens inside us when our child’s anxiety comes out sideways, and how a Parenting U-Turn can help us meet our own protective parts before returning to our child.
Learning to Face Uncertainty Together
Back-to-school season asks our children to walk toward so much that can’t be known in advance. A new classroom. A new teacher. Changing friendships. Academic expectations. Separation. Belonging. The ordinary uncertainty of beginning again.
We can prepare our children for what can be known. We can buy the supplies, visit the classroom, talk through the schedule, and make a pickup plan. Predictability can be deeply supportive.
And there will always be pieces we cannot make certain for them. And we can give them the sense that they can survive the unknown, even though it’s hard.
Perhaps part of resilience grows through the experience of discovering: “It’s hard to face things that are uncertain, but it’s easier if I can do it feeling connected to someone who loves me.”
We cannot promise our children that school will always be easy, that every friendship will work out, or that nothing painful will happen. What we can offer is a relationship sturdy enough to accompany them through uncertainty.
So, the next time your child has a surprisingly enormous reaction to something very small, perhaps you can pause for just a moment before deciding what it means.
The shoes may be just shoes.
And perhaps their off-track reaction to the shoes is a signal that something tender is traveling inside them and just needs a little more support.
Stay curious about your child. Stay compassionate toward the parts of them that may be working very hard to protect something vulnerable inside of them. Hold a loving limit when a limit is needed. And remember that you don’t have to understand exactly what is happening inside your child in order to stay calm and come close.
Sometimes a child who can’t yet tell us, “I’m scared,” may be asking through their behavior:
Will you stay curious about me when I don’t understand myself? Will you still see me when my fear comes out sideways? Will you help me feel that I don’t have to carry all of this alone?
And perhaps that is one of the greatest gifts we can offer our children as they step into another school year: the quiet, steady experience of knowing that whatever comes, they have someone standing beside them.
I’m here.
You don’t have to figure this all out today.
We’ll find our way through it together.
If you’d rather watch or listen, you can view this topic here:
When Back-to-School Anxiety Looks Like Anger, Defiance, or Control (IFS Parenting | SLPL 24)
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