Is My Son Experiencing Preschool Anxiety?

This post is part of a series where our team of child mental health professionals answer real questions submitted by readers like you. This post deals with worries related to school. Please take care when reading.

One parent recently wrote in with a question about their son’s apparent worries related to school. Here is their question, and an answer from our team of child mental health experts.

“We discovered that my son snuck donuts under the covers of his bed and eaten one. He’s never done anything like this before, though he has been more focused on ‘treats’ lately.

He’s also been having issues with preschool. He’s started going for 2 more hours in the day starting this month. Shortly after that, his main teacher got sick and hasn't been in the classroom. He keeps saying he wants to stay home, he is scared to go to school, and he is alone at school. He can't say anything that happened at school. He hasn’t had this kind of hesitancy around school for this duration before. How should we respond to these school worries?”

- S., Colorado

Thank you for contacting Little Otter!

You’re describing a new behavior in the context of many stressors - small for adults, but big-sized for your preschooler - who’s manifesting and verbalizing some anxiety about school.

In terms of why a donut in his bed: it's likely not more meaningful than him taking an object of comfort to bed with him. Regarding that particular behavior, I would acknowledge that doughnuts are delicious and that eating them in bed seems like a good idea for combining many good things. However, it's not something we do, because it makes it harder for laundry, and also some small animal species love crumbs and we don't want them in our beds.

For the big picture: think about whether, besides main teacher being sick, other things have been happening at school. Can he tell a story about why he is scared? Scared that teacher (comforting caretaker) is not there or scared because scary things are happening?

As a clinician, I often use storytelling to help my young patients verbalize things; this is a technique parents can use as well.

For example: "There was once a little boy called (some inversion of your son's name) and he used to like school; then he got scared. His mom did not know why." Then you pause and observe if he is attentive or distracted by story. If attentive, you follow with: "what do you think was happening with Timmy?" and let your kid try to speak. If distracted or nervous, propose a fun activity, and say that maybe you can go back to that story later.

I hope this is helpful! If it’s not enough, please remember that Little Otter has many resources for parents and families! We also offer both online therapy to support parents and caregivers with big and little worries.