Let your child's fears slide away

In the last of a two-part series on anxiety attacks, Friday addresses problems worrying children on the first day of school, stage fright and nervousness on the sports field

As adults, we realise that education is what we remember long after we've forgotten what was taught in the classrooms. So, it is total personality development that is the main aim of schooling.

It all begins on the first day of school – exposure to a foreign environment, albeit one that is to become a part and parcel of our lives for the next 15 years.

Ironically, it is the multi-dimensional area of sports education, drama and speech workshops that also creates stress in our children, although these co-curricular activities actually help ease some of the stress wrought by the academic curriculum.

The reason is the self-imposed barriers of cannot, will not, dare not, of personal skills that actually create the stress.

Anything that is unfamiliar is a bogey. By extension, that place called school – which we have only imagined up until the moment we actually enter its portals – is an unknown entity and, therefore, a subject of speculation and fear in young minds.

Being on stage is unfamiliar territory too and so is the competitive sports arena. They do not know how they are going to react or interact with the environment, and that leads to a series of behavioural patterns which we call stress. Some of them may be caught in the vicious circle of fear – and failure. Others, with the help of inspired teachers and parents, break this vicious circle.