As Kids Head Back to School, Science-Backed Ways to Help Their COVID Blues

Classrooms are opening this fall, but don't expect it to be anything like a return to pre-pandemic normal. These kids will be bouncing off the walls. They'll squirm in their seats, chat while the teacher is talking, horse around in the hallways, talk back and have a harder time than usual in following rules. "There will be millions of children returning to our classrooms this fall with an over-activated stress physiology," says Nadine Burke Harris, a former pediatrician and expert on childhood stress who is now California's surgeon general.

The last year and a half of COVID-19 craziness has had a cumulative effect on the kids, says Burke Harris. Come September, the sudden change in routine—from more than a year of home confinement and laptop learning to the social pressures of the typical classroom—is likely to unleash a flood of the stress hormone cortisol. Add to that the typical excitement of starting a new school year, even some typically quiet, well-behaved students will be anxious, sad, scared and angry, and these emotions may manifest in the classroom as difficulty paying attention, withdrawal, disruptive behavior and absences.

The potentially explosive first days of school will be a challenge for teachers—and for parents, too, in coping with the emotional and behavioral spillover at home. But it will also provide an opportunity to teach the kids more than multiplication tables and reading assignments. It will be an opportunity to impart a skill that will be important no matter where life takes them: how to bounce back from a difficult experience.