Parents often tell us they cannot understand what their teenager is so worried about.
The wrong shoes. A haircut they suddenly hate. Who they will sit with. Something a friend has said or not said.
With the start of a new school year approaching, these things can suddenly become very important. To a parent, the reaction can seem completely out of proportion.
It is tempting to be logical. The shoes are fine. Your hair looks good. You know people in your class. It will all settle down once you’re back.
But the thing they are talking about may not be the thing they are really worried about.
Writer and parent Lorraine Candy describes something she learned from raising four children. As each moved through their teenage years, the question sitting quietly underneath the start of a new school year was often: “Will I still belong?”
It is a key question for parents.
Candy recalls becoming frustrated when her 13-year-old daughter became very upset about having the school-approved shoes rather than the ones her friends were wearing. From an adult perspective, they were simply black school shoes.
What she did not know was that her daughter was already having difficulties within her friendship group. Going back in the “wrong” shoes had become tangled up with something much bigger: how she would be received when she walked back into the classroom.
The shoes mattered because belonging mattered.
A summer is a long time during adolescence.
A young person may return taller or looking different. Friendships may have shifted. Their confidence may not be where it was in July. They may be entering a year in which academic expectations suddenly feel more serious.
Meanwhile, adolescence itself is a period when young people become particularly sensitive to their peers and are working out who they are and where they fit.
So while parents are thinking about uniform, timetables and getting everyone out of the door on time, their teenager will be preparing for something rather different.
They have to walk back into a social world they left several weeks ago and find their place in it again.
For some young people, that feels exciting.
For others, it feels precarious.
Candy uses a good phrase to describe what she did over the shoes: she “bulldozed over her fear with logic.”
Parents do this because we can see things our children cannot.
We know the haircut probably won’t matter in a week’s time. We know one awkward conversation is unlikely to destroy a friendship. We have enough experience to put the problem into perspective.
Your teenager may not need perspective yet. They need you to understand why this particular thing feels so important.
That does not mean agreeing with every fear or reorganising family life around it. It means resisting the urge to dismiss something simply because it looks small from where you are standing.
Curiosity will usually get you further than reassurance.
“This seems to be really worrying you. What’s making it feel so important?”
The answer may tell you much more than another reminder that everything will be fine.
Parents cannot guarantee that their child will fit in.
We cannot control friendship groups or prevent embarrassment. Nor can we remove all the uncertainty that comes with a new term.
What we can provide is somewhere steady outside it.
Candy argues that teenagers approaching transitions need connection with their parents and the sense that they will be listened to and respected.
That becomes particularly important when something has gone wrong.
A teenager who knows they can come home and talk without immediately being corrected, questioned or given a solution has somewhere to make sense of what happened.
Sometimes they will talk. Sometimes they won’t.
The important thing is that you remain available.
Some anxiety before returning to school is entirely understandable. A new school year brings uncertainty, and most young people settle once they are back.
Pay attention when they don’t.
If the worry begins to interfere with getting into school, friendships start falling away or your child becomes increasingly withdrawn, the issue may have moved beyond ordinary back-to-school nerves.
The useful question remains the same one you asked about the shoes or the haircut:
What is happening underneath this?
You may not know immediately. Your child may not know either.
But taking their concern seriously gives you a better chance of finding out.
