Supporting Anxious Children in Schools: What Works When Everything Else Hasn't

You've got a child in your class who can't cope. Maybe they're at the door every morning in tears. Maybe they shut down completely when you ask them a question. Maybe they're in the medical room three times a week with stomach aches that have no physical cause.

You want to help. You've tried being patient. You've tried firm boundaries. You've tried giving them space and giving them structure. You've spoken to parents, referred to pastoral support, contacted the SENCO. Nothing's shifting.

And meanwhile, you've got twenty-nine other children who also need you. Lesson plans to deliver. Data to track. Ofsted breathing down your neck about attendance and outcomes.

Nobody trained you for this. Your PGCE didn't cover what to do when a child has a panic attack in assembly. Your NQT year didn't prepare you for the rising tide of children who can't regulate their emotions. And the CPD you get is usually someone telling you about growth mindset or resilience, which sounds lovely but doesn't help when a child is hyperventilating in your classroom.

If you're a teacher, teaching assistant, or pastoral lead struggling with anxious children, we provide practical training that actually equips you for this. But first, here's what's making this so hard - and what you can actually do about it.

Why This Has Become So Much Harder

Let's acknowledge the reality: the number of children presenting with significant anxiety in schools has exploded.

It's not because teachers are worse at their jobs. It's not because parents are more overprotective. It's because childhood anxiety has genuinely increased, NHS services have collapsed under demand, and schools have become the front line by default.

You're now expected to be educators, social workers, mental health first-responders, attendance enforcers, and safeguarding monitors. With no additional time, training, or resources.

The children who used to access CAMHS support are now on 12-month waiting lists. The families who would have seen educational psychologists are being told there's no capacity. So schools are holding children who need specialist support, except you're supposed to teach them maths whilst also managing their emotional regulation.

It's an impossible ask. And everyone knows it's impossible. But the children are still there, still struggling, still needing something.

What Usually Happens (And Why It Doesn't Work)

Most schools follow a predictable pattern with anxious children:

Stage 1: Reassurance
"You're fine, there's nothing to worry about, just try your best."

The child's anxiety doesn't improve because anxiety isn't logical. Telling an anxious child there's nothing to fear doesn't rewire their nervous system. It just makes them feel more broken because they can't "just relax."

Stage 2: Accommodations
The child sits near the door. They're allowed to leave if they feel panicky. They can go to the quiet room. You reduce expectations.

This provides temporary relief but often reinforces the message: you can't cope, you need special treatment, anxiety controls your life. The safe zone gets smaller. The avoidance gets bigger.

Stage 3: Consequences
When accommodation doesn't work and behaviour escalates, schools often move to sanctions. Missing break. Behaviour charts. Conversations about "choices."

But you can't consequence someone out of a dysregulated nervous system. The anxiety intensifies. The child now feels anxious AND ashamed.

Stage 4: Referral
SENCO involvement. Pastoral support plans. Referrals to CAMHS that go nowhere. Attendance meetings. Sometimes EHCP applications that take months.

Meanwhile the child is still in your classroom, still struggling, and you still don't have tools that work.

None of this is anyone's fault. It's systemic failure meeting individual need. But it leaves teachers feeling helpless and children getting worse.

What Anxious Children Actually Need (That Schools Can Provide)

Here's the good news: you don't need to be a therapist to help anxious children. You need to understand what's happening in their body and give them tools to manage it.

The STILL Method was built specifically for schools because traditional therapeutic approaches don't work in busy classrooms. You can't do CBT with a seven-year-old whilst teaching phonics to thirty children.

But you can teach them the STILL framework. It takes five minutes. They can use it independently. And it actually addresses the nervous system response that's causing the behaviour.

Stop - Recognise when your body's in threat mode
Talk - Name what's real vs what anxiety is saying
Imagine - Picture yourself coping
Listen - Notice what your body needs
Learn - Understand your pattern so you can interrupt it next time

It sounds simple. That's deliberate. Anxious children need simple. They need something they can remember when they're panicking, not complex therapeutic techniques.

The STILL Model training for schools teaches your whole staff this framework so there's consistency. Every teacher using the same language. Every adult understanding that shutdown isn't defiance and panic isn't attention-seeking.

Practical Strategies That Work in Real Classrooms

You don't need a complete system overhaul. You need small shifts that make a big difference:

1. Recognise Anxiety Versus Defiance

Anxiety looks like:

• Physical symptoms (pale, sweating, needing toilet repeatedly)

• Shutdown or freeze responses

• Avoidance that's consistent and predictable

• Distress that's genuine even if the trigger seems small

• Improvement when the stressor is removed

Defiance looks like:

• Selective about when/where it happens

• Often improves with boundaries

• Doesn't come with physical distress

• Child can articulate why they don't want to do something

If you're seeing anxiety patterns, consequences won't work. You need regulation support, not behaviour management.

2. Create Regulation Opportunities, Not Just Calm Spaces

Quiet rooms are helpful. But sitting alone in a quiet room doesn't teach a child how to regulate their nervous system. It teaches them to avoid until someone rescues them.

Better approach: teach them techniques BEFORE they're dysregulated. Morning check-ins where everyone practices breathing. Quick sensory breaks built into lessons. Movement breaks that aren't rewards, just part of the day.

When anxiety hits, they've already got tools. They can use them in the classroom without needing to leave.

Emotional Regulation Practitioner training gives teachers and TAs specific techniques to teach and practice with children - things that work in group settings without singling anyone out.

3. Stop Asking "Why Are You Anxious?" Start Asking "What Does Your Body Need?"

Anxious children often don't know why they're anxious. Asking them to explain makes them feel more broken. And honestly, the "why" doesn't matter as much as the "what now."

Instead: "I can see your body feels worried. What might help right now? Do you need to move? Breathe? Drink some water? Sit somewhere different?"

This shifts from interrogation to problem-solving. The child learns to tune into their body's signals and respond, rather than spiral into shame about not being able to explain themselves.

4. Teach the Whole Class, Not Just the Anxious Child

When you single out the anxious child for special breathing exercises or emotion charts, everyone knows who the "anxious one" is. That creates shame.

When you teach the whole class about the nervous system, about fight/flight/freeze, about how our bodies respond to stress, it normalises it. Everyone learns the tools. The anxious child isn't special, they're just using what everyone learned.

"Right, everyone, we're going to practice our STILL technique before this test because tests can make our bodies feel alert, and we want to stay calm and focused."

Suddenly it's not "the anxious child needs help," it's "we all have nervous systems and we all benefit from managing them."

5. Work With Parents, Not Against Them

Teachers often feel frustrated with parents of anxious children. Why aren't they getting their child to school? Why are they so overprotective? Why won't they just be firmer?

But parents are usually drowning. They're facing fines for school absence whilst on CAMHS waiting lists. They're trying everything and nothing's working. They're exhausted.

When you approach parents as allies, not adversaries, things shift. "I can see how hard this is. Here's what we're noticing at school. Here's what we're trying. What's working at home? How can we be consistent?"

That conversation builds partnership. And anxious children improve faster when home and school are aligned.

What About the Children Who Can't Attend?

School refusal driven by anxiety is one of the hardest situations for schools. You're legally required to enforce attendance. The child is genuinely unable to attend. Parents are stuck in between.

Traditional gradual return plans often fail because they're based on exposure without capacity-building. "Come in for registration then go home" doesn't work if the child's having a panic attack during registration.

What works better:

• Build capacity at home first (parents working with a coach or using STILL tools)

• Start with non-classroom attendance (meet the teacher at the park, visit school when it's empty)

• Make the first return about success, not duration (one lesson they feel capable of, not registration which is overwhelming)

• Provide a clear exit plan that isn't "run to medical room in panic"

Schools can't do this alone. But when schools partner with families and provide structure rather than pressure, return rates improve dramatically.

If your school is struggling with multiple children who can't attend due to anxiety, whole-staff training in trauma-informed anxiety support is worth the investment. One day of training can shift how your entire team responds.

The Training Gap Nobody's Filling

You became a teacher to teach. You probably love your subject, or you love watching children learn, or you wanted to make a difference.

You didn't train to be a mental health professional. Yet here you are, expected to manage panic attacks, meltdowns, school refusal, separation anxiety, and emetophobia with virtually no training.

Mental Health First Aid is helpful. It teaches awareness. But it doesn't teach intervention. When a child is having a panic attack in your classroom, "be kind and listen" isn't enough. You need to know how to actually help them regulate.

That's the gap STILL Method training fills. We train teachers, TAs, pastoral leads, and entire school teams in practical nervous system regulation techniques that work in real schools with real constraints.

Not theory. Not "wouldn't it be nice if you had endless time and resources." Actual strategies you can use on Tuesday morning when a child is shutting down and you've got a classroom full of children watching.

What Schools Are Getting Right

Before we finish, let's acknowledge what many schools are doing brilliantly:

You're noticing. Twenty years ago, anxious children were labelled naughty or lazy. Now you recognise anxiety when you see it. That's progress.

You're trying. Despite impossible workloads, you're reading articles like this. You're seeking solutions. You care.

You're advocating. Many teachers are fighting for better mental health provision, pushing back against punitive attendance policies, and protecting vulnerable children from systems that don't understand them.

You're holding. When services fail, when families fracture, when everything else falls apart, schools hold children. You show up. You provide stability. You're often the only consistent adult in an anxious child's life.

That matters more than you know.

What Happens Next

You've got choices:

Keep doing what you're doing. Sometimes good enough is good enough. You can't solve everything. Just being a kind, stable presence helps anxious children more than you realise.

Learn more. Read about separation anxiety in teenagers, emetophobia, school refusal patterns. The more you understand, the better you can respond.

Get trained. If you're serious about being equipped to help anxious children properly, STILL Method training gives you a complete framework. Individual teachers can train, or schools can book whole-staff sessions through our schools and care programme.

Connect families with support. You can't fix every child's anxiety, but you can signpost families to proper support. Sometimes just knowing where to look for help makes the difference.

Work with a STILL Method coach. If you have a specific child whose anxiety is significantly impacting their learning and you need expert input now, our trained coaches work with schools as well as families. They can:

• Assess the child's specific anxiety patterns

• Provide 1:1 sessions during the school day or after school

• Train your staff in techniques that work for that particular child

• Support gradual return plans for children who've been absent

• Work in partnership with your SENCO and pastoral team

Some schools fund this directly. Others signpost families who then bring the coach in. Either way, having specialist support for your most anxious children means you're not trying to manage complex anxiety alone whilst teaching thirty others.

Advocate for change. Push for better mental health provision. For training that's actually useful. For attendance policies that don't criminalise anxious children. For recognition that schools can't do this alone.

The Realistic Hope

We're not going to solve the mental health crisis overnight. We're not going to magic away the funding cuts or staff shortages or impossible expectations.

But we can give you tools that work. We can help you understand what's happening in anxious children's nervous systems. We can teach you interventions that take five minutes, not five hours. We can equip you to help the children in front of you right now.

Because every child who learns to regulate their anxiety instead of being controlled by it - that's a life changed. Every teacher who feels confident instead of helpless when a child panics - that's burnout prevented. Every school that shifts from punishing anxiety to supporting it - that's culture transformed.

You didn't sign up to be a mental health professional. But you are one of the most important adults in anxious children's lives. And with the right tools, you can help them in ways that ripple forward for decades.

That's not overstating it. Ask any adult in therapy for anxiety where it started. Most will say: school. When I couldn't cope and nobody understood.

You can be the teacher who understood. Who gave them tools. Who saw their fear and taught them they could survive it.

That's worth the investment.

The STILL Method provides practical, trauma-informed training for teachers, TAs, pastoral teams, and entire schools. We understand the constraints you're working under. We give you tools that work in busy classrooms with limited time. And we support you beyond the training day with resources, check-ins, and a community of educators doing this work.

School and care settings training: thestillmethod.co.uk/schoolsandcare

Individual professional training: thestillmethod.co.uk/courses

Emotional regulation training for educators: thestillmethod.co.uk/regulation

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