How to handle your anxiety about going back to school

Anxious. Tired. Terrified. Numb. These are all apt descriptions for parents right now. School is just around the corner and yet no one seems to have a good enough plan in place.
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I was talking with my colleague, senior parenting reporter Catherine Pearson, about the emotional rollercoaster we parents have been on the past four months. Though we certainly both talked about our anxiety about everything, we both noted just how *numb* we felt. “Dead inside” were the exact words.
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So Catherine spoke with some experts to see if what we were feeling was “normal” and it turns out, it 1000000% is. As Olivia Bergeron, who runs a parenting coaching company in NYC, told Catherine, “After being on high alert for so long, it’s entirely understandable that numbness would set in. No one can sustain a state of emergency for any length of time. We weren’t built that way. Fight or flight is supposed to be a temporary state to ensure survival, not a permanent way of living.” Read it here.
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But if you DO have anxiety about resuming your role as “homeschool teacher extraordinaire-ish,” that’s OK too! Catherine also wrote a piece about how to prepare yourself mentally for the likelihood that teaching your children is likely once again in your future. Her story is action-packed and I found it immensely helpful for organizing my thoughts. Read it here.
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If this topic is interesting to you, we’re kicking off a series of virtual parenting events this Friday from 1:30-2:30 PM EST with a conversation between me and my editor, Kate Palmer, who is also a parent of two, about handling your own emotions as parents about the back-to-school season. We’ll answer some questions live‌ and will have a discussion about all the feelings we’re experiencing right now. If you’re interested, sign up to be a free HuffPost member before 11:59pm ET on Tuesday July 21, and we'll e-mail you a promo code for free registration to the event, or you can purchase a ticket for $10 here.
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If you have any topics or specific questions you’re curious about, let me know at katea@huffpost.com.
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Hope to see you there!
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Kate

The funniest tweet from parents this week

Books about emotions

If you want your kids to be able to express themselves emotionally, why not start with reading books about feelings? Here are 35 children’s books that teach kids about emotions.

See them here

For when your kid is keeping you awake...

If all of us want to raise the kind of people we’d like to know, it starts at home.

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Our kids may be losing out on a lot right now, but the silver lining is that you can use these unprecedented times to help teach your child emotional intelligence, or “EQ.” Here are the most recent pieces in our series on emotional intelligence. Check them out below.