I always look forward to Labor Day weekend as a final summer hurrah, but every year, I instead find myself wondering why my children have lost their minds. My kids went back to school on Thursday. On Friday, my 11-year-old threw half of his books across his room when he couldn’t find his soccer socks. On Saturday, my 8-year-old began wailing at 7:30am and didn’t stop for hours, crying over… well, I’m still not sure exactly what. September is our family’s annual Witching Hour, when my kids are hot emotional messes and the house is in complete disarray and my Gmail inbox contains 159,622 unread messages (yeah, no, I’m not kidding).
I was disheartened — but honestly a little bit relieved too — to learn from last week’s newsletter thread that many of you are suffering through kid emotional madness, too. So I thought I’d try to re-connect with my rational brain and share research-backed approaches for handling the zany back-to-school transition.
First, let’s unpack why kids turn into ogres in September. It’s largely because transitions are really, really hard for children. Consider what it’s like to be a kid: Pretty much everything is out of your control. Your parents and teachers dictate where you go, what you eat, and what activities you’re allowed to do. With so little power, you cling onto the things you have (occasional) control over — which is why you throw a fit when you are served lunch on the red plate when you wanted the blue one.
This lack of autonomy is also why kids love routines: They feel a sense of security when they know what’s going to happen when. They may not get to choose what’s coming, but at least they know what’s coming, and that is something.
So when kids’ schedules get upended in the fall when they go back to school, they understandably feel extra unsettled and anxious. Life suddenly becomes a high-speed whitewater rafting ride where nobody knows what’s around the next corner. What will happen when I walk into my classroom? Will my teacher continue to be nice? What will we have to do today? Will I make friends? The loss of control and predictability on top of all the other daily chaos is disconcerting, and kids can react by becoming more emotionally sensitive and challenging.
This all said, there are things you can do to make the back-to-school transition easier and lessen the intensity of your kid’s challenging behavior. Here are some science-based tips for surviving the next few weeks.
