Am I Overthinking My Kid Going Back To Their Old School? What I’ve Learned Along The Way
It’s 10:17 PM, I’m folding clean laundry on the couch, and a faded navy hoodie falls out of the dryer. It’s the old neighborhood elementary hoodie, size 8, with a coffee stain blotted on the left cuff from the 2021 fall festival. My daughter Lila, now 10, hasn’t worn it in 14 months. We pulled her out of that school at the start of last year, after six weeks of her throwing up before math class and hiding in the bathroom during recess to avoid a girl who kept teasing her about her braces. We enrolled her at a small charter school 20 minutes across town, smaller classes, more one-on-one support, and for a while, it felt like the right call.
Last month, the principal from the old school called. They’d rezoned, cut the fourth grade class size from 28 to 20, and a spot opened up with the new teacher everyone raves about. Would we want it back? Lila was at the table when I got the call, and she leaned over before I even hung up and mouthed “yes please.” That’s when the overthinking started.
I catch myself scrolling through old parent texts from 2022, replaying the day I sat in the assistant principal’s office crying because no one seemed to care that Lila was skipping lunch. The bully moved to middle school last year, I know that. The overcrowded portable classroom they used for fourth grade got torn down over the summer, I drove past it last week. But I still lie awake at night listing every possible bad outcome: what if she falls behind? What if the old anxiety comes back? What if I messed up the good thing we had at the charter just to give her what she wants right now?
Last week, Mrs. Henderson, the retired first grade teacher who lives two houses down, brought over a bag of cherry tomatoes from her garden. I mentioned the whole situation while we sat on my porch, twisting the stems off tomatoes and dropping them in a bowl. She didn’t say “oh, it’ll be fine, kids are resilient” which is what everyone else says. She wiped tomato juice off her hands and said, “First thing: don’t make it a forever decision right now. Can you keep her spot at the charter for a month? Most places will do that for a transition like this.” I told her the charter already said yes, they’d hold it for 30 days. “Good,” she said. “Second: don’t send the new teacher a three-page essay about all the hard stuff. Send one paragraph with two or three small, specific things that help her. If she hates loud fire drills, say that. If she feels better lining up first for recess instead of last, say that. Teachers don’t need a whole backstory the first week, they need small things they can do right away.”
That clicked. I’d been drafting a long email about all the stuff that happened before, but instead I sent three short paragraphs: “Hi Mr. Torres, Lila was a student here in lower elementary and she’s excited to come back. She struggles with sudden loud transitions like the end-of-recess bell, so if she can stand near the door to line up early that helps a lot. She mentioned you have a sunflower window box, and she’d love to help tend it if you have extra space. I’ll check in if anything else comes up.” He wrote back 20 minutes later: “Already saved her a spot by the door and set aside an extra seed pot. Can’t wait.”
Third thing Mrs. Henderson told me, that I’ve already mapped out for the first month, is how to check in every day. She said forget “how was school?” Kids almost always say “fine” when they’re still processing everything. Instead, ask two small, specific questions that tell you how it’s really going, no pressure to dump all their feelings at once. I picked “what’s one thing you ate at lunch that you liked?” and “did anyone do something nice for you today?” They’re easy to answer, even on tired after-school days, and they tell me more than any big talk about feelings would. If she can answer both easily, it’s a good day. If she shrugs and says “nothing,” I know we need to sit and snack for a while before digging into whatever’s off.
I’ve realized a lot of my overthinking is about me, not her. I’m still carrying the stress of that terrible semester we had last time, when the school didn’t listen and Lila was miserable. That version of the school doesn’t exist anymore, and that version of Lila doesn’t either. She’s a year older, she knows what she likes, she can tell me when something feels wrong. We don’t have to get it right forever on the first day.
Tomorrow’s her first day. Her backpack’s packed by the door, the old hoodie’s folded on top, she put an extra sparkly eraser in a little zip bag to give to Mia, her best friend who never left the old school. I still woke up at 2 AM last night thinking, what if I’m making a mistake? What if she’s lonely? What if I’m overthinking this so much I’m already ruining it before it starts? But then I rolled over and reminded myself: we have a backup. We have the check-ins. The teacher already knows the small things that help. If it doesn’t work after two weeks, we go back to the charter. No one’s locked into anything forever.
I don’t know how this is going to go. Some days I think I’m overthinking every little detail, and some days I think it’s okay to think this much, because it’s my kid, and it matters. Right now, the only thing I know for sure is that she wants to try. And that’s enough to go through with it, for now.
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