Why going back to school is harder for kids than you think (and small things that actually help)
7:12 AM on the third day of fifth grade, I’m leaning against the front door holding my son’s packed peanut butter sandwich and a cold Capri Sun, wondering why shoe-tying is taking so long. I hear quiet sniffling coming from his bedroom closet, push the door open, and there he is: sitting on a pile of last year’s outgrown sneakers, his brand new back-to-school hoodie still crumpled with the price tag attached, squeezing that beat-up rubber fidget cube he swore he outgrew back in June.
“What’s up?” I say, leaning down. He shrugs, wipes his nose on his sleeve, and says “Nothing. I just don’t want to go.” I remind him he was fine yesterday, that he already met his new teacher and liked her. He says “Yeah, but everything’s wrong right now. Nothing fits, and I don’t know where anything is, and I have to raise my hand just to go get a drink of water.”
Two years ago, when my oldest started middle school, I would’ve brushed this off as first week jitters, told her to suck it up and get in the car. Back then I thought back to school struggles were just overblown drama, something that blows over by the end of the first week. I wrote off my daughter’s two weeks of snapping at everyone over tiny things as just middle school moodiness. But this time around, when my son mentioned he’d hidden in the bathroom stall during recess for 20 minutes that morning, I checked in with his teacher after school, and what she said changed how I think about this whole transition.
Ms. Lopez leaned against her desk, sipping cold coffee out of a chipped “World’s Best Teacher” mug, and told me this is totally normal. It’s not a sign of anxiety, or that your kid is being difficult, or that they’re going to struggle all year. It’s just that their brains spent two months with no rigid schedule: they woke up when they wanted, ate when they were hungry, spent hours doing whatever silly thing caught their attention without anyone telling them to switch tasks every 40 minutes. Throwing them straight into a full day of school is like asking someone who’s been resting on the couch all summer to run a 5K first thing Monday morning. Their brains and bodies just need time to adjust, and that adjustment is messy.
From that conversation, we made a few small changes, none of which took a lot of time or money, all of which have made a noticeable difference. First, I stopped asking “How was school?” the second he climbs into the car after school. That question feels like a test, like he has to sum up seven hours into one neat answer that I’ll be happy with. Instead, I started asking one tiny, low-stakes question: “What’s the weirdest thing you saw today?” or “Did anyone have a funny lunch?” He doesn’t have to dig up big feelings or talk about anything stressful if he doesn’t want to. Some days he says “nothing” and that’s fine, we just listen to his favorite cartoon podcast on the drive home.
Next, I added 10 extra minutes to our morning routine. I used to force him to lay out his clothes the night before to save time, rush him through breakfast and out the door to make the bell. But he told me he’d lie awake worrying he’d changed his mind about his outfit, or that his shirt would be itchy, and that low-grade stress would stick with him all morning. Now I set my alarm 10 minutes earlier, and he can take all the time he wants picking out what to wear, retying his shoes, even stopping to pet the cat for five minutes. I drink my coffee cold some mornings, but it’s worth it not to start the day with both of us stressed.
We also kept one small summer routine: after homework and before any chores or piano practice, we have 20 minutes of unstructured outside time. No plans, no rules. He can dig for worms, kick a soccer ball against the fence, even just sit on the porch and scroll TikTok if he wants. It’s a small buffer between the hyper-structured school day and home routines, and it gives him time to unwind before he has to do anything else. Ms. Lopez told me she does the same thing in her classroom: the first two weeks, she cuts 10 minutes off each academic block and adds a 10-minute movement break, even if it puts her reading schedule a little behind. She says it pays off in three weeks when kids are actually focused enough to learn.
The biggest change, though, is how I respond when he has a full-on bad day. Last Thursday he came home, threw his backpack on the floor, and yelled that he was never going back. I used to jump in and fix it: tell him to talk to the teacher, remind him that tomorrow would be better, nudge him to try joining a game again. This time I just pulled the last two popsicles out of the freezer from our end-of-summer cookout, sat down next to him on the porch steps, and said “That sounds so garbage.” He talked for 15 minutes about his locker getting stuck, his new pencil case falling apart, no one letting him join four square at recess. I didn’t fix anything, I just listened. By the end he was already asking what we could have for dinner.
It’s the second week now, and some mornings he still sniffs a little before we leave. Yesterday he came home and told me he played four square, and wrote his new friend’s phone number on the back of his homework sheet. We’re still keeping the 10 extra minutes and the popsicle breaks. I don’t know if next week will bring more bad days, or if this transition will take a lot longer than I expected it to. I used to think we had to be all settled into the new routine by the end of the first week. Now I think it’s okay to take it slow, and leave a little extra space for all the small, messy parts of starting over.
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