My Kid Says Everyone At School Is Annoying: Parenting Tips For Handling Schoolyard Irritations
I’m leaning against the side of my dented minivan after school last Tuesday, sipping a lukewarm gas station lemonade, when my 9-year-old daughter Mia trundles out of the elementary school doors. Her backpack is slipping off one shoulder, her art smock is crumpled in the bottom, and she yanks the passenger door open so hard the window rattles. “Everyone at school is so annoying,” she says, and flops back into the seat, arms crossed.
I’ve heard this at least once a week for the past three months. My old default was to brush it off: “Oh, come on, Lily’s not that annoying, she’s just your friend. Javi didn’t mean to cut you off.” The last time I did that, Mia stormed up to her room as soon as we got home and didn’t come down for dinner for 45 minutes, so I’ve learned to hold that reaction. This time I just put the car in reverse and said, “Okay, who was the worst today?”
She starts listing them off before we even pull out of the parking lot. There’s Lily, who sits next to her at reading, chews her eraser so loud it sounds like a squirrel gnawing a nut, and taps her foot nonstop during silent work. Javi, who cuts in the lunch line every single day and thinks it’s hilarious to flick eraser crumbs at people across the room. Even her best friend Lila, who keeps switching what game they play at recess mid-start, so Mia ends up standing around holding a jump rope for five minutes while Lila runs off to play four square. And today the cherry on top: Mrs. Henderson, the reading specialist, pulled her out of art class right when they were painting papier-mâché cats, so she only got to paint one ear before it was time to clean up.
I nod, pull into the McDonald’s drive-thru for the fries she’s begging for, and let her keep talking. As a part-time sub at this same school, I’ve been in that classroom. I’ve seen Lily’s foot tapping, I’ve swept Javi’s eraser crumbs off the floor, I’ve watched Mrs. Henderson pull kids out of specials to catch up on missed reading practice. Mia’s not wrong: all these little things add up when you’re stuck in a room with 25 other people for seven hours a day, five days a week.
A few months ago, I ran across a simple developmental note that put this all in perspective for me: 9- to 10-year-olds are just hitting this stage where their brains can finally notice how other people’s habits are different from their own. Before that, they just sort of flow along with the group, but now they’re hyper-aware of every little thing that doesn’t match what they’d do. It’s not that they’re being rude or unkind—it’s that their brains are just starting to parse the gap between “how I am” and “how everyone else is.” Add that to the fact that most of these kids spent their early elementary years in and out of remote learning, with way more space and alone time than they get now in full, in-person school, and it’s no wonder every little tap or chew feels like a personal attack.
Over the past few months, I’ve figured out a few small things that work way better than my old “it’s not that bad” line. First, don’t jump to fix it or defend the “annoying” person right away. When I immediately say “Lily taps her foot because she has ADHD and needs to fidget to focus,” Mia hears that as “your feelings don’t matter, I’m taking her side.” Instead, I just let her vent for five minutes in the car, no interruptions. The concrete phrase I use now instead of brushing her off is “That sounds so frustrating. What did you do when that happened?” It takes two seconds, and it changes everything.
Second, help them sort the big problems from the tiny annoyances. A lot of kids lump everything into one big pile of “everyone is terrible.” We go through the list together: is someone hurting you or breaking your stuff on purpose? Is something making it impossible for you to do your work? That’s a big problem, we fix that. Is someone just doing something that bugs you, even if it’s not hurting anyone? That’s a small annoyance, and we can find a tiny way to make it better without asking the other person to change.
For example, the pencil tapping and eraser chewing bugging Mia during math. We talked about it, and she decided to ask her teacher if she could move her desk 18 inches to the left, next to the empty spot by the bookshelf. Her teacher said yes in 10 seconds, and that solved 90% of the problem. On days when they can’t move, she keeps a pair of soft foam earplugs (the kind we got for Fourth of July fireworks) in her pencil box, and she puts them in during silent work. No one minds, it doesn’t call attention to her, and it blocks the noise. It’s way easier than expecting Lily to stop fidgeting just for Mia.
Third, it’s okay to let your kid not like everyone. I used to pressure Mia to be nice and include everyone, even the people that bug her the most. But the truth is, no one likes everyone, and that’s a good lesson to learn early. As long as she’s not mean or excluding anyone on purpose, it’s totally fine for her to sit on the other end of the bench at lunch, or walk a little slower to recess to avoid the kid that keeps bugging her. Boundaries don’t have to be rude.
For actual big problems, like when Javi kept knocking Mia’s water bottle off her desk and spilling it on her homework, we practiced what to say. She role-played with me in the car: “Javi, please stop knocking my water bottle off my desk. It ruins my work.” If that didn’t work, she knew she could go straight to her teacher. She tried it, and Javi stopped almost immediately. He didn’t even realize he was doing it that often.
Last week, Mia came home and said, “Today only two people were annoying. That’s a new record.” We got mint chocolate chip ice cream on the way home to celebrate. Some days it’s still everyone. Some days I still slip up and say “it’s not that big of a deal” and Mia rolls her eyes and says “you’re annoying too” and I can’t even argue with that. We haven’t gotten rid of all the annoying people at school, and I don’t think we ever will. That’s just part of being around people all day. Right now, that’s enough.
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