Why I Hate the End of the School Year (And What I Do To Help My Kid Cope)
Last Tuesday, my 10-year-old daughter Mia dragged her backpack through the front door and dropped it so hard a half-eaten bag of Goldfish spilled out across the entryway rug. She kicked the backpack into the corner, tossed her crumpled end-of-year memory book on the couch, and crossed her arms. “I hate the end of school,” she said, and my chest tightened because I knew exactly how she felt.
I’ve always hated the end of the school year too. When I was Mia’s age, I’d spend the week before break sneaking into the bathroom during recess to cry, while all my friends talked about summer camp and family trips. I thought I was just weird, until I had a kid of my own who gets the same tight, quiet look in her eye when the teacher starts talking about goodbyes.
This year, when Mia got home that Tuesday, the class had just talked about the end-of-year slideshow and the goodbye cards they’d write for Ms. Lee, her teacher who’s moving to third grade next fall. Mia and Ms. Lee have this thing: Ms. Lee keeps an extra pack of purple colored pencils just for Mia, because Mia always forgets hers and refuses to use any other color. When I asked Mia what’s the worst part, she said, “What if my new teacher doesn’t remember I need purple colored pencils? What if Lila gets a different best friend next year?”
That’s the thing no one talks about when they’re posting photos of end-of-year ice cream socials on Instagram: the end of the school year isn’t just a fun lead-up to summer. It’s a big, messy transition that involves a lot of small losses for kids. They lose the daily rhythm they’ve spent 9 months memorizing. They lose the adult who figured out their quirks—who knows they need a minute to reset after recess, who remembers they’re allergic to kiwi in the fruit cup. They lose the friend group that clicked just right this year, that knew all the inside jokes and where to sit at lunch. All the forced cheer about new beginnings just makes kids who are grieving the old beginning feel like they’re doing something wrong.
The first year Mia got this upset at the end of school, I did all the wrong things. I told her it was going to be fine, that summer would be fun, that she’d love her new teacher. I planned a big beach trip to get her excited. She just cried harder. Over the years, I’ve figured out small, low-friction things that work a lot better, and they don’t require any fancy planning or big budgets.
The first thing I do is I never push her to cheer up. Instead of saying “it’ll all be okay,” I say, “It makes total sense to be sad this year is ending. Ms. Lee does keep the best purple colored pencils, doesn’t she?” Just naming the specific thing she’s upset about, instead of brushing it off, takes half the tension away. It doesn’t fix the problem, but it lets her know it’s okay to feel upset, that she doesn’t have to put on a happy face just because everyone else is excited.
Next, we do this tiny, 10-minute ritual instead of the big scrapbooking I tried once that took me three hours and stressed everyone out. Every year, we pick three small things from this year’s school stuff to put in an old shoe box under her bed. This year, it was the ticket stub from our class field trip to the aquarium, the sticky note Ms. Lee wrote that said “great dog drawing,” and a nub of sidewalk chalk Mia used to play hopscotch with Lila every day. We don’t label them or glue them anywhere. We just put them in the box, close it up, and that’s it. It gives her a small, tangible way to hold onto the good parts of the year without forcing her to say goodbye.
I also send a two-sentence email to her new teacher the last week of school. It says: “Hi, this is Sarah, Mia’s mom. Mia is a little nervous about transitioning to fifth grade because she doesn’t love big changes. Would it be okay if we stopped by your classroom for five minutes after school one day this week to drop off a drawing she made? She just wants to say hi.” Almost every teacher has said yes. It’s five minutes of their time, and it lets Mia see the new classroom, meet her teacher, and get one small, low-pressure interaction in before the chaotic first day of school. No long meetings, no awkward introductions, just a quick hello.
Last week, when Mia’s class had their final practice for the goodbye assembly, she texted me (we have a cheap kid phone she keeps in her backpack) that her chest hurt and she wanted to leave. I checked her out an hour early, stopped at the gas station for a vanilla cone with sprinkles, and we drove around the neighborhood listening to her favorite Olivia Rodrigo playlist. We didn’t talk about school at all. That’s another thing I give myself permission to do: it’s okay to opt out of the forced fun if it’s too much. You don’t have to hit every end-of-year event to be a good parent, and your kid doesn’t have to love every tradition to be normal.
Some days this month, Mia still comes home upset, and I still hate how the whole end of the school year feels like one big party that no one let the kids who hate change RSVP to. We still have a few days left of school this year, and I know there will be more tears before it’s over. These small things don’t make the hard feelings go away completely, but they make it a little easier to carry them. And that’s enough, for now.
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