Managing the After-School Restraint Collapse
Raise your hand if this sounds familiar: It’s the first day of school and you’re excitedly waiting in your car in the school pick-up line to greet your children. You’ve been wondering ALL day about how things are going, and so as soon as they enter the car, you rattle off questions: how’s your new teacher? Who did you sit next to at lunch? What was your favorite thing about your new classroom?…
However instead of shiny, happy faces beaming back at you in the rear-view mirror telling you all about the wonderful day they had, they’re whining, complaining and sulking. Maybe kicking the back of your seat as well, just for good measure. Welcome to the After-School Restraint Collapse.
This phenomenon is certainly not limited to the first day (or week) of school. It can happen any time and all of the time and still be completely normal. It means that your child has been holding it together and has been on their best behavior all day, and now that they’re safe in the comfort of the car with YOU, they can let it go. It can be frustrating and difficult to hold all these feelings for them, in addition to managing the disappointment of your own expectations.
Here are three things you can do to manage the After-School Restraint Collapse:
Reframe the situation: Remind yourself that this likely means your child did an awesome job keeping it together at school and THAT is an accomplishment. It also means that you are their soft place to land, and isn’t that exactly what we want to be for our children?
Model coping skills: Take a nice deep breath in through your nose and out through your mouth and turn the music down or change it to something soothing so that it’s not increasing stimulation or adding to the overwhelm for you or your child.
Resist the urge to join the chaos or give a lecture: Instead, make a simple comment about what you’re observing: “Wow, you have a lot of big feelings right now. I bet it’s hard to keep all of that in all day at school.”
