Does your child come home from school irritable, emotional, or overwhelmed, even when their teacher says they had a great day? For many children, managing the academic, social, and emotional demands of school takes more energy than we realize. By the time they get home, they may have little patience or flexibility left for even the smallest requests. Learn why after-school meltdowns happen, what they may tell us about your child's needs, and how parents can help make the transition home a little smoother.

When a child has a tantrum, it is often a very stressful, loud, overwhelming event for the parent, child, and those around them. As a parent, it is easy to get frustrated, upset and lose your cool during these big moments. In order to minimize these big, instinctual reactions when children display big feelings, parents must be proactive and prepared. It’s important to be able to approach big moments being cool, calm, and collected. But how, you may ask…

Being a kid is hard! They live in a world where they are constantly told what to do and most of their everyday tasks feel out of their control. Keeping this in mind can actually help you give your child more freedom, which will help them be even more independent. It’s all about picking and choosing how to direct their behavior.

Reflections are repetitions of what your child has just said. This can be a verbatim repeating of what they have shared or a summary. Using reflections during dysregulated moments helps your child to slow down their own thoughts and big feelings while also allowing them to feel heard by letting them know that you’re listening to them.

Children’s emotions typically follow a curve. They are calm, until something triggers them and their emotions intensify. If the child is unable to cope with their feelings, they reach a peak emotion, which is typically when we would see them hit, yell, kick, or cry. Sometimes, it feels like you are looking at a child you do not recognize during these peak emotions. During each stage of this curve, parents can react differently in order to minimize the size of the child’s reaction and alleviate emotional stress. In order to find what triggers big reactions in a child, parents need to be detectives.