As the school year winds to a close (or runs to the finish line!), stress levels can reach an all-year high. What’s going on? The parties are great, the field trips awesome, and everybody is looking forward to summer vacation. Along with this excitement come anxiety and apprehension. Finishing the school year means losing much that is familiar. Teachers change, friends sometimes move, routine disappears. There are school performances to attend, projects to complete, and goodbyes to be said everywhere.
All this can prompt a regression of sorts in children. Old losses are remembered, consciously or unconsciously. For children adopted at older ages, behaviors that had seemed under control can resurface. The child who once reacted to anxiety by hoarding food may once again need to hide food in her bedroom. The young man with the short fuse who worked so diligently at maintaining his composure in school suddenly ends up in the principal’s office twice in a week. And the normally happy younger child gets whiny and clingy every afternoon. What is a parent to do?
End-of-Year Strategies
Routine, routine, routine — that’s the mantra of parents who want to keep their children confident and calm at school and at home. But routines are often interrupted toward the end of the school year. Here are a few strategies for keeping chaos in check:
• Be gentle with your children. Acknowledge that you know this is a difficult time.
• Keep a general routine in place while maintaining some flexibility.
• Consider giving your child a mental health day during the last weeks of school. A breather can do both of you some good.
• Let your child’s teacher(s) know that you understand the pressures they are under. A thoughtful card or a quick phone call might make a big difference.
• Keep consequences consistent for misbehaviors, even as you understand where those behaviors are coming from.
• Be gentle with yourself! Eating fast food off paper plates in the back yard once in a while won’t kill anybody. Cut up watermelons and let the children get messy. Turn on the sprinklers and give them an outside shower.
• Allow kids to watch a video and chill out for a while after school if they seem burned out. This goes for big kids as well as little ones.
• Avoid introducing new or difficult concepts now. Have children complete homework, making notes of where they may be struggling. Then, find a way during the summer to work on those areas that need help.
•Pick a book to read together as a family — a short, easy one with great pictures. Even older kids are soothed by this activity.
•Give kids opportunities to be successful outside school, especially if they aren’t feeling particularly successful in school at the moment.
•Plan a celebration that reflects who you are as a family. A picnic, a special outing, a project — ask your children what they’d like to do. It’s a positive, affirming note on which to end the school year and a wonderful way to start the summer.
This article originally appeared in Adoption and the Schools: Resources for Parents and Teachers, edited by Lansing Wood and Nancy Ng. To order a copy, go to www.fairfamilies.org.
