I can hear my hollering child’s words a second time, because they have echoed off of the houses on our street. She is explaining to me how her after school will proceed and it will not include homework or chores. For the life of me, I cannot figure out how we went from hugs of delight when she first saw me at school to this screaming creature informing our entire neighborhood of her displeasure. Once we finally arrive home things do not improve and I am online trying to solve the after school transition blues. How am I going to solve after school meltdowns?
I empathize with the struggle of being a child. They have been at school for seven hours. They have listened to a lot of grown ups. They have moved from here, to there, to everywhere at someone else’s whims. They have played nicely with peers even if they didn’t want to play some other kid’s game. Our children have been stretched, and grown, and now they are done. But, I empathize with myself as well. I have been working wether in my home or at another location. I have gone here there and everywhere taking care of the minutiae and essentials that help our family function. I have chosen to go along with other people in the spirit of compromise and expediency. I too have struggled.
So, what are these tired humans going to do? How will we get through this daily transition without epic after school meltdowns? I offer up for you a method that is helping us make it through one day at a time. Once I began using these steps, even “imperfectly” our after school chaos shrunk considerable. Now, there are peaceful moments in a time that used to be only stress. Do you want to give it a try?
Step 1: Define Your Goal and Evaluate
When you visualize an ideal after school transition, what do you see? Is your child skipping along, singing the song she just learned in second grade and regaling you with tales of her learning adventures? Are you having a meaningful conversations about his day? In your minds eye are you driving in the car and no one is yelling? What do you want the after school window to be for your family?
Secretly, I want after school to be the skipping, story book version of events even though it is not logical. Once I identified that my hope was unrealistic based on my children’s current capacities and personalities, I started to build a more obtainable objective. I settled here. My goal is conversations without yelling, to reestablish belonging in the family culture, and accomplish a few tasks from my list of needs but not my list of wants. (Sigh). In my minds eye, as we walk home down our little street, I only hear my daughter’s words once because there is no echo from her after school melt downs.
Step 2: Build in a Buffer and Adjust Accomplishment Expectations
If at all possible, slow down the timeline. How, you may ask, can a person accomplish this? Do Less Things! Now, you are incredulously calling me a crazy. Do Less Things? Impossible! Some days this is impossible. Other days, you can strike things off the list of things to do. Whether you can simplify or not, insist on a pause. Let your family and kids guide the length, but add in a quiet moment. If quiet doesn’t suit your family, add in a care-free moment that offers respite.
There seems to be enormous pressure to accomplish all of the things in the brief window between school and dinner and bed. What happens if we take out some of those pressures? If the list includes snack, chores, homework and free time, can any of those things shift? In the previous step you evaluated your family unit’s capacity to accomplish what “needs to be done.” Now is the time to actually adjust those expectations. What is a need and what is a want? Decide and then communicate clearly to your crew what the manageable plan is going to be.
Step 3: Obtain Student Buy-In
This is easier said than done, but I have experienced great success with this tool. On the weekend, or during a car ride take a survey. How has your child experienced after school? Do they like how things have gone? If not, get their ideas for a solution. Turn this into a collective family hurdle to be leaped over in tandem. Once you have a plan, write it down. Use voice to text, a grocery store receipt or have your student scrawl it somewhere. Commit to your plan for a week, and then double down with the commitment to evaluate and tweak the plan. This may seem like “too much work” but in my experience the recording, evaluation and revision steps are key parts of the alchemy that helps this work long term.
At the end of the day, whether we have regaled our street with our theatrics or been a picture perfect vision of a family, we end our hours with a hug and I love you. We accomplish our goals and we don’t quite hit the mark. When I don’t act as I want to, I employ the circle back technique. And after my kiddos are sleeping I try to peak in on them. I look at the curve of their cheeks and remember they are “just little.” Then, I go do some type of self care, because tomorrow I will get to try again. I invite you to try this 3 step method to end after school meltdowns. Use a few minutes of your limited down time and make your own plan. And if you get a spare second, send me a message or drop a comment. Let me know if these tools worked for you. You might even consider telling a friend.