Back to School

Back to School 2024: Ten Minutes of Togetherness

Written by Kelsie Goller, MA, LPC-S, RPT

Clinical Director, KPS

In September 2023, I wrote an article entitled “Back to School: Overcoming Separation Anxiety”. (You can read it here if you are facing that challenge this year!  The first half of the article explains why this happens and the second half is packed with practical strategies for helping your child with this struggle.)  Now it is August and time for back to school once more, so this year I want to focus on the other end of the school day.  If separation anxiety most often rears its head during school mornings, the challenge for after school is reconnection.  

Reconnection is that moment in the day when you first see your child again after many hours of separation.  Much has happened in the intervening time- they have eaten lunch (which they may or may not have liked), engaged in hundreds of little interactions with peers (both positive and negative), run around outside and maybe gotten a scrape or bruise, engaged in multiple interactions with teachers, and learned many things.  By the time your child sees you again, they are often full to the brim with experiences and have been flooded with sensory input.  They are returning to the place that is hopefully their safe place to decompress.  

The challenge is that you as a parent may have also experienced hundreds of interactions, frustrations, and tasks throughout the day.  But the time of reconnection when you see your child again, whether that is in the carpool pick up line, after they have been dropped off on the bus, or after you return from work yourself, is a time to set all of that aside and engage your child with intentionality.  These transition times (home to school and school to home) are the small moments that have a big impact on building relationships.  Here are three keys for making the time of reconnection an intentional time of building attachment: 

• Most importantly, check your face.  Your face should communicate your delight in seeing your child again, no matter what has happened in your own day.  Your child is not responsible for (and does not know about) the challenging situation that came up at work today, the annoying calls to the insurance company about getting doctor’s bills straightened out, or the interpersonal conflicts you faced with others throughout the day.  At this moment, they only know whether or not you look happy to see them.  Young children have egocentric thinking, a normal stage of development which means that they believe that everything that happens relates to them.  Therefore, a frustrated or unhappy expression on the parent will be interpreted by the child that the parent is frustrated or unhappy with them.  That makes it all the more important to communicate on your face that you are delighted to see your child again.  

• When you are trying to reconnect after school through conversation, try to avoid asking “How was school?”  This question is too vague for most kids and usually results in the equally vague answer, “Fine.”  Choose better questions, such as some of my favorites: “Were you kind to others today?  Were others kind to you?”  “What made you laugh today or what did you think was silly?”  “Did you learn a cool new fact?”  “Were you bored anytime today?” “What was your high and your low for the day?” (i.e. the best part and worst part of the day)  It may help to have food or fidget toys while talking.  Making sure that kids have a snack and a drink after school is a big part of helping the nervous system to return to a state of calm.  It may also help to have this conversation while pushing the child on the swing, cuddled up on the couch, or going for a short walk.  

• Allow for sensory decompression.  As mentioned earlier, children have been flooded with sensory input all day- loud noises, cafeteria smells and tastes, kids bumping into them, and so on.  Some children are more sensitive to this than others, but all could benefit from sensory decompression.  It may help them to swing or go for a short walk or sit quietly and listen to music/read, depending on the child.  Find their sensory decompression style and try to provide that for them.  

In this generation of students where multiple after-school activities and homework are the norm,  it is important to note that these things don’t need to take a lot of time.  It only takes a moment to prepare our faces to communicate delight to our children when we first see them.  It may only take ten minutes to talk with them about their day and then send them on their way towards sensory decompression.  But this valuable ten minutes can set the tone for the rest of our afternoon and evening, so be intentional to set aside this ten minutes of togetherness.  As author Shauna Niequist says, “Life is a collection of a million tiny little moments and choices, like a handful of luminous pearls. Strung together, lined up through the days and the years, they make a life.”  These regular ten minutes of togetherness in your child’s day may be some of the pearls of their life!