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After school meltdowns (article)


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This came up on my FB page.

 

Not sure if it's been posted before (date?) but seems applicable to afterschooling.

 

We have emotional regulation issues here anyways. But a read-aloud gets extra hard if there's a sudden crying fit in the middle of it. Sigh.

 

But what I can understand I can work with.

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Yeah, we're having problems here as well, and I've been doing pretty much everything in the article. (Although I am bombarding her right away with questions about her day, oops.) DD just started her first year of PS (1st grade), and she's doing really well in school, but we're having worse problems at home than we ever have. Two years ago was my hardest parenting year ever, a year later it led to her ADHD diagnosis, and she's even more out of control than she was then. I know the reason for the defiance and furniture climbing and easy tears, and I know school is still brand new for her and a huge adjustment, but that doesn't make it any easier for either of us. Hopefully it gets better, I hate only seeing the worst of her...Looking forward to the weekend.

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One helpful thing is to provide them with the sensory diet they need. The article mentions music...that is not helpful for the child who is frazzled from the screamers and criers...quiet may be a better choice. Or water, as in swimming...whatever they normally do to calm their developing nervous system.

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Luckily for me, my mom passed this wisdom along when I was young.  She always said she was glad she had the kind of kids who behaved outside of the house, even though that meant they brought it all home.  Much easier to deal with it at home than to get notes from the teacher and wonder what the heck you can do about it.

 

As for asking them questions, I learned years ago that if I was going to get anything out of them at all, I'd better start with easy questions like:  what did you have for lunch?  Was it good?  Did you have gym today?  What did you do at recess?  Stuff that isn't stressful to think and talk about (at least for my kids).  Next I ask, "how was your teacher today?"  Then eventually they feel like pouring out the less happy stuff that may have happened.

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Food! My oldest had a sugar low issue when he attended public school because there was not enough time to eat much and he is a slow eater. 20 mins of lunch is not enough for him to eat finish a sandwich and a 250ml pack of milk. So I actually brought snacks when I picked him up from school at 2:15pm. He ate on the walk home.

 

Even though we homeschool now, we still have to feed DS11 when we pick him up from German or swimming or music lessons or he is out of sorts.

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After school crankiness is exactly why I've been doing the bulk of our after schooling in the morning BEFORE the school day. :P

 

Afterschool we mostly just read together. 

 

I agree that snacks are hugely important. If we get any learning done in the evening it's with a snack or a Popsicle. 

 

One thing I'm surprised the article doesn't mention is sleep. Lots of cranky students are not getting enough sleep at night...I know if DD gets a solid 11 hours I'm probably going to have a good evening cooperator, but if she has trouble falling asleep on time (even just a little less than 10.5 hours at night) she's burned out by 4 pm and I shouldn't push it. 

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