We can all relate to having a child come home from school on a bad foot. Knowing how to pick up the pieces from their bad day can be hard, especially when we don’t understand the cause.
Trying to help with a load of questions might make it worse and turn a tough day into a full-on tantrum in seconds. So what can you do?
When we give our kids time and space to process their emotions safely, we let them develop their emotional processing abilities in a secure environment.
Your home is their sanctuary; kids can be tired, grumpy, or moody, and some days, having those feelings in a safe space is precisely what’s needed to let off steam after a tough day at school.
You won’t be able to stop them from having a bad day, but you can help them reset once they are home. Here are some ideas from the team at our Atlanta Christian school.
1. Let Them Vent
Have you ever just needed to get a problem off your chest? It is the same for kids. They are still developing their language skills, and it can be harder for them to express themselves when they are feeling big emotions.
Give them time to vent because, at that moment, they do not need answers or helpful suggestions. They need to get it all out.
2. Hug it Out
Once they have ranted, you can hug them. Hugs from parents make kids feel safe and give reassurance. When kids get a hug, their brain releases oxytocin, the love hormone. Oxytocin increases emotional bonds and helps with social recognition and learning.
Hugging it out after an emotional outburst reinforces constructive solutions for bad days.
3. Change the Scenery
Your child is finally home from school. So what next? On a typical day, this might be the time for your after-school routine—maybe homework or chores.
But after a tough day, kids need a little more time to regulate and might struggle to go straight into their normal routine. Try changing the setting. Take a walk together in nature. The sights, sounds, and smells of the outside can have a calming influence and be a great reset for everyone.
4. Encourage Everyone to Talk
Talking about our emotions is a learned skill. It does not come naturally for everyone, and we need to teach our kids how to do it.
Ask open-ended questions about their day, like “How are you feeling about X?” or “Why do you think Y happened?” Open questions help kids identify and describe their emotions. Younger kids might need a second question to help them work out the specific emotion they are feeling. For example, you could ask: “Are you feeling good or bad about X?” or “Did X make you feel sad, tired, embarrassed, mad, or something else?”
These conversations can help kids feel like home is a safe space to communicate. They can validate kids and boost their self-esteem; on bad days, they can speed up the reset process.
5. Nurture Positive Perspectives
We have all been there: We find something so frustrating that we shout, “Ugh, I just can’t do this!” Kids get the same feeling, but it can have a considerable knock-on impact. They don’t know that the feeling is only frustration, and their negative thoughts can take over.
Let’s take math. You may remember having bad days at school when you learned something new in math and couldn’t quite catch on to it right away. You might have gotten upset and declared, “I will never understand!” or “I’m too stupid to do this.”
Negative perspectives are normal but left unchecked, they can harm a child’s self-esteem. If that negative thought is related to learning, like in the math example above, it could build an emotional barrier and lead to more bad days.
Encourage kids to put a positive spin on difficult situations. As their grown-ups, we know that it is just not true that they are “too stupid” or “will never understand.” So we encourage them to rephrase to something like “I don’t understand now, but with practice, I will,” or “I need more time to get this right.”
Positive affirmations help to nurture an enduring, positive perspective. Try something together called “Two Stars and a Wish,” where you share two awesome things from your day and one thing you wish had gone differently.
6. Practice Gratitude
Along with positivity, encourage gratitude. Keep a family gratitude jar or journal by the kitchen table and have the whole family share at least one thing they are grateful for during dinner.
7. Get Your Bodies Moving
Our bodies do not like to be still all the time. When kids have to sit quietly at school for an extended time, they can end up feeling big emotions and making poor choices.
To improve the mood, get some wiggles out. When your child first gets home, kick off a dance party, take a walk, play a game of tag, or throw a ball.
Movement offers so many health benefits. It triggers the release of endorphins, which helps kids feel good and reduce stress and anxiety. It helps kids burn off excess energy and let go of tension.
8. Draw a Line on the Day
Whatever happened that day ends at bedtime, and the next day is a fresh start. Mark the day off on the calendar to officially put it to rest.
Bad Days Will Happen
It is normal to have the odd bad day. How we handle a bad day is up to us.
When kids can talk about their feelings and have a safe space to work them out, they will develop emotional skills and resilience for dealing with those inevitable bad days.