As soon as they enter the car, as soon as you are away from others, sometimes as soon as they see you coming towards them or already in your arms hugged, they start crying.
Maybe they hold it all inside until you get home, letting go of their guard, slowly melting down or collapsing with tears, or even anger and frustration only after an hour at home. And you find yourself dreading these moments, crying from within, trying to understand what is going on, hoping for a simple, quiet afternoon together instead of ones that ask you to gather all your patience and hold it together for your child and possibly also their siblings.
After school overwhelm
When our children come home from school or any activity or outing overwhelmed, depleted, and either shut down or take it all out as soon as they see us, or as soon as we enter our home, holding it together is difficult.
So as a start, I’m inviting some self-compassion and a lot of deep trusting breaths.
Gaps…
The overwhelm so many children experience in schools may result from varying gaps.
Gaps between who they are and the system, event, gathering, and its members.
In kindergarten, one meets other children, teachers, possibly sometimes also other parents, and spends a few hours or more in an environment that may be energetically nourishing and possibly is not.
In a classroom, in addition to other children, teachers, and the environment, a child may also experience the gaps in learning. These could be based on challenges with sitting for a long time, the way the teacher explains something, the pace, too quick or too slow, and more.
Any gap expresses itself also in one’s energetics
Let’s briefly explore some of these gaps.
Other children, for example. Not all children get along.
Way before we consider the bully in the class and a child going through something challenging that our child nor we won’t know about, merely being with lots of other children, each carrying their own human gaps and energy, can challenge our energy field.
Our energy field naturally knows when it can expand and when to come closer to us.
The more others are around us, the more it contracts.
It’s not natural for us to be contracted. It’s okay for a short while. It’s not okay as a way of living.
Spending a lot of time in a space with a lot of others invites us to hold it also energetically for a long time.
This is true for any child.
If your child is to some extent also highly sensitive, empathic, intuitive, or spiritually aware, their challenge is doubled or tripled or more.
They all, each in a slightly different way, pick up energetic information where they are.
After school overwhelm causes for a highly sensitive child
A highly sensitive child will pick up subtleties of who the other children are and what their energy field communicates.
They sense and know about thoughts, emotions, sometimes see images of past lives of other children. They pick up all that goes on in between the lines.
This also includes a teacher who may have had a tough morning with her own children before she came to work. Maybe she wasn’t ready for the class and is confused about something.
They pick up everything.
Note that often not in awareness.
Sometimes it comes up as a lot of questions or talking about a topic for a long time because they bring themselves to focus on one thing, which helps them avoid the massive pool of information around them.
After school overwhelm causes for an empathic child
An empathic child will pick up on emotions, but not only. Literally. It’s not only feeling the emotions of others, but it is also often about taking them in, making them theirs.
Then they come home and need to unload. They actively, sometimes physically, try to push these emotions that are not theirs out of them, out of their own body.
They are not aware this is what they are doing. Their body knows it’s not theirs.
After school overwhelm causes for a spiritually aware child
Spiritually aware children, may also feel everything at the energetics of the classroom, and often also come with a healing mission.
Yet it is one thing to work with your abilities as an adult, knowing tools and also how not to take it all in, and a completely other thing to be a child in a crowded class, and even ten children is already considered very crowded for the highly sensitive, empathic, and/or spiritually aware, working with your gifts intuitively without awareness.
And while they offer beautiful gifts and healing, they are also still children in their human form, and their ability to integrate and choose is age-related.
Gradually, and with aligned guidance, they will learn to discern and work with their gifts in ways that will nourish them and not deplete them.
There are many gaps to consider. These can also be about what they are asked to learn, the how, and their teacher’s innate integrity.
So many children today are highly sensitive, empathic, intuitive, and/or spiritually aware. So for many, it is a combination of the challenges above.
Where to start? A first recommended step for parents
As initial steps in considering how to support your child, first, as always, observe not only them, but yourself.
What helps you release all that you pick up when out and about?
What helps you gather yourself?
Not because you now have to, but as a gradual, healthy process of regaining your breath and your flow.
Then observe what triggers them and what can help them.
The connection to grounding
I will return to this topic in future episodes, as there is so much more to understand.
As a start, after observing, open yourself to a deeper understanding of what grounding is and how it can help.
While grounding, being present or not is also only a symptom, understanding it will help in diving deeper.
Here are two posts to explore:
- Energetic grounding to our physical body: Are you grounded? Is your child?
- Energetic Grounding in Transformative Times
If you would like to learn more, I offer a free grounding mini-course.
It is available through the Stepping Into Spiritually Aware Parenting roadmap, which is also at no cost.
If you have specific questions that you would like me to explore in future episodes, please share them in the comments or privately by responding to one of my newsletters.
I would love to learn what you are experiencing and what helps your child.
Until next time, luminous blessings and light.
Why do some children cry, withdraw, or express anger after school? This episode, explores after-school overwhelm through a spiritually aware parenting perspective, including:
– Possible sources of overwhelm: crowded classrooms, social demands, and mismatches between a child’s learning needs and the school environment.
– Highly sensitive, empathic, and intuitive children: how heightened awareness of others and their surroundings may contribute to feeling depleted.
– Emotional release at home: why some children hold themselves together during the day and let their feelings out when reunited with a parent.
– First steps for parents: practice self-compassion and observe what triggers overwhelm and what helps your child recover.
– Exploring grounding: an introduction to grounding as a possible support for feeling present and reconnecting after a demanding day.
