Why your child has meltdowns - and how to deal with them

5 days ago
8 min read

Updated: 4 days ago

You pick your child up from nursery, kindergarten or school, expecting the reunion you've been imagining all day. You know the one: You appear at the door and their face lights up. They run towards you in slow motion, launch themselves into your arms, cover your face in kisses and spend the walk home telling you every delightful detail of their day.

Instead, they throw themselves on the floor because you put their shoe on the wrong foot.

They cry because you gave them the banana they asked for.

They scream in the car, refuse to get out when you arrive home, and then spend the next two hours whining and objecting to dinner, pyjamas, teeth brushing and the general injustice of being alive.

Eventually, they fall asleep.

You stand in the doorway wondering what on earth happened to your lovely child.

First, don't worry. We've all been there.

Second, there is something important to understand about what your child may be experiencing, particularly when they have just started somewhere new.

Starting a new nursery, kindergarten, school, playgroup or even a weekly Mummy & Me class is a much bigger deal for a young child than it looks from the outside.

Think about your first day at work

Ah that first day of work.

You walked into an unfamiliar building and immediately had to figure out where to go, who everyone was, where the toilets were and whether you were supposed to make coffee in the communal kitchen or whether that was somehow a capital offence.

Then came the introductions - lots of them.

Names you absolutely intended to remember and immediately forgot.

You had to listen carefully, absorb new information, work out what was expected of you, understand the unspoken rules, find your place in the team and somehow look competent while internally thinking, What on earth am I doing here?

By lunchtime your brain was probably operating on approximately seventeen remaining percent.

And you were an adult. You already understood how workplaces worked. You knew that eventually you would learn people's names and that if you couldn't find the printer, there was probably someone you could ask.

Now imagine doing all of that when you are two, three, four or five years old.

You are trying to understand a completely new environment while still figuring out how the world works in the first place.

Who are these people?

Where is Mum?

Who do I ask if I need the toilet?

When do we eat?

What happens if I want the blue crayon?

Where do I sit?

What happens at lunch?

Who is going to help me?

What are the rules here?

And perhaps most importantly: Am I safe here?

That is an enormous amount of information for a small nervous system to process.

And your child has to do it while also navigating separation from you, new relationships, new expectations, unfamiliar sensory experiences and the exhausting business of behaving appropriately in a group.

Wowza - that is a lot to deal with for such a tiny human.

Your child's body knows this is a big deal

There is some fascinating research on what happens physiologically when children start school.

In a 2022 study (2022 Leblond et al.), researchers followed 384 children as they moved from preschool into kindergarten and measured their morning cortisol, one of the hormones involved in the body's stress response, at several points before and after school entry.

Most children's cortisol increased during the first two weeks of school.

The researchers described school entry as a normative environmental stressor, meaning that the transition itself can place a perfectly ordinary demand on children's stress systems. I know what you are thinking: "I knew school / kindergarten/ nursery is ruining my child...":) It is not. Starting school is not harmful - it simply requires adaptation and help from their favourite person - you.

When your child starts something new, their brain is taking in an enormous amount of new information, their relationships & routines are changing. They are working out how to function in a new social world.

Their stress system is part of that adaptation.

The study also found that children differed in how quickly their stress response settled after the transition, which is a useful reminder that there is no universal timeline for "settling in." Some children adapt quickly. Others need considerably more time.

So when your child comes home after a big day and falls apart, it may help to stop thinking, Why are they behaving like this?

A more useful question is:

What have they been holding together all day?

Enter: the evening meltdown

This is where things get interesting. A meltdown happens when a child's emotional and physiological arousal becomes greater than their ability to regulate it in that moment.

They may cry intensely, scream, collapse onto the floor, become physically agitated or seem completely unable to communicate what is wrong.

And the thing that finally triggers it is often something small:

The cup is the wrong colour / you cut the toast / you put the sock on before the trousers / someone breathed near them...

The trigger can look ridiculous because it often isn't the real problem - It is simply the final straw.

Your child may already be tired, hungry, overstimulated and emotionally full from spending hours navigating a new environment. Add one more tiny demand and their capacity tips over.

Now, picture a balloon

I'd like you to try a little experiment.

Blow up a balloon and hold it underwater.

While you are holding it down, the balloon is under pressure. It is being contained by something stronger than its natural tendency to rise.

Now let it go. It shoots upwards.

That is a useful way to picture what can happen after a long day in a new environment.

Your child has spent hours holding themselves together. They have been listening, watching, waiting, following instructions, navigating relationships, managing frustration, separating from you and working out what is expected of them.

Then they see you, their safe person, the person with whom they don't have to work quite so hard to hold everything together.

And suddenly the balloon comes out of the water.

The tears arrive, the clinginess, the wild energy, the refusal to put shoes on.

The complete collapse because you served dinner on the wrong plate.

It can feel as though they are behaving worse because you have arrived. In reality, your arrival may be part of what makes the release possible.

Home is where they can finally stop managing the outside world.

So what should you do?

This is the part where we are tempted to respond with more management.

"Calm down."

"Stop crying."

"Use your words."

"That is ridiculous."

"You're fine."

"Why are you behaving like this?"

Which is understandable, particularly when you have your own nervous system approaching its daily limit and dinner is still somehow not cooked. But when a child is highly dysregulated, reasoning is unlikely to be your most effective first move. They need help coming back down before they are ready to process, explain or problem-solve. So instead of trying to stop the release, think about creating a softer landing.

Here are my top 3 end of day rituals for a smoother transition

1. Create a soft landing

The first few minutes after collection matter.

Rather than immediately launching into questions, instructions and the logistics of the evening, give them a little time to reconnect with you:

A long hug, a snack, a cuddle in the buggy, a few quiet minutes together.

You don't need to interrogate them about their day the moment they get into the car. They have already had a full day. Sometimes the most useful thing you can say is simply, "I'm so happy to see you." Then let them come back to you.

2. Give them somewhere for the pressure to go

Children often need a physical or sensory way to decompress after a demanding day.

For some children that means running, jumping (yes, even on the sofa if you allow it), climbing or rough-and-tumble play. This is my children's favourite, which I find particularly baffling because after a long day I would personally prefer everyone in the house to sit quietly and contemplate their life choices....

But if physical play helps your child discharge some of that energy, let them move.

Other children need the opposite.

A quiet book, water play, playdough, a cuddle, some time alone.

There isn't one correct release valve. Watch your child and work out what helps their particular system come back towards calm.

3. Lower the evening's demands

This may be the most underrated parenting strategy of all.

If your child has spent the day adapting to a new environment, the evening may not be the moment to add another twelve things to their cognitive workload.

Keep routines predictable & expectations realistic. Give choices where you can.

Protect food and sleep.

And when something small goes spectacularly sideways, remind yourself that you may be looking at the overflow from an entire day rather than a child suddenly deciding to become difficult at 17:42.

That shift in perspective can change your response.

And your response matters.

This happened to my six-year-old

My six-year-old recently started a new primary school.

Everything was new: children, teachers, routines; a completely different layout, recess, lunch in the school canteen, which had never been part of her life before. And the entire programme was in German.

By anyone's standards, that is a lot of newness to absorb in one day.

She held it together really well. Until dinner - then she went Elsa-mode and she just let it go: The tears were free-falling, her whole body was tense, she was trying to speak, but the words simply weren't coming.

My first instinct was the one most mothers know very well:

I want to fix this.

I wanted to make it easier for her. I wanted to take away whatever had made the day so difficult. I wanted to somehow smooth the road ahead so she wouldn't have to struggle.

But I can't do that, and ultimately, I shouldn't. Part of building resilience is allowing our children to encounter difficult things while knowing they don't have to face them alone. So I hugged her and whispered, "Do you want to go and sit by the river with me? Just you and me?" She nodded.

We walked down to the river in front of our house and sat together, wrapped around each other. And once she was somewhere quiet, somewhere familiar, with no one asking anything of her and nowhere she needed to be, the stories started coming, and all I needed to to was just be there while she made sense of her day.

That is often what our children need from us after a big transition - a safe place to land.

And when the meltdown comes?

Get close if they want you close.

Keep your voice low.

Reduce the number of words.

Make sure everyone is safe.

...and when they have calmed down, that is when you can talk.

You might say, "You had a really big day today. I think your body was exhausted."

Or, "It seemed like everything became too much after dinner. I wonder if you were still carrying some of the hard parts of today."

Over time, this helps your child begin to make sense of their own internal experience.

They start to recognise, I'm tired. That was overwhelming. I need some quiet. I need Mum.

That is part of how emotional regulation develops.

If you enjoyed this article, you will also LOVE

Reacting Vs Responding to your child's behavior

PS. At the beginning of the year I ran a survey about the experience we have of early motherhood: the expectations, guilt, pressure to have it all and be it all, preferably at the same time.

I have published the findings in the Phoenix Report - Burning the Bounce Back Myth of Early Motherhood: Download it for free!

Here's to raising smarter, more confident & resilient children - and more often than not, it starts with us.