On the first day of school this week, I watched a boy named Eli walk into my classroom with his shoulders back and his brand new sneakers squeaking against the floor like he was proud of the sound. He hung his backpack on the hook with his name on it, found his seat without being told twice, and raised his hand to answer a question before I had even finished asking it. His mom lingered by the door a beat too long, the way parents do, and I gave her the nod that means go, he’s got this. He did.

I always want to bottle that first day. Not because it’s the easiest day of the school year, it usually isn’t, but because it’s the most deceiving one. Kids show up to day one running on adrenaline and new marker smell. Parents show up relieved that the summer scramble is finally, officially over. Everyone is on their best behavior, including me.

Then comes week two.

This is the part of teaching I wish someone had warned me about early in my career, and it’s the part I now warn new parents about every single September. The kid who walked in confident on day one is often the same kid crying at drop off eight days later. The kid who came home from the first day chattering about her new teacher goes quiet in the car a week later, or worse, falls apart over something that has nothing to do with school at all: a broken cracker, the wrong color cup, a sibling breathing too loudly.

Parents tend to panic here. They call me. They ask if something happened, if another kid said something, if their child is regressing. And almost every year, the honest answer is no, nothing happened. This is just what week two looks like.
Here’s what’s actually going on, from a teacher’s side of it. Day one runs on adrenaline, and adrenaline is not a sustainable fuel source for a six year old, or for any of us. It gets kids through the newness: the new room, the new rules, the new faces, all of it held together by the sheer novelty of the thing. By the second week, the novelty has worn off, but the actual demands of the school day have not. If anything, that’s when they ramp up. Routines that were explained once on day one are now expected to be followed. The pace picks up. The stamina required to sit, listen, transition, and regulate for six hours a day catches up with a nervous system that was never built to run on adrenaline alone for very long.
So the meltdown at pickup, the tears over nothing, the sudden refusal to get dressed in the morning, none of that is a step backward. It’s closer to the opposite. It’s a child’s system finally being honest with you about how much effort the last week and a half actually took. The mask that got them through day one has come off, and it’s coming off with you, at home, in the safest place they have, because that is exactly where it’s supposed to come off.

I tell parents this every year, and I watch the relief land on their faces the same way every time. Somehow, hearing “this is normal, and it actually means your child feels safe enough to fall apart with you” changes the whole week. It’s not a discipline problem to fix. It’s not a sign the school year is already going wrong. It’s a nervous system catching its breath.

What actually helps in week two has very little to do with sticker charts or stern conversations about behavior. It has much more to do with lowering the bar everywhere you can. This is not the week for a jam packed after school schedule or a big weekend of errands stacked on top of an already exhausted kid. It’s the week for an earlier bedtime than feels necessary, a simpler dinner, a slower morning even if that means everyone gets up ten minutes earlier so nobody has to rush. It’s the week to expect less from your child after three in the afternoon, and to not take the after school crash personally, even when it’s aimed directly at you.

For teachers reading this, the same grace applies inside the classroom. The behavior that shows up in week two, the wiggliness, the shorter fuses, the kid who suddenly can’t sit through a lesson that was fine seven days ago, is rarely a discipline issue underneath it. It responds far better to a slower transition, a predictable routine, and a little extra warmth than it does to a firmer hand. And for grandparents or caregivers covering pickup this month, know that the version of the kid you get in the afternoon is often the most tired, most honest version of them all day. That’s not a bad sign. That’s trust.

By week three or four, for most kids, the adrenaline gives way to something steadier: an actual rhythm, built out of routine instead of excitement. That’s the version of the school year that lasts. But you have to get through the slump to reach it, and it helps enormously to know, walking in, that the slump is coming, that it isn’t a warning sign, and that it ends.

If you’re heading into this school year with a little one of your own, whether Tuesday was your family’s first day or you’re still a week out, know that the hard part isn’t the first morning. It’s the one that sneaks up on you a week or two later. You aren’t doing anything wrong. You’re just watching your kid catch up to how much they’ve been carrying.

If you’re looking for simple, low-pressure ways to keep the learning momentum going once the adrenaline wears off, whether at home or in the classroom, I share printable activity packs for ages 3 to 6 in my Etsy shop, along with sight words and early reading books on Amazon.