The last weeks of school. The last mornings of this particular year.
On endings, transitions — and why children need adults who know how to grieve them.
My middle child has one teacher she has loved completely this year. Not in the performed way children sometimes love teachers — with drawings and compliments — but in the quiet, specific way that means she's actually been seen. She told me in March that she was 'getting sad already' about the end of the year. We were in March. The year had months left.
Children experience the end of a school year as a genuine loss. Not always, not all children — but the ones who have been held well by a class, a teacher, a particular friendship, are losing something specific and real when June comes.
Adults tend to handle this in one of two ways: dismissal ('you'll make new friends') or overload ('let's plan the whole summer so you won't be sad'). Both responses are avoidance. They tell the child, without meaning to, that the feeling they're having is not one we know how to sit with.
The research on children's grief — which applies to small losses and large ones alike — is consistent: children who are allowed to name and feel their losses, without being rushed toward resolution, develop substantially better emotional regulation than those whose losses are minimised or managed away.
My daughter was 'getting sad already' in March. The correct response was not to redirect her. The correct response was: 'Tell me what you'll miss.' And then to listen to all of it, without finding the silver lining.
Materials, steps, what to notice — the hands-on part that makes the edition usable at home with your children this week.
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