The first week of school. What the complaints tell you.

The first-week-of-school complaints are consistent across the children I see and the families I know. Everything hurts. The school is too loud. The food is wrong. The teacher is different from last year. The work is hard. The locker doesn't work. The complaints pile up with an intensity that suggests catastrophe.

None of this is catastrophe. This is the nervous system recalibrating to a new set of demands after eight weeks of recalibration in the other direction. The school year requires the same nervous system that was resting in July to work at full capacity in September. The recalibration takes, in my experience, approximately ten to fourteen days. After that, the child is back.

None of this is catastrophe. This is the nervous system recalibrating. The recalibration takes approximately ten to fourteen days. After that, the child is back. By week two, in almost all cases, the complaints change character.

None of this is catastrophe. This is the nervous system recalibrating to a new set of demands after eight weeks of recalibration in the other direction. The recalibration takes approximately ten to fourteen days. The complaints of the first week are a sign of success, not failure. The locker will be fixed or it won't. The food will be acceptable or it won't. What helps is naming the general pattern.