The Hidden Reason Children’s Behavior Changes During the Last Six Weeks of School
- 4 days ago
- 7 min read
Dr. Victoria A. Elasic is the founder of Oak & River and a coach specialising in whole-system recalibration for high-capacity women navigating demanding careers, complex family systems, and competitive educational environments.
Maya is six years old, and until recently, she loved school. She bounded into her classroom each morning with excitement, wrapped her arms around her teacher during greeting time, proudly completed her work, and eagerly shared stories about her day at the dinner table each evening. Her teacher described her as joyful, engaged, kind, and deeply connected to the classroom community.
But sometime during the final weeks of school, something shifted. Maya suddenly became more emotional and irritable at home. Mornings grew harder. She no longer wanted to go to school. Small frustrations turned into tears. She became clingier with her mother and more reactive with her siblings.
At school, her teacher noticed changes too. Maya struggled more during transitions, became distracted during activities she once loved, and seemed unusually sensitive to corrections or changes in routine. Other children in the classroom appeared different too: louder, sillier, more emotional, more dysregulated. Maya’s mother was confused.
As a teacher herself, she recognized the pattern immediately. She had seen similar behavior changes emerge in classrooms every spring during the final six weeks before summer break. Despite years in education, she realized something surprising:
No one had ever really taught her why this happens, and resources were not readily available when she sought clarity and strategies for supporting her little one.
There were endless resources about academic readiness, behavior management, and summer learning loss, but very little discussion about the emotional and environmental experiences children go through as the school year begins to close.
What if children like Maya are not simply “acting out” at the end of the school year? What if they are responding to something much deeper?
Every year, it happens almost predictably. A class that once felt calm, connected, and steady suddenly becomes louder, more emotional, more impulsive, or more dysregulated as summer approaches. Teachers begin noticing increased conflict, clinginess, tears, defiance, distraction, regressions, or emotional outbursts, even from children who are typically confident and well-regulated.
Parents often notice it too. Children who seemed settled throughout the year suddenly become more sensitive, anxious, irritable, emotional, or exhausted in the final weeks before summer break. Adults frequently interpret this as children “checking out” for summer.
Consider this, "What if something deeper is happening?" What if many children are not celebrating the transition into summer, but grieving the loss of the environment that helped them feel safe, connected, regulated, and seen?
Children experience school as an emotional ecosystem
Adults often think of school primarily as an academic environment. Children do not.
Especially in the elementary and primary years, children experience school as an entire emotional ecosystem. Research on school belonging increasingly shows that teacher relationships, emotional safety, and school connectedness significantly influence children’s wellbeing and sense of security within school environments.
For many children, the classroom provides predictable rhythms, emotional connection, relational safety, sensory consistency, routines and rituals, community belonging, encouragement and celebration, meals and physical care, movement and outdoor play, adult attention and co-regulation, and opportunities for competence and identity.
In many cases, particularly within under-resourced communities or high-stress family environments, school may be one of the most emotionally stable and responsive places in a child’s life.
Children bond deeply with their teachers, classmates, routines, and classroom environments. Unlike adults, children do not yet fully understand time, transitions, or temporary endings in the way we do.
To adults, summer break may feel exciting and temporary. To children, it can feel uncertain, disorienting, and emotionally enormous.
The invisible environmental shifts adults often miss
One of the most important things educators and caregivers can understand is this: Children often sense environmental changes long before adults explicitly discuss them.
In Montessori education, we understand that children absorb environmental information constantly, not only through direct instruction but through tone, rhythm, energy, movement, pacing, and relational shifts.
Long before the final day of school arrives, children begin noticing subtle changes such as altered routines, less structured academics, schedule disruptions, countdown conversations, teachers packing classrooms, end-of-year testing, field days and assemblies, emotional shifts in adults, changing expectations, substitute teachers, classmates moving away, and discussions about summer plans they may not share.
Even when adults perceive these as positive or harmless changes, children’s nervous systems often interpret them as signals that something important is changing. When children cannot fully articulate those feelings, the emotions frequently emerge through behavior.
Behavior is often communication, not defiance
Montessori philosophy and other relationship-centered educational approaches remind us that children often communicate emotional experiences through behavior long before they can articulate them through words.
A child who suddenly becomes more emotional, oppositional, silly, clingy, or withdrawn may not be “misbehaving”; they may be communicating uncertainty, anticipatory grief, anxiety about change, fear of losing attachment, sensory overwhelm, confusion about expectations, loss of predictability, concern about what summer will feel like, and worry about next year’s teacher or classroom.
This is especially true for children who rely heavily on external structure and co-regulation. Children who are neurodivergent, highly sensitive, anxious, or carrying significant stress outside of school may experience the end of the school year as a major nervous-system disruption.
Their behavior is not random. It is adaptive.
A reflective tool for teachers and caregivers
To help educators and families better understand the invisible emotional load children may be carrying during end-of-year transitions, I created a free reflective resource called:
The End-of-Year Transition Compass
Inspired by Oak & River’s environment-based approach, the worksheet helps adults reflect on predictability and rhythm, emotional safety, nervous-system load, transition awareness, belonging and connection, and summer preparedness.
Rather than asking, “How do we stop the behavior?” the tool encourages adults to ask, “What environmental changes might this child be responding to right now?”
Access the free worksheet here.
Why transitions matter so deeply in childhood
Developmentally, young children experience time differently from adults. Six weeks may feel manageable to us. To a child, it can feel enormous.
When transitions are named, visualized, discussed, and emotionally held by trusted adults, children are more likely to move through them with confidence and security. The goal is not to eliminate emotion but to help children feel safe enough to process it.
In Montessori education, there is a concept known as indirect preparation, intentionally preparing children emotionally, cognitively, and environmentally for what comes next before transitions occur.
Children feel safer when change is named, visualized, discussed, emotionally supported, and woven into predictable rhythms.
When transitions are abrupt, unpredictable, or emotionally unsupported, children often experience dysregulation. However, when adults intentionally prepare children ahead of time, children are more likely to move through change with confidence, security, and emotional steadiness.
Sometimes, what looks like “end-of-year behavior” is actually a child trying to hold onto a place, a relationship, or a feeling of safety they are not yet ready to lose.
Practical ways teachers can support children in the final weeks of school
1. Name the transition openly
Children often feel calmer when adults gently acknowledge what is happening. Simple language matters:
“We are getting close to the end of our school year.”
“A lot of children have big feelings during this time.”
“Even exciting changes can feel emotional.”
“Your classroom memories and relationships matter.”
Naming emotions reduces uncertainty.
2. Use visual timelines and countdowns
Children benefit enormously from visual representations of time, such as paper chain countdowns, classroom calendars, visual schedules, “what to expect” boards, and transition maps for summer and next year.
This helps children feel cognitively oriented instead of emotionally overwhelmed.
3. Preserve connection and belonging
Children often fear being forgotten, and memory-building activities can be profoundly regulating, including classroom memory books, shared photographs, letters from teachers, class reflections, “favorite memories” circles, autograph books, portfolios of work, and class videos.
These tangible reminders help children understand: “This mattered. You mattered. The relationship was real.”
4. Maintain as much rhythm and predictability as possible
While flexibility naturally increases near summer, maintaining familiar routines can significantly support regulation. Predictable morning meetings, consistent expectations, familiar transitions, and structured classroom rhythms provide emotional safety during periods of change.
Children often need more structure during transitions, not less.
5. Prepare children for summer in concrete ways
Many children feel anxious simply because summer feels abstract. Help make summer understandable for children by discussing what summer days may look like, brainstorming activities, creating “summer idea” lists, talking about camps, parks, libraries, routines, or family traditions, encouraging continued reading and creativity, and helping children identify safe adults and comforting routines.
The more predictable summer feels, the safer children often feel emotionally.
6. Support parents in understanding the transition
Parents may unintentionally interpret increased emotionality as behavioral problems without recognizing the developmental context, and schools can help by sharing transition guidance, emotional regulation strategies, visual schedule ideas, summer rhythm suggestions, and reminders that regression or emotional sensitivity can be normal during major transitions.
When adults understand the “why,” they often respond with greater compassion and steadiness.
Children do not simply leave environments, they carry them
One of the most important truths educators learn is that classrooms are never “just classrooms.” They become emotional worlds.
Research on school belonging increasingly shows that children experience schools as emotional and relational ecosystems, not simply academic environments. For many children, the classroom provides far more than academics alone: rhythm, belonging, predictability, co-regulation, encouragement, and relational security.
Children carry the feeling of those environments long after the school year ends; a child may not remember every lesson taught, but they do remember how safe they felt, whether they belonged, who noticed them, who celebrated them, who helped them regulate, whether school felt emotionally predictable, and whether adults understood their behavior with compassion.
As adults, we have an opportunity to understand end-of-year behavior not as resistance, but as information. Children are showing us that transitions matter. When we support those transitions intentionally, we help children build emotional resilience, trust, and security that extend far beyond the classroom itself.
Read more from Dr. Victoria A. Elasic
Dr. Victoria A. Elasic, Founder of Oak & River
Dr. Victoria A. Elasic is the founder of Oak & River, where she works with high-capacity women seeking greater clarity, steadiness, and margin in complex professional and family systems. Drawing on her background in Montessori education, leadership, and coaching, she guides clients in recalibrating how they carry responsibility across work, home, and school environments. Victoria’s work focuses on reducing hidden friction in daily systems so capable women can experience greater lightness, clearer decision-making, and more sustainable leadership. She works privately with a small number of clients and leads curated small-group intensives.
