Back to School and the Déjà Vu of the Same Old Struggles

By Luke Mihail, Lumi Counselling, Geelong

There is a strange feeling that can hit parents when school goes back. On one hand, there is relief. The routine returns, the lunches get packed, the uniforms come back out, and the house starts to feel a little more structured again. But then, almost immediately, the familiar issues start showing up again. The morning battles. The tiredness. The screen arguments. The friendship stress. The “I don’t want to go.” The emotional explosion over something that seems tiny, but clearly is not tiny to them.

And for a lot of parents, it can feel like déjà vu. “We were dealing with this last term.” “I thought we had moved past this.” “Why are we back here again?” I hear this a lot at Lumi. Parents are often not dealing with brand new problems. They are dealing with the same old patterns returning in a new school week, a new term, or a new season. That can feel discouraging, but it does not mean nothing is changing.

Kids often struggle with transitions. Even kids who like school can find the return hard. After holidays, their body clock has shifted. Their tolerance has dipped. Their social battery might be low. Their brain has gone from loose and flexible back into structure, expectation and performance. For some kids, that shift is massive. They are not just returning to a classroom. They are returning to noise, friendship dynamics, comparison, instructions, pressure, separation, tiredness, and the constant demand to hold it together.

So when they get home and fall apart, it is not always because they are being difficult. Sometimes it is because home is the first place their nervous system feels safe enough to unload. That does not mean parents should excuse everything. Boundaries still matter. Respect still matters. Morning routines still matter. But it does mean we need to look underneath the behaviour, because a child who keeps saying “I hate school” might actually be saying, “I feel overwhelmed and I don’t know how to explain it.” A child who melts down over their shoes might be saying, “I am already at capacity and one more thing feels impossible.”
A child who refuses homework might be saying, “I have spent all day trying to keep up and I have nothing left.” A child who becomes glued to a screen after school might be saying, “I need to disappear for a while because my brain is cooked.”

This is where parents can get stuck, because the behaviour is loud and the need underneath it is often quiet. One of the things I try to do in the counselling room is slow everything down enough to help the young person and their parents understand what is actually going on underneath the surface. I am not just interested in the behaviour itself. I want to know what is driving it, what keeps feeding it, what helps, what makes it worse, and what the child might be trying to communicate without having the words for it yet.

So, as school returns, it can help to ask a slightly different question. Not just, “How do I stop this behaviour?” but, “What is this behaviour telling me?” That question does not remove the boundary. It just helps you respond with more clarity. If mornings are always hard, the answer might not be more lectures in the morning. It might be reducing decisions the night before. If school refusal keeps showing up, the answer might not be forcing a big emotional conversation at 8:15am. It might be calmly naming the anxiety, keeping the routine predictable, and working on the bigger issue when everyone is regulated.

The same is true after school. If after-school meltdowns are common, the answer might not be asking 15 questions as soon as they get in the car. It might be food, quiet, space, movement, and connection before correction. If screens keep becoming the fight, the answer might not be a sudden dramatic ban. It might be a clear after-school rhythm that includes decompression, responsibilities, connection and limits. A simple starting point for parents is this: after school, lower the demand before you raise the expectation. Give them a small window to land. Food. Water. Quiet. A walk. A kick of the footy. Ten minutes of connection. Something that helps their system come back down. Then talk about the hard stuff.

Because a dysregulated kid usually cannot learn much from a perfectly reasonable parent lecture. Their brain is not in the right place for it yet. I see this all the time with kids and teens. Once they feel safe, understood and not instantly judged, they are often far more capable of talking about what is really going on. Sometimes that happens through a conversation. Sometimes it happens through a game, Lego, drawing, movement, or just doing something side by side until they feel ready. That is a big part of how I work at Lumi. It is not about dragging kids through a clinical conversation they are not ready for. It is about building enough safety and trust that the real stuff can start to come out.

The return to school can bring up the same old issues, but it can also give you another chance to understand the pattern more clearly. What keeps happening? When does it happen? What usually comes before it? What helps them come back down? What makes it worse? Those questions matter, because patterns are not just problems. They are clues. And when you start seeing the clues, you can stop feeling like you are starting from scratch every term.

At Lumi Counselling in Geelong, I work with kids, teens and families around these exact moments. The school refusal. The anxiety. The big emotions. The friendship stress. The screen battles. The moments where parents feel like they are walking into the same struggle again and again. My goal is not to make family life perfect. It is to help kids understand what is happening inside them, build tools that actually work in real life, and help parents feel less alone in the process.

If the return to school already feels like déjà vu in your house, it might be worth getting support before the pattern becomes the whole term. Lumi Counselling supports kids, teens and families across Geelong, the Bellarine and the Surf Coast.

Hit that orange button to book your session. Start the term off right.