In short
Why kids behave differently at school vs. home, framed as a developing adaptation skill (linked to theory of mind), plus “restraint collapse” after school and how home is a safer place to release stress.
Guest backgrounds
Hosts Amy and Margaret Ables (motherhood podcast hosts). Episode references author Beth Arkey (Child Mind) and clinical psychologist Stephanie Lee; also mentions ADHD coach Ryan Wexelblatt (“ADHD dude”) and podcast guest Christy Martin.
Key claims
School requires constant restraint, transitions, social pressure, and teacher modeling; kids may “mask” at school and then melt down at home (or the reverse). Emotional release at home can be a sign of safety. After-school collapse is normal; parents should loosen demands briefly but keep household rules. Parents should get curious, compare notes with teachers, and collaborate without making it adversarial.
Notable examples
“Two-year-old on a plane” vs. older child; selective mutism (silent at school, chatty at home); school bell/45-minute transitions; snack/nap preventing chaos; “Miss Murphy” teacher modeling; after-school “airplane rules” (break allowed, no hitting/ripping homework).
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOUnderstanding Kids' Behavior Changes
0:45 to 1:16
Exploring why kids behave differently at school compared to home.
“You're jumping to our first line of topic.”
Development of Adaptation Skills
1:16 to 1:55
Discussion on how children adapt to different environments as a developing skill.
“So yeah, people act differently in different locations, right?”
Theory of Mind in Children
1:55 to 3:00
Explaining the concept of theory of mind and its importance in behavior.
“She talks about, which I think we know from our own kids, that this ability to adapt to different environments, right, is a developing skill.”
Impact of Developmental Issues
3:00 to 4:25
How developmental issues affect children's ability to adapt to different environments.
“They're like, hey, man, this looks cool.”
Restraint Collapse After School
4:25 to 5:42
Exploring the concept of after-school restraint collapse in children.
“And we know that kids on the spectrum or kids with other diagnoses are probably going to be on the trailing end of that development.”
School vs. Home Dynamics
5:42 to 6:57
Discussing the contrasting behaviors observed in children at school and at home.
“Now we have a four-year-old on the plane who has some understanding of, You have to sit still for three hours to get to grandma's house.”
Frustrations of Parenting
6:57 to 8:13
Addressing parental frustrations when children's behavior differs at home and school.
“People, I know I have had this experience that you have a kid who feels very out of control at home.”
School Structure and Children's Behavior
8:13 to 10:00
Analyzing how school structure impacts children's behavior and their social batteries.
“You said this earlier on that a kid who has restraint collapse is restrained at school, which is actually a good thing in a lot of ways.”
Adapting to School Environment
10:00 to 12:39
How children adjust to the structured environment of school and its challenges.
“never occurred to me that school is an environment that is not replicated anywhere else in our lives, which is that every 45 minutes, you're expected to go deep into one activity, English.”
Understanding Kids' Behavior at Home vs. School
17:10 to 28:00
Explore why kids behave differently at home compared to school settings.
“That most kids in school are putting on some form of armor or mask to just exist in that environment.”
Show all 18 chapters
Understanding Kids' Behavior at Home and School
28:00 to 29:09
Learn how peer pressure and environment influence children's behaviors.
“It is happening because this is absolutely built into the structure of everything that is happening with kids.”
Managing After-School Interactions
29:10 to 30:29
Discover effective ways to engage with your child after a long school day.
“Oh my gosh, did they decide what play they're going to do.”
Recognizing Emotional Needs After School
30:30 to 31:20
Understand the importance of allowing your child space after school.
“My husband, trying to be helpful, was like, let's talk it through.”
The 5 to 8 PM Parenting Timeline
32:35 to 35:16
Explore a humorous timeline of challenges faced during evening routines.
“So your hair becomes something you enjoy, not something you stress about.”
Exploring School-Home Behavior Differences
35:17 to 40:04
Get insights into why kids may behave differently at school versus home.
“So we either have a kid who is doing great at school and having behavior trouble at home or doing fine at home and having behavior trouble at school.”
Collaborating with Teachers for Solutions
40:05 to 42:00
Learn how to foster better communication with teachers to support your child.
“Like kids who might be reading, let's say, a book about the Holocaust at school, and they're learning about it for the first time.”
Navigating Teacher Relationships
42:00 to 47:01
Learn strategies for collaborating effectively with teachers for your child's benefit.
“And I will say, I talked to my mom who was very good at talking me down.”
Introducing What Fresh Hell Plus
47:01 to 47:14
Discover the subscription program offering bonus episodes and ad-free listening.
“parenting, then you need to sign up for What Fresh Health Plus.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00This episode is brought to you by Peloton.
0:03Heidi Grant:Break through the busiest time of year with the brand new Peloton Cross Training Tread Plus. Powered by Peloton IQ. With real-time guidance and endless ways to move, you can personalize your workouts and train with confidence. Helping you reach your goals in less time. Let yourself run, lift, sculpt, push, and go. Explore the new Peloton Cross Training Tread Plus at OnePeloton.com. Literally get away from me, crazy lady. What Fresh Hell Laughing in the face of motherhood I can still smell her perfume With Margaret Ables And Amy Wilson Chances are I need a snack or a nap A podcast that solves today's parenting dilemmas So you don't have to I think it would be great if we just had daily catch-ups
0:57hello everybody welcome to what fresh hell laughing in the face of motherhood this is amy
1:01Heidi Grant:and this is margaret and today we're going to talk about why kids act differently at school than at home i mean why shouldn't they grown-ups can act differently at work than they do at home Speaking as one. You're jumping to our first line of topic. Love to see it. So yeah, people act differently in different locations, right? You act differently at happy hour with your friends than you act at church. You act differently with your aging grandmother than you act with your bestie. So it's not unusual for kids to behave differently in different settings. You'd expect them to act one way at a friend's birthday party and another at their grandparents' house.
1:42Heidi Grant:Let's hope so. Yes. Sometimes it's the same great and sometimes it's the same not great, but sometimes not so much. So this is from Why Kids Are Different at Home and at School by Beth Arkey for Child Mind. She talks about, which I think we know from our own kids, that this ability to adapt to different environments, right, is a developing skill. A two-year-old can't really do this. A two-year-old is just a terror of noise and debris wherever they go. They don't act differently at church than they act at the playground. I have a nephew who is between one and a half and two. And yeah, it makes me think of, I never thought about this, but he is the same everywhere, which is completely well-behaved as long as I can be constantly moving around.
2:30So if it's a bridal shower or somebody's house, as long as he can constantly be moving from room to room, picking up things, putting them down, and you don't bother him in that need to move, he is fine. But you can't have expectations of that kid to behave differently. They don't understand that that's an expectation in the first place until two or three, I guess.
2:49Heidi Grant:This is the two-year-old on a plane dilemma, right? They are ready to be at the playground and they don't realize they're now in a contained tube in the sky. I want to get down. They want to go play. They're like, hey, man, this looks cool. I want to jump on my tray and pull the hair of the lady in front of me because I don't understand that I don't act the same way at the playground as on an airplane. So when we have a developing skill like this, that involves adapting and behaving differently in different environments, this is a skill that children develop at different times. It seems to me that this would involve having theory of mind.
3:29So much comes back to that. That theory of mind is this understanding that a baby or a toddler has to develop by the time they're about three, that other people have different feelings than them, that you can be happy, but somebody else is sad that you took their truck like that. They don't get that until a certain developmental stage. So therefore, if you're the two-year-old on the plane who just wants to get down and run around, you don't understand that other people don't want you to do that because that hasn't occurred to you yet that other people are different.
3:52Heidi Grant:No, I'm swinging from the lady's hair in front of me and I'm living my best life. And I'm not clocking that she's crying and giving me a death stare, right? Like it doesn't matter. Yeah. It's not that you don't care. It's that you don't know that other people have different feelings. Okay. So theory of mind has to probably be in place for them to have any sense of what I should be doing right now. Right. And so like any developing skill that kids come to at different times, you're going to see a range with kids about their ability to be adaptive to different environments. And we know that kids on the spectrum or kids with other diagnoses are probably going to be on the trailing end of that development.
4:35Heidi Grant:So it's going to take a kid with developmental issues longer to figure out this is a different environment. And they may feel that as anxiety first, but not necessarily be able to adapt their behavior correctly. Does Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. So they're going to feel this feeling of I'm doing something wrong and I can tell that people are mad or I feel really uncomfortable and anxious, but I do not yet have the skills to adapt for this changing environment. And then there's the, I'm sure we'll talk about this, the after-school restraint collapse idea that your kid can hold it together in pre-K until 2.45 and then gets in the minivan and just has a whole meltdown because they were trying to hold it together at school.
5:29And that's actually a good sign. It's my understanding that that's a good sign of a kid getting the different behaviors and being able to hold it together, even if then they're a nightmare at home when they first get home. That just means they're developing this skill.
5:41Heidi Grant:Yeah. And let's go back to our kid on the plane, right? Now we have a four-year-old on the plane who has some understanding of, You have to sit still for three hours to get to grandma's house. You did a great job sitting still. But what are they looking like at baggage claim, right? That kid is running around. They're going crazy, possibly tackling other travelers, possibly trying to ride on the luggage conveyor because they are restrained and then they're let loose. So you see this like defining those two modes can be really helpful in understanding your kid's behavior. Yes, I'm seeing the restraint and then after church we go get donuts and you can run around as much as you want And so we understand that there is a cost to kids to being restrained for a certain period of time Right, you can do it the easy way or the hard way But we used to say when our two boys were little My husband used to say that there were like big dogs and you just had to run them You had to take them to the park and run them at some point during the day If you didn't want the dogs chewing the furniture, right?
6:43You had to get that out and you can get that out before church or after church or whatever But if you don't, then it's going to come out in a way that might not be so good.
6:51Heidi Grant:So going back to child mind, let's talk through what the environments are like at school and at home. But before we do that, let me pause and talk a little bit about the topic more generally. Okay. People, I know I have had this experience that you have a kid who feels very out of control at home. And then you're like, well, what about the, no, I'm not talking about my own kids, but like, what about the hitting? What about the biting? What about the running around? What about the throwing things. And then you go to your school meeting and the school is like, he's an angel here all day. I don't know what you're talking about.
7:24Heidi Grant:And that can feel extremely frustrating because it feels like I'm doing something wrong that the school is magically doing right. So the kid is good at school and bad, I'm using air quotes, at home. We had a guest a couple of years ago. We'll link to the interview, Ryan Wexelblatt, the ADHD dude. He coaches parents of kids with ADHD and kids with ADHD themselves. Anyway, I remember him saying that that frustration is often present for parents of kids with ADHD, but it is in fact a good thing that the alternative of your kid behaves the same at home and at school and is biting and hitting and can't follow directions is less welcome news than, well, they don't do it at school.
8:10If they don't do it at school, there's a chance that there's growth to happen in a different way than if they're the same misbehaving everywhere. It's kind of good news.
8:18Heidi Grant:Yeah. You said this earlier on that a kid who has restraint collapse is restrained at school, which is actually a good thing in a lot of ways. School is an environment where you have to be restrained. Yes. School offers structure, which can make kids feel secure. It's socialization, which can feed kids, And it can also be very socially draining, right? The social, I have a kid now who's constantly talking about their social battery, which is a term that has apparently... Is that the TikTok word for it? I was about to say, become very popular on TikTok. But it is kind of a useful phrase, right?
8:56Heidi Grant:My social battery is depleted. We've all had that feeling of having a day where you had to go and talk to six people and you got your hair done, you had to talk to the people there, and then you had to go to a meeting. And by the time you get home, you've had that like, nobody talked to me feeling my social battery is at zero. Then on the more extreme sides, you can see cases of in this article from Child Mind, they profile a young girl who has selective mutism. So they don't speak at certain times. And their selective mutism is at school, and then they're very chatty at home. So sometimes these differences between home and school can be very marked.
9:39Right. Well, that's an example, because we've been talking so far about they're fine at school and they come home and they're rough at home. This is just the opposite. This is a kid who's not functioning well at school, but has that skill clearly because they can use it in a developmentally appropriate way at home to speak, but just not in certain situations.
9:56Heidi Grant:My sister-in-law, who we've had on the podcast, Christy Martin, she talked to me about, which had never occurred to me that school is an environment that is not replicated anywhere else in our lives, which is that every 45 minutes, you're expected to go deep into one activity, English. And then as you start to be like, oh, I am enjoying this book. Oh, this is a good conversation about the Lord of the Flies. The bell rings. And it's like, forget that. Now it's art. And you're like, okay, art. All right. Now let me go get my crayons. Okay. Now I'm drawing. Stop that. Math time. You know, that this idea that school happens in 45 minute increments, it involves a ton of transitions, which especially kids on the spectrum, but lots of kids struggle with transitions.
10:45Heidi Grant:And that constant, I mean, imagine living your life, Amy, with a bell that went off every 45 minutes and just was like, now you go somewhere else. No matter whether or not you're enjoying the thing you're doing, whether you're into the thing you're doing, bored with the thing you're doing, here comes the bell. And I would argue some of the things you really enjoy doing, like for me, like, oh, it's time for physics. It's time for gym. Those are the things I really didn't like, but I had to do. Somebody else was like, I got to go do art now. I hate art, but you have to do it. Yeah. And as you say, you're supposed to become, I never really thought about this, the idea that you have to become immediately absorbed in calculus or something when you're just like 10 minutes ago, we're talking about Lord of the Flies.
11:25And in the three minutes in between class, then you have social stuff. Your social battery has been affected in some way by what happened on the walk to math class and now math.
11:33Heidi Grant:So sometimes that structure is really good for kids. And sometimes that structure is really hard for kids. Sometimes that socialization is really good for kids. I have kids for whom the chattery socialization feeds them. And I have kids for whom the like, I'm holding a tray and trying to figure out who I can sit with is extremely draining. It's constants and variables. School, we could talk forever about should school be structured differently. And there are certainly schools that are structured differently that you don't have this bell system where you see a different teacher every 45 minutes, or even in the lower grades, like you sit at your desk until it's time for gym.
12:14Heidi Grant:School is basically a constant for most of us. We're not going to redo how our schools are structured. So I think the work is saying, where is this playing into my kid's strengths? And where is this playing into my kid's weaknesses? Or where is this draining my kid? And where is this energizing my kid? Right. I mean, you can change your school situation. We certainly have listeners who have chosen a homeschool or unschool, or you can change schools, you can fix it. But I guess I would say, first, make sure there's something to fix. It's completely developmentally appropriate for anybody to behave differently in one environment than another.
12:53Heidi Grant:Yeah. And I think that that's right. I'm taking this conversation with the school as sort of a constant. So if it's really not working for your kid, there are kids who cannot do traditional schooling in elementary, middle, or high school. It doesn't work for them. In college now, you're seeing a lot of colleges moving towards, hey, we do quarter systems where you only study one thing per quarter, whatever, different structures. But I'm approaching this particular conversation. If you got to move schools, you'll figure it out that it's not working for you. This is how we're operating within the confines of where we currently are planted.
13:30Heidi Grant:Right. Okay. So let's take a break and we're going to come back and talk about what's going on at home. For some of us, tax season is one of the only times that we look at our finances fully. And once it's over, well, that was terrible. And it is completely understandable not to want to think about it for another whole year. But using Monarch and being intentional with your finances in an ongoing way helps you see where your money is going and how you can put your refund to best use. We are here to tell you, simplify your finances with Monarch. Monarch is the all-in-one personal finance tool designed to make your life easier.
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17:10Heidi Grant:so the biggest thing about home is that it's a safe place for kids it's taking the mask off right it is letting it all hang out there is an element that i think we all remember of going to school and putting on the i'm the happiest most normal most fittingest innest kid you've ever met in your life right or at least like i don't care that you're bullying me and bothering me on us. It doesn't bother me, right? Right. That most kids in school are putting on some form of armor or mask to just exist in that environment. No matter how cool you are, P.S. It doesn't matter, and they're not doing it for bad reasons, and they're not doing it because they're crazy kids.
17:57Heidi Grant:They're doing it because that is just how you operate in a room full of a thousand other kids. like everybody does. I was recently looking at a senior care facility. They're like, it's bingo, and it's this, and then we have a movie, and then it's mealtime. It is a little bit like, oh, this is a lot. Living with a thousand people and going to different activities with people you may or may not have chosen to like, that environment, again, it's just so far from the way we live. Being in a building with a thousand and sometimes more than a thousand other humans all day is exhausting. And so home becomes a safe space.
18:39Heidi Grant:As you say, sometimes this leads to they're saving all their love for you, which means they're coming home and kind of vomiting all of that stress and anxiety and difficulty upon you when they come home. I'm reading Demon Copperhead right now, which is a great book. This is why my head's going there, probably. Demon Copperhead won the Pulitzer in 2022, and it tells the story of a boy. It's David Copperfield told from the vantage point of modern day Appalachia. Lots of poverty and addiction and all the things that go with it and this young boy, Demon Copperhead, going through it. Anyway, it occurs to me, and I think this applies to almost nobody listening to this episode, but there are kids for whom the home environment is less safe than school, and so they're going to behaving differently too.
19:26But they're probably not listening to this episode. It would be nice if they did, but those people probably are not. Yeah.
19:31Heidi Grant:And I think that that is where kids who thrive on structure, who come home to a very unstructured home, it's just information gathering, right? Like, could it be that I need to pull out my whiteboard and have it say, you know, at 3 p.m. we get home and you have an hour to do whatever you want. Screens, run around outside. Nobody's going to talk to you for that hour. Then at four, we're going to review what's in your backpack and see if there's homework and make a plan for that. Then at five, we're going to start on homework. Then at six, we're going to have dinner. Then at seven is free time again.
20:07Heidi Grant:I mean, I had this on a whiteboard in my house for years. I don't do it anymore. My kids are now high school and middle school, but I needed that for years. And one of the things that parents of autistic kids will know about is a visual calendar or a visual schedule. And it's something that I think is useful for all kids. Visual is pictures for kids who may not be reading yet. And that's four o 'clock. And it's a picture of a kid playing on a video game. You can get these through an app. You can download the pictures from online or you can just make them yourself. four o 'clock video games, five o 'clock, look at homework, you know, whatever it is so that kids just know.
20:54Heidi Grant:And if you go into a special ed classroom, you will see almost every child has a schedule on their desk because that thing of I don't want the bell ringing, that's very anxiety producing. And the idea of I don't know what comes next. And this whole day is just waiting for that beltering and then being dragged somewhere else I don't want to go. Sometimes really leaning in to the feeling of schedule can be really helpful for kids if they struggle with this. Right. Like a Montessori preschool might not be right for every kid either, where you just sort of do what you want to do until you don't want to do it anymore.
21:29If your kid needs more structure, then that's not the right environment for them. Or maybe it is. But these are things you can dial up and down. I hadn't really thought about it before.
21:37Heidi Grant:And here we come to your post-school restraint collapse, which is coming home from school. I know I lived in a very kind of traditional home growing up. And my dad would come home on the train from New York City. And he would walk in and he would change from his suit into like another kind of fancy outfit. It was like slacks, a button down shirt and a sweater, you know, giving Mr. Rogers, it's very or mad men, you know, It was very much, there was no, I'm going to just put on t-shirt and jeans. That didn't exist. But that process, I once heard an author speak. I can't remember who it was. I can't remember who it was.
Read the full transcript
22:19Heidi Grant:But he talked about when he, I mean, this was funny because he was like, I work out of my home. And people were like, what? Work at your home? It was a different time. It was probably typewriting on a typewriter. But he said he got up in the morning. He put on a full suit. He got in his car, he drove around the block, he parked and he came in a different entrance to sit at his desk because the idea of defining the spaces was mentally really important for him. And the parallel is, how does your kid take off their tie when they get home? What does that look like? And giving some time to sort of imagine that we do that because we are acknowledging that we are stepping into a different place.
23:03Heidi Grant:Yes. That ritual is something that maybe you could add. I took a very woo-woo acting class in college where there was a sculpture in the front yard of the building and our acting teacher encouraged us to sort of step through the sculpture on the way in the building so that we would be in the place to roll around on the floor and feel our feelings when we went into the acting class. Yeah, but he just he just imposed this 10 second ritual and we all as college students took it totally seriously and behaved differently after we stepped to the sculpture. Maybe that would help a kid like this is yeah, we are going to change into our relaxing sweatshirt.
23:36We are going to ring the chimes that mean now it's time to relax or something. That could be very helpful.
23:41Heidi Grant:Also helpful at this point, meal, food, feed the bear, as we've often said. And this is something I was never amazing at. I mean, my sister-in-law would always I remember her kids coming from school and there was always a beautiful snack tray. And I always felt bad that I wasn't better at this. But I mean, I said to my husband, we just celebrated our 18th wedding anniversary. Wow. Thank you. And I said to him early in our marriage, when I'm really in a bad mood, the chances are I need a snack or a nap. That's just me, you know, and that's kids too. Like, it's the iceberg. What's underneath this behavior?
24:18Heidi Grant:and I have found that when I skip the snack, they walk in the door and an hour later, it's chaos and tears. And then when you try to take the backpack out to look at it, I hate school. I don't understand this. I don't understand anything about it. Is that hunger? I would bet it is. It also might be tiredness. And what they need is to veg in front of a video game for an hour. But I think that transitional hour between home and school can make a big difference. You know, teachers are so good at redirection. I get a lot of teacher content on Instagram. There's some great teachers out there. And watching them give examples of how they calmly redirect a kid who's having a meltdown.
24:57I mean, they're more trained at it than some of us as parents. But I think sometimes it can feel like my kid is a nightmare after school and there's nothing to be done except bring your hands. But there is. You can have ritual. You can watch some of these videos and learn how to redirect calmly. And there are things you can do to get a little more, pay a little more attention to it instead of hope it goes away.
25:15Heidi Grant:Absolutely. Another reason, here's a few more reasons for improved behavior at school, which we've talked about a lot of these structure and rules. We've got resource expenditure, that's the social battery, social pressure. So this is the mask, the child might behave well to avoid social embarrassment or negative consequences. so a kid who will sit and chat with you for three hours about the intricacies of like the moons of you know saturn they might have learned not to do that at school that that's kind of a turnoff for people at school but all day they're like all i want to do is talk about saturn's moons and so that's coming out too that's part of the like restraint collapse and then the other thing is teacher modeling, which I thought was interesting.
26:05Heidi Grant:Teachers can model appropriate social and academic behaviors. And because of peer pressures, children are more inclined to follow suit at home. Yeah, it doesn't have to be negative though. Like the teacher says, I mean, Miss Murphy, my first grade teacher, I can still smell her perfume. She had long straight hair. Like she was the most glamorous creature I'd ever encountered. And when she wanted me to sit on my carpet square, you better believe I was going to sit on that carpet square because I was in love with Miss Murphy and moms and dads don't have that same unconditional adoration. That's exactly right.
26:41Heidi Grant:If you are feeling bad that like, why does my kid behave for Mrs. Murphy and not for me? Mrs. Murphy, first of all, has an angelic teacher quality. Mrs. Murphy also has 20 other kids who are behaving and modeling what is expected in that room. That's right. And Mrs. Murphy only has them for 45 minutes. So like, or even if she has them all day, the structures are really different. And as you said in the beginning, when you see that emotional release at home, it is a sign that they feel safety and trust at home, right? That they can be themselves. That's a good thing, but it may not be the best for you.
27:21Right. There's things you can do to help them feel better, right? And if they feel better and they feel like they can let down their guard in a more productive way, then you have an easier afternoon as their parent. But it isn't like they're not allowed to melt down when they come home. That's normal. Absolutely. Like they're not bad kids. It's they're being normal. And then you can make it a little easier on you, but making sure you have the animal crackers ready at the door.
27:45Heidi Grant:The headline of all of this is there's no bad in it. It's like there are clear reasons why this happens. We talked on our parables episode about the empty boat, right? This is happening because I'm a bad person. I'm a bad parent. I'm not as good as Mrs. Murphy. It's not. The boat is empty. It is happening because this is absolutely built into the structure of everything that is happening with kids. And I do think that sometimes the kid to kid peer pressure, it isn't always like, I'm going to steal your lunch money. It can be positive. I do think it It's easier to know what you're supposed to do when 20 other kids are doing it.
28:25If you're a kid that has a harder time sitting still, but Carson's sitting there, so I guess I'm supposed to do that too. And it doesn't have to be stressful. They're taking it in without thinking about it, I guess is what I'm saying.
28:34Heidi Grant:And I think the moment of stepping off the bus or getting in the car at the end of the day is a moment that looking back, I misplayed very often. So I'm asking you to learn from my mistakes. the first time you see a kid, I feel the ideal interaction is just handing them something to eat, basically. It's great to see you, period. You forget, like when your kid's in elementary school, you miss them all day. Like you're so excited to see their cute faces at three o 'clock and they've been away from you all day. What happened? Oh my gosh, how's it going? How's Mrs. Murphy? Did you have a good day?
29:13Heidi Grant:Oh my gosh, did they decide what play they're going to do. A kid is so not ready for that barrage at 255. And I will say it took me 10 years to learn this. And I'm still kind of working on it. I'm a chatter. I like to have a big chat. I've missed, I've been home alone all day. And so we're coming at it from exactly opposite points of view. I'm finally getting to talk to somebody and they're like, literally get away from me, crazy lady. I just went, my daughter's play, they had their Q2Q tech day. So you have, you know, like the weekend before the play, like a eight, 10 hour rehearsal day, which I went to help out with.
29:49It's a lot of sitting around. It's a lot of, you know, waiting to be used, whatever. And I came home and walked in and my husband was like, Hey, how'd it go? And like, wanted to talk to me. He'd been hanging out all day. He kind of had dinner, like kind of started, but like, let's get right into making dinner. And I was so crabby. And at least I recognized it in myself, like, Oh my God, I, I don't want to talk to you about how my day was. The day was kind of long and boring. I know I need to sit on the couch for a couple. I don't want to get rid into making dinner and chit-chatting the whole time.
30:18Anyway, I recognize that in myself so clearly as not this person's fault, but not really my fault either, that we have different needs for communication at this particular moment.
30:28Heidi Grant:There you go. I had this last night. I had a really difficult day yesterday. My husband, trying to be helpful, was like, let's talk it through. About three minutes into it, I was like, could you actually just leave me alone? I'm going to go to bed. I don't want to talk it through. It's not that I have a dilemma that I'm trying to figure out. It's just that life came and kicked my butt 86 different ways today. And there's nothing for you to solve. And I don't want to process it. But that's a very late in life skill. I feel like I came to that skill 10 years ago, 10 years into an 18 year marriage.
31:06Heidi Grant:So we can't really expect our kids to have that language. but it's good for us to remember that feeling because our kids feel it too. Yeah, that's right. All right. We'll be back with some solutions for how to merge these two worlds. If you want to wake up with skin that looks even better than before you went to bed, reach for Osea Skin Care. I mean seconded. Osea's clinically tested formulas are designed to deliver visible results. And with a full lineup of body care products, they have something for everyone. Osea's Anti-Aging Body Balm is a liquid silk body balm that combines the lasting hydration of a lotion with the firming power of a serum, leaving skin smoother, firmer, and beautifully supple.
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33:45Heidi Grant:And now, a timeline of 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. from the What Fresh Health Podcast. 5 p.m. What time is it? It's gotta be almost bedtime, right? Oh, sweet mother of Kansas, it's only 5 p.m.? 5.15 p.m. I'm hungry. Can I have a snack? No! No snacks! We are in the cone of dinner time, and all snacking must cease. Okay, what is for dinner? 5.23 p.m. Mom, don't forget, for English, I have to make an island at 1.16 scale that represents the plot of my favorite novel, and it's due by tomorrow and I haven't started it yet. No! Okay, I'm calling for a pizza. 5.34 p.m. It must be time for bed for you, huh? Okay, oh no, it's only 5.34.
34:33You, find some Harry Potter Legos to start gluing to this poster board. 5.52 p.m. Okay, the pizza's here. Everyone grab a slice, but whatever you do, don't stop doing your homework.
34:45Heidi Grant:6.15 p.m. How's the Island Project coming along? What do you mean you haven't started yet? 7.52 p.m. Anything that's not done is not getting done, folks. I'm putting the baby down. Let's wrap this thing up, people. 8 p.m. Everybody grab a screen or two and go to bed. Mama is done for the night. This has been a timeline of 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. from the What Fresh Hell podcast.
35:16Heidi Grant:Okay, we're back, Amy. So we either have a kid who is doing great at school and having behavior trouble at home or doing fine at home and having behavior trouble at school. We know why these might be happening in these different environments from the things we've talked about. And now we're going to talk about some solutions. Okay. Our biggest solution, get curious about what's happening. Set up a meeting with your child's teacher and compare notes. This can be really helpful. Also, I mean, I've had the experience of, I don't know why, but in the last six weeks, my child is a nightmare at home.
35:54Heidi Grant:They're grouchy. They're crying a lot. I don't know what's going on. They're driving me crazy. And the teacher sometimes has a pretty simple insight. Oh, I did notice that her friends are sitting at a different lunch table and she's not included in that. It may be something that your kid hasn't been comfortable sharing, but here's another crazy thing. Your kid may not realize that's what's bothering them. And that I think is super interesting. I've talked about before that we had a death at my child's elementary school that was extremely, extremely tragic. And knowing that that had happened, it was very interesting to see how the kids expressed their grief and trauma about it.
36:34Heidi Grant:because it's not like they come home and they say, you know, I'm feeling really afraid because this happened. I'm feeling really sad because this happened. They come home and they don't want the dinner you prepared and they tell you you're stupid. And you're like, wait, what? Where is this coming from? But in that case, I was very clear that there had been an inciting event. So I saw all the behavior as an expression, as a reaction to this event. But sometimes you don't know. That's obviously a huge event. But lots of times those things are happening at school, but you don't know about them. You're the last one.
37:13You're the last one that your kid is going to tell that so-and-so said, not only do I not like you, nobody in the class would like you because X, Y, Z, that that happened to your kid at school today.
37:22Heidi Grant:You will be the last to know. I'm going to be gendered and say, I find this more so with my boys. I feel like my girl is like, here's the news report. And I get everything more than I want. But at some point, I had heard that a teacher at my children's elementary school had broken an arm or a leg in a fall at the school. I can't remember if it was my child's teacher and had to be taken by ambulance out of the school. I found this out six months later and I went to my boys and I was like, did your teacher break her leg in school? Oh, yeah. Never mentioned it. Didn't seem like a news headline. And so I think getting curious, this doesn't mean becoming me and greeting them with like, tell me what happened in school today.
38:06Heidi Grant:Did anyone break their leg? Did anything happen? They're also in 2025 doing active shooter drills two or three times a quarter. They're dealing with, We just recently had a misunderstanding at the school that led to a lockout where they were locked inside the school for several hours. These things have become part of the fabric of our lives, but they're not the fabric for the kids. Hiding under your desk for 10 minutes is mentally very hard on a child. Oh, gosh. I mean, that was after my time being in my kids' classrooms. And all the grownups around you presented as calm and regular and normal.
38:46It's none of those things, right? They shouldn't not do that. It's more reassuring to have the adults do that, but there must be a mismatch. I'm like, this is stressful and not okay. And I'm imagining why it would be a real situation. Yeah.
38:59Heidi Grant:And there's a, what is it called when you like integrate something into your psyche, basically that, okay, when this first started happening, Columbine and Sandy Hook, it was so like shocking. And now it has become kind of integrated into our psyches. I don't know. I couldn't say like, does that mean it's not as bad for kids or worse for kids? But there's a lot going on at school that we are just seeing random behaviors from, and we need to get curious about what's going on. And the source of information may not be your kid. You may have to go to the school counselor, the teacher. And also they may have people they feel more comfortable talking to about certain things than you.
39:45Heidi Grant:It seems like this is a very, of course, it's a useful tactic, but it's secondarily useful because it gets you off like, why is my kid like this? Why doesn't my kid behave? Why am I such a terrible parent? To instead focus on, something must have happened at school today. I wonder what it was. I wonder what it was. And you can't rely on your child to make those connections, right? Like kids who might be reading, let's say, a book about the Holocaust at school, and they're learning about it for the first time. They're not going to really come home when they're in sixth grade and be like, learning about this horrible atrocity has made me feel kind of unsure about humankind, and I'm feeling very agitated by that, they're not going to make that connection, but they might be showing behaviors.
40:31Heidi Grant:And so I think even if you can't always define the source, you may never know like, oh, they didn't eat dinner that night. Well, because someone said something mean to them in the line, you don't have to be a detective who connects all the dots, right? You just have to be really curious about behavior as opposed to you have to approach behavior as communication fundamentally. When I say you, I mean, all of us, and I was terrible at this. I was like, just eat your dinner. No one cares. You know, like, believe me, I wasn't sitting there like, let me get curious as you punch your sister about what's underneath this all.
41:04Heidi Grant:But as it becomes a bigger problem, you need a bigger solution. Right, right. If it's more sort of garden variety, you don't need to know what's underpinning it, knowing that there might be something underpinning it that you don't fully understand will make you be able to be more calm and effective and not escalate it further. Another note that I thought was really helpful, and I have dealt with this myself, collaborate with your child's team. So there is a tendency for this to become adversarial because it sounds sometimes like the teacher is saying, this is a you problem. They behave fine here.
41:36Heidi Grant:They're bad at home. That's you. It becomes adversarial very quickly. I had a situation with somebody who was supporting one of my kids who I found very difficult, came on really strong to me. And the first meeting, I was extremely reactive. And I got on the other side of the net and I was like, let's duke this thing out. And I came home and I calmed down. And I will say, I talked to my mom who was very good at talking me down. And she was like, you have to convince that person that they're the best teacher in the world and that they are the solution because fighting with them is not going to get you there.
42:13Heidi Grant:And I took a deep breath and I went back and I took the point of view of how can we help this situation? You are obviously a very trained teacher. Like I turned to you for solutions. Now in doing so, I ended up getting what I wanted. I wasn't actually like, I abdicate everything because you are so smart, but this child mind article suggests, and I think we sometimes forget, praise the teacher and then suggest how you can work together. The less it can be adversarial, sometimes people are oil and water. And sometimes people, if you think a teacher is damaging your kid, meet with the principal, change classes, obviously.
42:52Heidi Grant:But for generic kind of run of the mill, this is not my favorite person on earth. I think putting the child first is a good idea. And I also think going the other way, if your kid is going through something difficult at home, the death of a grandparent the parents are getting divorced we know whatever it is that the older sibling has left home for the first time that giving the teacher a little more information yes the teachers want to be there they want to take good care of our kids they love our kids and for them to know like oh they have been staying up more lately because their brother's in the hospital like that that's just really good information to give the teacher so that then at school when the kid is all of a sudden going haywire about something about crayons they'll know why This collaboration, for the record, could be once a year.
43:36Heidi Grant:It could be once a semester. It doesn't mean that you're meeting with the teacher every single day and you guys are really partnering on this. Please don't meet with the teacher every single day. They don't have the bandwidth to do that. I can imagine. I can imagine. And I'm sure the teachers listening can also imagine. I think it would be great if we just had daily catch-ups. One other tip that I really liked from this child mind piece was when then statements for kids, especially younger kids or kids on the spectrum, ADHD, when you do this, then this will happen. And so really explaining and getting into for kids who the like unexpected and the transitions are a big deal, then having this conversation of when this happens, then this will happen and visual schedules and trying to give them ideas at school for you can actually have some control over this environment by knowing what to expect all day, I think can be really, really helpful for kids.
44:39And that's positive too. Like when you sit nicely during story time or whatever, then, you know, I don't know what, but that it's not like when you misbehave, then you don't get snack. It's when you do this good thing, then this good thing will happen.
44:52Heidi Grant:Right. And even just small things of like when you put your food in the cubby, it will be safe there. Then at 1130, you will get it and be able to eat it. That everything has some reason behind it. And it's not just this random bell ringing and then someone's handing you a sandwich, like help them to really understand the environment. And that can also be helpful at home, I think. Their final piece of advice is your after-school restraint collapse. It's absolutely okay to have less stringent demands during the period of time when your child gets home from school. They need a break. That said, it's important for them to understand that the rules of the household still need to be followed.
45:34Heidi Grant:This is Stephanie Lee, a clinical psychologist. so you can come home and watch video games for an hour. You can come home and lay on the floor while eating chips for an hour. It's pretty much airplane rules for that one hour, like whatever you need, you can do as long as it is within the rules of the household. She can't be rude to me. You can't hit your sister. You can't throw things on the floor because you're mad. You can't rip up your homework because you don't understand it. You have to behave the rules, but I also understand you need a break and we're going to carve that out. Clear expectations.
46:09Heidi Grant:Yeah. Because kids' boundary-seeking behavior, as my mom used to say, they kind of want to know that it's not a free for all at home. They want to know that there are guardrails and there are walls, but that within those walls, they can be themselves. Your love and boundaries is like those stretchy sleep things I keep saying on Instagram that you get your kid like a caterpillar pod thing. Yeah, I kind of want one. You are that. You're providing the like, yeah, you're home now and you're going to be held snugly between the couch and the television eating your chips. You're good. You're all good.
46:45Exactly. We got you. So we solved it, except there's nothing to solve. It isn't that you have to fix that there's a difference between home and school. It's that you need to understand why when you can and then use what you learn in the other place to help the other place. Solved it, Amy. Do you ever wonder what Margaret and I talk about when we aren't talking about parenting, then you need to sign up for What Fresh Health Plus. It's our subscription program. We do once a month a bonus episode on something definitely not parenting related and sometimes incredibly silly. You also get access to our entire catalog of 1 ,000 episodes at this point.
47:21We've been doing this show for nine years. Our entire catalog, completely ad-free. Sign up for What Fresh Health Plus in the link in this episode or on our website, whatfreshhealthpodcast.com. And with that, we will talk to you next time.
47:33Heidi Grant:Thanks so much for listening. Thanks, everybody.
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From the publisher
Why do kids often act so differently at school than they do at home?
In this episode, you'll learn how skills like adaptability and “theory of mind” develop over time, why younger kids struggle more with behavior shifts, and how structure, transitions, and social pressure shape school-day behavior. We explore concepts like afterschool restraint collapse, social battery depletion, and masking—and why post-school meltdowns are usually a good sign, in that your home is a place your kid feels safe.
You'll learn some practical strategies for making things easier, including creating afterschool rituals, using visual schedules, feeding kids early and often, collaborating with teachers, and getting curious instead of reactive when behavior changes.
Here are links to some of the resources mentioned in the episode:
Our Fresh Take with Ryan Wexelblatt
Beth Arky for Child Mind Institute: "Why Are Kids Different at Home and at School?"
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What Fresh Hell is co-hosted by Amy Wilson and Margaret Ables.
We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website:
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What Fresh Hell podcast, mom friends, funny moms, parenting advice, parenting experts, parenting tips, mothers, families, parenting skills, parenting strategies, parenting styles, busy moms, self-help for moms, manage kid’s behavior, teenager, tween, child development, family activities, family fun, parent child relationship, decluttering, kid-friendly, invisible workload, default parent, kids behave differently at school and home, afterschool restraint collapse, child behavior school vs home, parenting behavior issues, why kids melt down after school, child development theory of mind, school transitions and kids, emotional regulation in children, social battery kids, parenting strategies after school, collaboration with teachers, child behavior communication
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