When School Reveals What Summer Hides

There is something about September that often makes parents and teachers suddenly notice things that may have been much less apparent during the summer. A child who seemed relatively happy and relaxed in July may begin complaining of stomach-aches as soon as school starts. A child who enjoyed spending time with friends may suddenly become reluctant to go to school, while homework becomes a source of conflict, mornings become increasingly difficult, and behaviours that seemed manageable only a few weeks earlier begin to feel overwhelming. For some children, the transition back to school is simply an adjustment to a new routine. For others, however, September can bring a dramatic increase in anxiety, emotional distress, school avoidance and behavioural difficulties.

A recent Canadian Press article, “Overstretched youth mental health providers in Ontario brace for return to school,” provides an interesting perspective on this familiar September pattern. The article reports that demand for children's and youth mental-health services in eastern Ontario has increased by 69 percent over four years, with demand tending to rise when the school year begins. It also notes that the number of children under six seeking help through the region's 1Call1Click service more than doubled, from 502 in 2024 to more than 1,000 the following year. What particularly caught my attention, however, was an observation made by Dr. Katherine Matheson, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario: “September doesn't necessarily create the problem — it reveals the problem.”

That distinction is important because it invites us to think differently about what happens when a child begins to struggle after returning to school. Rather than automatically assuming that the school year has somehow created a new mental-health problem, we might consider whether the return to school has instead made an existing difficulty more visible. From the perspective of a Positive Systems Approach, however, this distinction takes us one step further. It encourages us not only to ask what may be happening within the child, but also to examine what has changed within the child's environment.

Consider a child who returns to school in September and begins having difficulty completing assignments, becomes increasingly anxious about going to school, and starts having emotional outbursts at home. It would be relatively easy to conclude that something has gone wrong with the child. Perhaps the child has developed an anxiety disorder. Perhaps ADHD is interfering with school functioning. Perhaps the child is becoming oppositional or lacks motivation. Perhaps the child simply needs to learn better emotional-regulation skills. Sometimes one or more of these explanations may indeed be relevant, but there is another question that deserves equal attention: what changed?

For many children, summer provides an environment that is considerably different from the one they encounter during the school year. There may be fewer transitions and fewer time pressures, greater opportunities to choose what to do and when to do it, more opportunities for physical activity and outdoor play, more sleep, and more time spent doing activities that are personally interesting and rewarding. There may also be less social comparison and fewer academic demands. For a child who struggles with attention, executive functioning, anxiety, social interaction or sensory regulation, these differences can be enormously significant.

A child with ADHD, for example, may appear to function remarkably well during the summer when there are fewer deadlines, fewer competing demands and greater opportunity to pursue personal interests. When school resumes, however, the child is suddenly expected to wake up at a particular time, get dressed, eat breakfast, leave the house on schedule, transition between classrooms, listen to instructions, remain seated, organize materials, complete assignments, navigate social relationships, cope with academic evaluation and manage the many small frustrations that inevitably occur during a school day. For some children, this represents a manageable challenge. For others, it represents a dramatic increase in demands that can exceed their capacity to cope.  The child has not necessarily changed dramatically between August and September. The system has changed, and when the system changes, behaviour can change with it.

This is one of the reasons that the return to school can be understood as a kind of natural systems stress test. During the summer, a child's ability to cope may be supported by a relatively flexible environment. Then, almost overnight, the demands increase and the child's behaviour provides us with information about how well the new system is working.

A child who refuses to get out of bed may be communicating that the demands of the coming day feel overwhelming. A child who complains of a stomach-ache every morning may be experiencing genuine distress rather than simply trying to avoid school. A child who becomes angry when asked to complete homework may be communicating frustration, exhaustion or a sense of failure. A child who repeatedly disrupts the classroom may be communicating that the expectations being placed upon them exceed their current capacity to manage those demands. None of this means that every difficult behaviour should automatically be interpreted as a symptom of anxiety or distress, nor does it mean that children should never be expected to meet reasonable expectations. It does, however, suggest that behaviour deserves to be understood before it is judged.

This is particularly important because one of the risks in responding to children's mental-health and behavioural difficulties is that we can become overly focused on the individual child. The child is anxious, the child is refusing school, the child is inattentive, the child is oppositional, the child is having meltdowns, or the child lacks motivation. There may be truth in some of these descriptions, but they can inadvertently encourage us to locate the problem entirely within the child. A Positive Systems Approach asks us to broaden the lens by recognizing that behaviour occurs within an environment and that children are embedded within families, schools, peer groups, communities and broader social systems. These systems interact continuously with one another, and changes in one part of the system can have significant effects elsewhere.

When a child begins struggling at school, therefore, it is important to consider more than the child's individual characteristics. We need to think about the academic demands being placed upon the child, the predictability of the school environment, opportunities for movement, the amount of choice available, relationships with teachers and peers, the possibility of bullying or social isolation, the appropriateness of expectations for the child's developmental abilities, and whether the child has the organizational and executive-functioning skills necessary to meet those expectations. We also need to consider what happens at home before and after school, how much sleep the child is getting, how much time is being spent online, and whether the child has sufficient opportunities for genuine relaxation, play and connection. Most importantly, we need to consider what the child may be communicating through the behaviour.

The Canadian Press article provides an especially useful example of why this broader perspective matters. Dr. Ripudaman Minhas, a developmental pediatrician at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, points out that mental-health difficulties can manifest through absenteeism and encourages parents to consider whether a child's refusal to attend school may be associated with social isolation, bullying or other difficulties rather than simply assuming that the child is being lazy. He also notes that emotional difficulties can appear through physical complaints such as headaches or stomach-aches.

Imagine a child who complains of a stomach-ache every morning before school. One response might be to reassure the child that they are fine and insist that they go to school. Another response might be to become curious about what the stomach-ache is telling us. That second response does not mean allowing the child to stay home indefinitely or avoiding the expectations associated with school. Instead, it means treating the behaviour as information and trying to understand what might be contributing to it. Perhaps the child is being bullied. Perhaps the academic work has become too difficult. Perhaps the classroom is overwhelming. Perhaps the child is terrified of being called upon to read aloud. Perhaps they have no friends at recess. Perhaps they are exhausted because of an increasingly demanding schedule. Perhaps they are experiencing anxiety that they cannot yet put into words.  The behaviour itself does not tell us which explanation is correct, but it does tell us that something deserves our attention.

This way of thinking also changes the nature of intervention. If a child repeatedly becomes distressed during a particular situation, we can certainly teach the child strategies for managing that distress. Developing coping skills, emotional-regulation strategies and problem-solving abilities can be extremely valuable. At the same time, however, a Positive Systems Approach encourages us to ask whether there are aspects of the situation that can be changed.

If a child becomes overwhelmed by transitions, perhaps transitions can be made more predictable. If assignments routinely trigger emotional outbursts, perhaps the way assignments are presented or structured can be modified. If social situations generate anxiety, perhaps the child needs greater support in developing meaningful peer relationships. If the school day places excessive demands on the child's ability to sustain attention, perhaps opportunities for movement or shorter periods of focused work can be incorporated. If mornings are consistently chaotic, perhaps the family can restructure the morning routine. None of these approaches is simply about making a child more compliant. They are attempts to create a system in which the child has a greater opportunity to succeed.

This emphasis on prevention is particularly important when we consider the increasing pressure on children's mental-health services. The Canadian Press article describes a system that is already struggling to meet demand, while also pointing to the importance of better access to support through schools, communities and primary care so that difficulties can be addressed before they become more severe. A prevention-oriented approach means paying attention to the early signals rather than waiting until a child is refusing school every morning, experiencing severe anxiety, having frequent emotional outbursts or falling significantly behind academically.

Perhaps the child has begun complaining about school more frequently. Perhaps homework is taking twice as long as it used to. Perhaps the child has stopped seeing friends or has become increasingly irritable. Perhaps sleep has deteriorated, or the child is spending much more time online and much less time engaged in activities that previously provided enjoyment. None of these observations necessarily indicates a mental-health disorder, but together they may suggest that the balance between the child's needs and the demands of the environment is beginning to break down. Recognizing that imbalance early creates an opportunity to make changes before the situation becomes a crisis.

It is also important not to place the entire responsibility for children's mental health on parents or schools. The article points to broader pressures affecting young people, including social media, economic uncertainty, reduced opportunities for free play and outdoor activity, climate anxiety and concerns about the future. Kids Help Phone has also reported increased demand for its services and anticipates another increase when school resumes. These influences remind us that children's mental health does not develop in isolation. A child lives within a family system, the family exists within a school and community system, and those systems exist within a much larger social environment.

Economic pressures, technology, social expectations, academic competition and uncertainty about the future can all become part of the context in which a child's behaviour develops. Recognizing these influences does not mean blaming society for every child's difficulty, just as it does not mean denying the importance of individual differences or mental-health diagnoses. It means resisting overly simple explanations for complex problems. There is rarely one cause. More often, there is an interaction among multiple factors, and understanding that interaction can be much more useful than trying to identify a single source of the problem.

This is particularly relevant when working with children because children do not always have the language or developmental capacity to explain what they are experiencing. A child may not be able to say that the academic demands being placed upon them exceed their current executive-functioning abilities. They may simply say, “I don't want to go to school.” They may not be able to explain that they are experiencing social anxiety because they do not feel that they belong within their peer group. They may say that their stomach hurts. They may not be able to explain that they are exhausted by the constant demands being placed upon them and need greater control over their environment. They may simply tell a parent to leave them alone.

In these circumstances, behaviour can become an important form of communication. The behaviour is not necessarily the problem we need to eliminate; sometimes it is the message we need to understand.  This is one of the central ideas underlying a Positive Systems Approach. The approach does not deny the existence of mental-health disorders, developmental disabilities, ADHD, anxiety or other conditions that can significantly affect a child's functioning. Nor does it suggest that changing the environment will eliminate every difficulty. Rather, it recognizes that the child's characteristics and the environment are constantly interacting.

A child may have ADHD, but the extent to which ADHD interferes with functioning can vary enormously depending upon the demands and supports within the environment. A child may experience anxiety, but the situations that trigger that anxiety can be influenced by relationships, expectations, predictability and perceived control. A child may have difficulty regulating emotions, but emotional regulation does not occur in a vacuum; it is influenced by sleep, stress, relationships, sensory demands, expectations and the responses of the people around the child.  Understanding the child is therefore only part of the task. We also need to understand the system in which the child is living.

Perhaps this is one of the lessons that September can offer us. The return to school creates a natural opportunity to observe the relationship between a child and the environment. A child who functions relatively well under one set of circumstances but struggles dramatically when school resumes is providing us with valuable information. Instead of asking only why the child is struggling now, we can ask what has changed. What demands have increased? What supports have disappeared? What opportunities for choice have been reduced? What relationships have changed? What expectations have been introduced? What sources of reinforcement are no longer available? What aspects of the environment might be contributing to the behaviour, and what could we change before asking the child to change?

These questions move us away from a purely reactive approach and toward prevention. They also encourage a more compassionate understanding of children's behaviour without lowering expectations or minimizing genuine mental-health difficulties. The goal is not to excuse behaviour that is problematic or to remove every challenge from a child's life. Children need opportunities to develop resilience, learn coping skills, tolerate frustration and gradually take on increasing levels of responsibility. But resilience is not developed by continually increasing demands while ignoring the conditions under which the child is expected to function. Children are more likely to develop resilience when they have appropriate challenges accompanied by the relationships, resources and environmental supports necessary to meet those challenges successfully.

The return to school will always bring challenges for some children. September is a significant transition, and transitions naturally create uncertainty. But perhaps we can begin to see September somewhat differently. Rather than viewing the return to school simply as the time when children's mental-health problems suddenly appear, we can see it as an opportunity to learn more about the relationship between children and the systems in which they live.

When a child begins struggling, the behaviour is giving us information. When anxiety increases, something has changed. When school refusal emerges, something may be making school difficult to tolerate. When emotional outbursts increase, the demands being placed on the child may have exceeded the resources available to them. And when a child who seemed to be doing well during the summer begins to struggle in September, perhaps the most useful response is not to ask what happened to the child, but to ask what happened to the system.

That shift in perspective is at the heart of a Positive Systems Approach. Behaviour occurs within an environment, and when the environment changes, behaviour can change with it. By paying attention to that relationship, we have a better opportunity to understand what children are communicating, identify difficulties before they escalate, modify the conditions that may be contributing to those difficulties, and create environments in which children have a genuine opportunity to succeed.

Perhaps September does not create the problem. Perhaps, if we are willing to look closely, September simply reveals what was already there—and gives us an opportunity to do something about it.