The Neurobiology of Mixed Feelings: Back-to-School Reflections from The Real Work
It can be easy to think of the return to school after summer as a straightforward emotional event. Children are expected to feel excited, nervous, or perhaps some combination of the two. Yet this framing can still subtly imply that difficult feelings are temporary obstacles to be reassured away before a child is ready to begin. It's important to note that that the transition back to school is inherently complex. It involves separation and reunion, familiarity and uncertainty, plus increased autonomy in some areas and reduced control in others. A child may genuinely want to return to friends while also dreading the sensory demands of the classroom. Or, vice versa! Entering a new grade can be empowering as well as scary, and is usually coupled with some grief around the loss of summer schedules and activities. There are often paradoxical experiences, such as joy at seeing friends again, but fear around being around friends as well.
Using “integration” as a goal, rather than happiness or even “calm”
Within Daniel Siegel’s interpersonal neurobiology framework, psychological well-being is associated with integration. Integration is defined in this context as the capacity to differentiate distinct aspects of an experience while also linking them into a coherent narrative. An integrated response during the month of August when you ask “how are you feeling about going back to school?” might sound like, “Part of me wants to go, and another part of me wishes I could stay home.” Both emotional states remain differentiated, but neither has to cancel the other.
Adults often respond to children’s ambivalence by highlighting the feelings that we are most comfortable seeing our kids experience:
“You’ll have so much fun once you get there.”
“But you love your teacher.”
“it’s going to be so much better this year.”
Although these statements may be factually true, they can unintentionally communicate that positivity or even having a singular emotion is the correct experience. The child is then left not only with the original anxiety, but with an additional relational problem: the sense that the adult cannot fully join them in what they are experiencing.
Integration requires us to acknowledge the anxiety (even if it doesn’t seem rational or true!). It asks the adult and the child to hold two truths at once:
“You are really looking forward to seeing your friends, and your body is also telling you that going back feels like too much.”
“You know this school, but so much about this year is still new.”
“You can be ready and not feel ready.”
For us as parents, a coherent narrative is actually more important to help our kids access than it is to highlight the positives!
The Predictive Brain and the Stress of Uncertainty
Our brains are wired to anticipate what will happen next. Predictability allows our nervous systems to allocate attention and energy more efficiently. When an experience is uncertain, the brain must devote additional resources to scanning, forecasting, and preparing for potential outcomes. Research on anxiety increasingly emphasizes that uncertainty is a central driver of anticipatory distress. Uncertain threat or even uncertainty around something preferred can intensify vigilance because the nervous system does not yet know what response will be required.
Back-to-school transitions contain multiple layers of uncertainty. Here are some guesses I might make as a parent, but you know your particular child best and I bet you could generate a list quite easily of some uncertainties. It’s important to hold these as underlying stressors, but not necessarily as problems to be solved:
Who will I sit with?
Will the teacher understand me?
What if the work is harder?
Where will my parent go after drop-off?
Will the classroom be loud?
Will I know what I am supposed to do?
Will I still belong?
These questions may never be spoken explicitly. They may instead appear as stomachaches, irritability, bedtime resistance, repetitive questions, increased rigidity, or a sudden refusal to discuss school. From a predictive-processing perspective, these behaviors can be understood as attempts to reduce uncertainty. Some children may seek repeated reassurance, insist on controlling small details, or avoid the transition entirely because predictability itself has become regulating.
This is particularly relevant for neurodivergent children. A school day includes rapid transitions, unclear social expectations, variable sensory inputs, and demands that are often communicated implicitly. A child may be looking forward to learning while accurately anticipating that the environment will require significant neurological labor. Their reluctance should not automatically be interpreted as irrational anxiety. It may contain important information about the accessibility of the setting.
In the few weeks before school starts, what can we as parents do within the relationship to support the upcoming transition?
Co-Regulation Before Self-Regulation: Notice YOUR feelings and expectations first.
Children do not develop emotion regulation in isolation. Regulation first occurs between people and is gradually internalized. Contemporary models describe parent-child regulation as a reciprocal process. The emotional state of each person influences the other. Take a moment to notice what you carry as a parent. Grief around endings? Fear for the year? Already exhausted thinking about all teh advocacy you’re going to have to do?
This is important during back-to-school season because adults often attempt to regulate children with their words, while communicating their alarm nonverbally. A parent may say, “You’re going to be okay,” while moving quickly, holding tension, avoiding eye contact, or displaying visible tension around the topic. The child’s nervous system receives all of these signals. Regulation is communicated through the entire relational environment, not simply through reassuring language.
That being said, you don’t have to be perfectly calm! The goal is to model coherence. You can name YOUR thoughts and mixed emotions as well, while providing reassurance that you will be there for your child no matter what, and reassurance that you can make a plan together to help them feel supported. Your goal should be simply to remain organized (integrated) enough to be emotionally available.
The adult might communicate:
“I can see that this is hard.”
“We do not have to push this feeling away.”
“I believe you can do hard things, and I will still help you.”
This stance combines acceptance with confidence. Acceptance without confidence can feel like this: “Yes, this is terrible, and I do not know how we will manage.” Confidence without acceptance can feel like dismissal such as: “There is no reason to be upset.” As the trusted adult for your child, tuning in to your emotional complexity is key, and will empower you to provide a connected response that honors mixed feelings and also instills a sense of resilience and connection between yourself and your child that you can both take into the school year together.