Brain health · Sanctum

Exhausted after school

They come home from school with nothing left. Wiped out, irritable, melting down over small things, or silent and flat. A whole day of holding it together has emptied the tank, and home is where the emptiness shows.

Masking and coping all day, the noise, the rules, the social demands, the effort of keeping up, takes enormous energy in a child who is working harder than anyone can see. By home time there is simply nothing left to manage with, so it spills.

Because school sees a child who copes and home sees the collapse, the exhaustion gets read as behaviour, or as something happening at home, rather than the cost of the day finally landing. The after-school crash is one of the clearest signs, and one of the most missed.

We treat the after-school collapse as evidence, not misbehaviour, because of what it tells us about the effort going in. None of this is a diagnosis. It is what we explore with you.

Written by Dr Asad RaffiConsultant Psychiatrist · Founder & Medical Director