MY CHILD Is Perfect at School but Falls Apart at Home | #TRIBE Talk - Ep. 24

In this episode of TRIBE Talk, we explore a situation many parents recognise: teachers report that a child is calm, cooperative, and thriving at school—yet at home the same child seems overwhelmed, emotional, or prone to meltdowns. This contrast can be confusing and sometimes even lead parents to feel that their concerns are being dismissed.

Through a trauma-informed and developmental lens, we unpack why children can appear regulated in structured environments like school but release their emotions in the safety of home. We discuss the emotional effort it takes for some children to hold things together during the school day, why home often becomes the place where feelings finally surface, and how adults can respond in ways that support regulation rather than increasing stress.

Episode Highlights:

• Why some children “hold it together” at school but struggle at home
• Understanding emotional effort and the after-school release
• How safety and attachment influence where emotions show up
• The impact of masking, pressure, and self-control during the school day
• Why this pattern is often misunderstood by adults
• Working together to build shared understanding and support

For more information on TRIBE Trauma Informed Care visit: https://www.tribecare.org/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome everybody to Tribe Talk. You're here with Rachel Evans and Laura Neal. And today we're talking about why some children have glowing reports in school and everything seems fine in school, but then when they get home behaviours tend to fall apart.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Welcome to Tribe Talk, the space for parents, carers and practitioners to explore trauma-informed care in practice.

SPEAKER_02 0:28

So does this sound like you? You pick your child up from school at the school gate, the teacher hands them over and says, They've had a great day, they've been absolutely fine, and you get in the car, sometimes make it home. For some parents, they don't even make it to getting in the car. But as soon as you're alone with them, everything goes to parts. So they're shouting, they're screaming, they won't do anything that you ask them to do, they want dinner but don't want dinner. Um, and you you end up thinking, What am I doing wrong here? How can they have such a great day in school? And they come home and everything has gone wrong.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

So in today's podcast, we're gonna unpick this a little bit for you and um understand the patterns as to what's actually going on in in these circumstances from a trauma-informed lens. So I think this topic comes up quite a lot. I think we say this a lot. We all we we've thrown all the um all the difficult scenarios, but I do think this comes up a lot in consultations where um families are really worried and they're like, What am I doing wrong? Because at school everything's absolutely fine. They have glowing reports, like you said, at the school gate, that you know, at the hand over like, yeah, fabulous day, brilliant. They played with their friends lovely, even in parents' evening, they might get you know a great report, but you know, at home and the conversations that you're having with your supervising social worker or um a social worker that are not those conversations because you're really struggling at home with high-level challenging behaviours, you're seeing non-compliance, you see in your refusal in anything, um, and you're thinking, well, it's gotta be me. Yeah, and that's such a knock to your parenting and your confidence.

SPEAKER_02 2:19

Absolutely, and I think it can go it can go two ways. It's uh, well, it's gotta be me, what am I doing wrong? And you feel completely useless, I think, a lot as a as a parent when you get to that point. Um, but then equally, sometimes you can start to question, well, what's school are school not telling me? Because I can't be seeing all of this at home, and then suddenly they go to school and that's turned off and everything's completely fine. So why is school not telling me the truth? Um, so it and it can one, it can cause difficulties between home and school, um, but then two, it's it's not helpful sometimes for parents because they just feel like they can't get anything right.

SPEAKER_00 3:02

Oh, and the flip side to that as well, parents thinking, no one's believing me, like this is actually going on in my house, like I'm really struggling. Are they not believing me? Because sometimes I will turn up to consultations and they're like, Rich, this is really happening. Like, do you believe me? And of course, like I you know, they're not gonna lie about something like that. Um, it's just that in school that's setting it's just not seeing those those behaviours, which we'll we'll come on to talk about why that might be. Um, but I think parents then feel a bit worried, they're like, Oh, maybe people think that I'm not being truthful about this, and I'm genuinely struggling and I'm I'm worried about uh whether I'm doing something wrong.

SPEAKER_02 3:41

Yeah, or just maybe not not being truthful, but well, they must be exaggerating that it can't be that bad. Yeah. Um, which often isn't isn't the case, it is that bad.

SPEAKER_00 3:54

And I think in definitely in when this comes up in consultations is providing a lot of reassurance to parents and carers that yeah, absolutely like I'm just here to like gather as much information as possible to understand why this might be going on, completely understand that it is going on, and we we need to find some solutions to it because you know, as a family they can't they can't continue with that. So providing that reassurance and confidence that you know it's yeah, it's just something that we've got to find a solution to.

SPEAKER_02 4:26

Yeah. Uh so if we start picking this apart a little, I think the first point to make is that children will always push boundaries more with their parents. Um now this is just kind of an opening point. It's not to say that they're just pushing boundaries with you, because with a lot of our children, it's not just pushing boundaries, but it is something we need to bear in mind that all children, whether they've experienced trauma or not experienced trauma, um, will push boundaries more with their parents, so um there's more likelihood of having more escalations at home.

SPEAKER_00 5:05

And I think even like with some friends or other family members, it's quite a common story of uh parents going to parents' evening, like, oh your child's perfect, and yeah, and sometimes my friends are like will say to me, Well, they're cheeky in the house, yeah, you know, you know, that is at like the the lowest level, but yeah, I completely understand what you're saying, and that that children would generally push more boundaries with their parents because they feel safest.

SPEAKER_02 5:33

Yeah, yeah, so they feel safest with you, they know you're around, they're gonna push those boundaries more. Um, but there is so much more that comes into it with children who've experienced trauma, but we do always need to bear that in mind in the background as well.

SPEAKER_00 5:47

Yeah, yeah. So let's just take a look at school first then, and what school offers for for children, and I think this might be one of the reasons why behaviour might be might be cropping up. So school provides children with that structure um and that predictability. There's lots of routine boundaries are very clearly stated. You've got your school rules, you've got your classroom rules, there's constant feedback, there's constant guidance. So it really sets up all the advice we would really give. You know, for care experience children, that's how we're gonna support stability, yeah. Um, and helping them to succeed because all those things are in place typically.

SPEAKER_02 6:36

Um those are really the things that we want for children who've experienced trauma that they have that consistency, that predictability, that repetition, uh, that then creates that reliability. Um, and you you said schools are set up for that. Not every class is set up in that way. Just wanted to uh point that out. There are differences, typically. Typically, yeah. But typically there's lots of rules, there's boundaries, there's structure, there's consistency in the day, which gives those foundations um that set a child up for success.

SPEAKER_00 7:11

Yeah, definitely, and even that like constant guidance and and feedback, children are getting are getting that continually on any behaviour that they're engaging in. Um, and again, that just adds to that um predictability and that reliability that we know consistency, predictability, reliability reliability, they are the foundations to that we need to provide um children, especially children that are care experienced. So schools and classrooms are providing that to a high level, um, that that's what school should be set up like. Um, so at home, um if if you know we're taking that advice, that's what we've got to follow, then isn't it, in setting up that routine, that that structure, um, and that's maybe a first place to start, really, is um how can we mimic some of some of what a school setting can offer? Um, because if a simple um explanation, I suppose, is half terms, summer holidays, children really struggle during those times because that structure is is instantly taken away, and we know that when we're when we're providing consultations with families, um half terms, Easter, summer holidays, Christmas, we know that they're tricky times for children um for lots of different reasons, but that that loss of structure and um predictability is one of the reasons why we see a spike in behaviours during those times because aside from your meals, you know, your breakfast, lunch, and your and your dinner, you know, school are also saying, Okay, we've got this lesson next. Yeah, um, after lunch, we're gonna be doing this. So there's lots of prep, there's lots of discussion, there's lots of guidance, um, and setting our home-up like that will um will will support a reduction in some of those challenges. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:05

And I think particularly in the younger years, you see lots of that structure. Um, within schools, if a child is having difficulty in school, one of the first things we look at is the structure and routines. Um, and quite often, if a child is having difficulties, we find that the structure and routine has maybe slipped or isn't there. Um, and we're looking at how do we re-implement this.

SPEAKER_00 9:27

Yeah, like your Friday afternoon free time. Yeah. Children don't really respond well to that, same as if they've got um supply cover those days in school, you know, or if there's like film day, you know, you're gonna see some children slip through the net where we're gonna see some challenges. So I think a lot has got to say for creating that consistency, predictability, and reliability within a setting to put a bit of a lid, a bit of a blanket on some of those behaviours. Yeah. Um, so that could be potentially a reason that you know we might see some spikes. So another thing that I was thinking about when um we came up with this topic was the um cork bottle analogy in terms of explaining behaviours and and and triggers. So if you imagine, I suppose your child has a bottle of pop, um, and they they go to school and there's lots of different demands, there's lots of different instructions that are that are presented, there's difficulties, there's there's transitions, but every time something like that happens, you um you shake that bottle, it creates a little bit of frustration. But every time they they encounter that, then that fizz is just bubbling up and bubbling up and bubbling up, and it could be then they come home, there's again put your bag, put your coat away, tie to your bedroom before you come down for dinner. There's lots of instructions and and demands, or there's difficulties within that, and it could be they get home and that's when things explode because they've reached that level. All these little triggers have happened, and it's like I can't contain this anymore, and I'm just gonna completely explode. Yeah, and you might get that fallout at home.

SPEAKER_02 11:20

And you you've got to think this brings us back to our first point of children will push more boundaries with parents who they know are there consistent and safe. So when they're in safe environments, um, so they know that in that environment they can explode and they'll still be safe.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:35

Um, so you've got those those two elements then that are interacting.

SPEAKER_00 11:39

Yeah, and that's where you kind of see those behavioural challenges then happen and they and they play out, but it it could and we might not ever get to the bottom of that, but it's something to definitely consider that that may happen, and and we may feel that, you know, in our day-to-day, where it's just like that straw that broke the camels back and I'm gonna I don't know, shout my husband to us for something that he hasn't done.

SPEAKER_02 12:04

Um it can happen with all of us, can't it? If we're having a particularly difficult day, so we were stuck in a traffic jam in the morning, didn't get to work on time, and then our computer broke when we were in work, um, someone came to us with a problem that we couldn't fix, someone else came to us and really annoyed us, and by the time we go home, we're ready to explode. Yeah, it's the exact same effect is happening with our children.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

And I've used my husband as an example, but that for you know, talking about safe people, I know that I could probably shout at him. Yeah. And things are gonna be okay after, you know. Um, it's not gonna be a big fallout, it's a safe space to raise my voice, you know. Um, because we can repair after that, and I think the same goes for our for our children, like you said, is that home is like a safe place to kind of explode.

SPEAKER_02 12:57

Um that is exactly why my teenage daughter explodes at me all the time at the moment. The things will settle quite quickly, they'll settle, and she knows I will have a word, but then everything will be fine again. Um, so she knows she can do that.

SPEAKER_00 13:12

Yeah, and that's how like behaviour works, isn't it? So I think it's just important. The point we were trying to make here is just important to consider that this is what might be happening as well in in some cases, maybe not every day, there might be some other things going on, but just remember that analogy, and and especially with your own behaviour as well, like that that is something that can happen when there is just one thing, the stroller breaks the camera's back, and that's where we might be seeing behavior play out in the safest place. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:42

Um, so that kind of leads us nicely on to um something else which I think is important to recognise. Something I think we talk about a lot is children that mask in school. Um, and I wanted to highlight that there is masking, but then there is children who don't mask and they're fine in school.

SPEAKER_00 14:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:02

Um, and we don't want to always assume that there is masking. So, first off, what is masking? So, masking is um when you're putting up a front or putting up a brave face, you might be suppressing your needs to avoid rejection, essentially. You are putting on this brave face or putting this um image of yourself out there so that you don't get rejected or you don't get um further consequences, which um lots of our children will do in school. So they might suppress those difficulties, they might suppress their needs, they might suppress difficult behaviour that comes out elsewhere because they know that there will be more rejection or more pain if they show that side of themselves in school. Um, and that's what masking is. And I think when we have children who are displaying lots of challenges at home and there's not challenges in school, it can be very easy to assume that they are masking in school, but that might not be the case. There will 100% be children that are masking, but we need to look at it objectively and think, well, are they masking or are they not masking? Because if school has got a lot of what you talked about earlier with that routine, that structure, that reliability, children actually might feel quite safe in school and they might be doing okay, they might be doing really well. Um, and it it might be that they're actually doing well there and they're not not masking, and we shouldn't assume that it's masking all the time.

SPEAKER_00 15:37

Yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_02 15:38

Um yeah, but there are some signs, uh, so we we go and uh uh observe children a lot in school to look at what's going on, and there are some really obvious signs if a child is is masking, um, because although they do keep it together, they usually um don't keep those subtle signs in check so you you can see. Uh so the first one that I always look for um when I when I'm assassinating a child in school um is hypervigilance. Are they hypervigilant? Are they looking for any person who enters the room? Um being a new person in the classroom, usually when we're observing, it's really easy to see that hypervigilance because they will be looking at us. And they'll be over straight away asking questions. Hello, who are you? Why are you in my classroom today? Shall I sit right next to you? Um, that happens quite often. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so if that happens, you it kind of gives you a sign of okay, this child is very observant of what's going on. Maybe they're not as fine as we think they are within the school environment. Um so the um the next point then it kind of goes hand in hand with hypervigilance, is that wariness. So it's wariness of new people, but it also might be wariness of um just tasks, being overly anxious about tasks, might be asking the teacher a lot of questions, it might be doing their best to get it right and not wanting to ask for help as well. Um, you have to really observe that to um try and pinpoint what's going on for that individual child. Um, I think a big one that is a telltale sign is concentration. So children who struggle to concentrate, and um, where we can see that really um clearly with younger children, particularly, is carpet time where they sit down, listen to stories, um, or there's an activity on the carpet, they can't sit still, they're wandering, um, their concentration really, really wanders, or if they've got a specific task, they can't focus on it, um, and that's a good sign that actually there might be more masking going on than um than we've considered.

SPEAKER_00 17:42

Yeah, and for younger children who talking before we kind of press record was um for younger children in foundation phase, it kind of suits them at that age to kind of go around and um and just interact with lots differently, it could be I'm not concentrating on one thing, but I'm flipped in, you're gonna miss that. Um, but when there's a focus task, they might be there for two seconds and then they're off, or if there's carpet time, like you said, and then they're off. That's like another kind of telltale sign for for a younger for a younger child and kind of picking up some of these like red flags, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:19

Yeah, so when when I go into schools anyway, those are the things I'm looking out for. Uh am I seeing hypervigilance? Am I seeing wariness? Am I seeing um that they can't concentrate very well? Am I seeing on a positive that they're engaging with their peers, they're able to have conversations, they seem quite settled with their peers, or am I seeing a child that seems to want to please everybody and um is more anxious around their peers? Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes those signs are quite subtle, but if we can pick up on them, we can actually work out are they actually doing okay in school or are they masking and then you're getting that big blow up when they go home.

SPEAKER_00 18:57

Yeah, and and that's um that's really important to understand what that might look like across the ages as well. Um, because that might look very different, or yeah, just the paper might present very different for a younger child versus someone that's old and I'm picking up on them really early on is is important, yeah, to know like is this masking? Yeah, or is something else going on? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:21

And I think that fits into what you were talking about earlier, Rachel. Um, before we actually started recording again with attachment styles, because particularly in teens, you can almost predict the way that they're going to react based on their attachment style. Um, so if uh a young person uses more ambivalent um style attachment behaviours, then they're far more likely to ask for over-ask for help, ask for lots of support if they're doing a task that they're struggling with, or if they're if they want to mask, they're going to surround themselves with people. Whereas um an avoidant child will try to do everything on their own, and they will be they'll be the ones who always say this in our tribe training. They fly under the radar because nobody notices that anything is wrong, because they seem content, they seem like they're getting on with their work, but internally they're really, really struggling.

SPEAKER_00 20:17

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, everything you've just said, it's just important to to know the differences there and what to pick up on diff at different points in a in a child's life, in terms of their age, um, to understand what's really going on at school and why are we seeing this difference then at home to get to the bottom of it. Yeah. So another thing that we wanted to talk about to today as a potential reason why we might be seeing these differences in behaviour um in different settings, and we do have a behavioural term for that, um, it's called behavioural contrast. Now, to explain explain this to you um so you can understand it in this context, when you have a behavior that is heavily reinforced in in one environment, what you might see then in other environments, you kind of see these spikes, and this is what might be going on in um versus school versus home, it could be vice versa as well. But it's important to consider that in one environment, if there's any any changes, like behaviours are really reinforced, it's tightly controlled, you might see spikes in other areas, kind of linking into what we were talking about, that safe space be it being home as well. Um and we know this because behaviour is shaped by by our environment. So if two different environments are providing different things, you will see different responses in in some cases. Um, so you know, having these meetings, you know, an MDT meeting, to understand what are those environments looking like, what are what are those similarities? What are those differences? Is there anything that we can learn from one one another in terms of their in terms of environments to set that up for success for our for our children? Because it could be something like that that's that's going on where we're seeing this contrast in behaviour because they're so different.

SPEAKER_02 22:15

Yeah. Um so to give an example of that, you might have a child, for example, who has had difficulties in school and they're hitting out in school, so they um hit a lot of their peers. School puts support in, that support works, and there is no longer any hitting in school. But at home, they suddenly start hitting their siblings all the time. And then there's those discussions about well, this might be fine in school now, but we're having real problems at home. That's behavioural contrast, where an intervention is put in in one environment, and you see the opposite effect in an environment that hasn't been changed at all, so it's not really related, but that's what behavioural contrast is.

SPEAKER_00 22:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:59

And um we see behaviour crop-up, yeah, you know. And it's it's something that's scientifically proven to happen time and time again, so we know that that might happen.

SPEAKER_00 23:10

Yeah, exactly. Um, so another thing to be considering why we're seeing these differences in these two environments, school versus home, because behavioural contrast might be at play. So let's um wrap up um this podcast by looking at a question that was asked by uh a carer in one of our tribe trainings. So this um carer had said, I feel like no one believes me, which we've kind of we have covered this, isn't it? And it's quite calm. So no one believes me when I say that I'm seeing behaviours at home because at school these behaviours do not exist. How do I get other people to understand what I'm going through? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:47

Um I think there's a number of ways that you can you can do this. One of the first things um I encourage parents to do when we first meet a parent who has this difficulty is um to say, right, start recording what's happening. So um you've got some how often is this happening, how extreme is it, um, so that when we do have an MDT meeting, uh you can give that information. Um and then my second point would be is to have MDT meetings, um, not necessarily just parent and school, um, because it can be helpful to have other people there to have uh to give some context around that, and that could be if you've got a consultant like us involved, having one of us, it could be having a social worker who comes to that meeting as well, um, to uh talk about what's going on at home, and then importantly, really look at how can we work together? So, in school, um, what is happening in school? If things are going really well, great, what can we learn from that? Um, but also asking that question do we need to look at this a little bit more closely because mum or dad or both are having these big outbursts when the child comes home?

SPEAKER_00 24:59

And in my experience, schools are more than happy to to offer some help and some guidance and at least provide some of the things that are working at at school so parents can try at home, and that's usually like the first step, isn't it? Um, before these MDT meetings are are called. So yeah, I think there's a lot of benefit to widen that invite to invite more professionals along to that. So, like you said, you're adding to that context and you're you're opening that conversation to others to get more advice. Okay, so some just some key takeaways from our um discussion for from today. So if your child completely falls apart at home and things are going well at school, it doesn't mean that you're the problem. We just need to unpick what is actually um going on, and it could be that you're their safest place. Um so things that we've talked about today is is considering that school setting and what that offers and what we can mimic at home that will that will help um with with the behaviour at home, but also understanding is your child masking in school, or again, is there something else that that is going on there that we need to that we need to understand? So I guess the goal isn't to um well you're not the problem for starters. We just need to understand, that's what our goal is, isn't it? To understand what is actually going on, what are the patterns that that we're seeing, what let's just un unpick the this problem and start implementing some strategies that are gonna support learn from others, gather guidance from others, and um encourage those MDT discussions as well.

SPEAKER_02 26:41

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