Every spring, somewhere around the last week of April, our preschool teachers start telling me the same thing: the children are dysregulated. Sleep is off. Drop-offs that have gone smoothly since October are suddenly tearful. A child who has been potty-trained for six months has two accidents in three days. A normally cheerful five-year-old refuses to put her shoes on.
In most cases, the kids are not sick and nothing has gone wrong at home. They are picking up on the end of the school year — and they have no language for what they are picking up on.
The last six weeks of a preschool year are quietly disorienting for children under five. The room they have spent nine months learning is about to be empty. The teacher whose voice they know better than some of their own relatives is about to not be there. A child sitting next to them every day, all year, may be going to a different program in the fall. The routine they finally trusted is about to dissolve.
Adults, with our years of practice, barely notice this. Four-year-olds notice it intensely and cannot say so.
What we see in the classroom
The patterns are predictable enough that our teachers track them. In the last month of every school year, we typically see an uptick in: separation distress at drop-off, regression in self-help skills (toileting, getting dressed, feeding), increased physical conflict between children, sleep disruption reported by families, and the appearance of "big" emotions over things that previously did not cause big emotions.
None of this is a sign that anything is wrong with your child. It is a developmentally typical response to a routine change that is real, but not yet visible to a young child as a story they can understand.
The good news is that small, deliberate adults can make a noticeable difference here. Children this age are exquisitely sensitive to the texture of the adults around them. A few specific moves help.
Name the thing out loud
One of the best things you can do for a child this age is to give them words for what is happening. Not a lecture — a sentence.
"The school year is almost over. In a few weeks, you will have your last day with Ms. Reyes. Then we will have a summer at home, and then in September you will start a new class with new friends. That is a lot of changes."
Say it on a Tuesday morning while you are tying their shoes. Say it again on a Saturday at breakfast. You are not trying to make the change less real — you are giving them a frame to hang the feelings on.
The American Academy of Pediatrics and most early-childhood researchers point to the same finding here: naming feelings reduces their intensity. A child who can say "I'm sad my teacher is leaving" feels that sadness as something they can hold. A child without those words feels it as something happening to their body.
Keep the rest of life steady
The instinct, when a child is dysregulated, is often to make things more fun. Extra screen time. Special dinners. Cancel the bath because they are tired.
Resist this, gently. What helps a four-year-old in this stretch is more of the predictable, not more of the special. The bedtime routine you have always done. The same songs in the car. The dinner foods they know. The boring, beautiful regularity of family life is the thing they can lean on while one of the other big systems in their world is changing.
If anything, this is a good stretch to reduce novelty for a few weeks. Save the surprise trip for July.
Mark the goodbye
Children this age process transitions partly through ritual. We do this in classrooms by walking the kids through a goodbye sequence in the final week: the last circle time, the last song, the last hug at the door. We tell them, in advance, that today is going to be the last day. We let them be sad if they are sad.
At home, you can do small versions of the same thing. A family ritual on the last day — a photo with the classroom door, a special breakfast that morning, a card the child writes (or dictates) to their teacher. The point is not that the ritual is elaborate. The point is that there is one, and that the child knows it is coming.
A predictable ending is much easier for a four-year-old than a sudden one. "Today is the last day" is a kindness.
Plan the bridge into summer
The other piece is what comes next. The day after the last day of school is, in our experience, the hardest day for many children. The routine they have just said goodbye to is now absent, and the new shape of summer has not yet formed.
Build a small structure into that first week. Even just two anchor activities per day, at predictable times, is enough. Morning park time, lunch at home, an afternoon book. The structure does not need to be impressive. It needs to be there.
And a note for parents of children moving up
If your child is moving from our infant room to toddlers, or toddlers to preschool, or preschool to kindergarten this fall, the work above starts now, not in August. Walk past the new room when you drop off. Mention the new teacher's name occasionally. Read books about starting new schools. Let your child draw a picture of the new classroom they imagine.
You are not preparing them for the actual reality of the new room. You are preparing them for the idea that there will be a new room, and that you will be steady on the other side of it.
A word to families
Most of what helps in these weeks is small. Naming. Predictability. Goodbyes that are real. A bridge into what is next. You are already doing most of this — we see it at pickup every day.
The dysregulation will pass. The sleep will settle. By the third week of summer, most children look up from whatever they are doing, and the school year that just ended is already a piece of their history.
If you want to talk through a specific transition that is feeling hard at your house, our family support staff is available all spring and through the summer. We are glad to help.
