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If you are a parent, you have probably lived some version of this day. School reports a mostly fine morning. Maybe a few blinks. Maybe a cough the teacher barely noticed. Then the bag hits the floor at home and the volume jumps. Neck. Eyes. Sounds. Suddenly the child who "held it together" all day looks like a different body in your kitchen.

I get asked versions of this every week. A throat clear that stays quiet through lessons and fills the car ride home. Blinking that seems mild at pickup and takes over homework. A vocal sound that barely shows at school and then spends the evening with you. Sometimes the child is seven. Sometimes they are twelve and this pattern has been the family weather for years. The detail changes. The confusion underneath does not: why here, why now, and does that mean home is making it worse.

Here is the honest answer, without the sugar or the scare.

For a lot of children, after school is when the day finally lets go. They have been holding, focusing, wat...