The last day of school has something of a party's end and something of a farewell about it. Your child comes home with a half-empty backpack, a crumpled drawing and a strange mix of euphoria and exhaustion. And that very night, when at last there's no early start the next morning, they won't fall asleep. They toss and turn, ask for water, get up twice. The holidays begin and, against all expectation, they sleep worse than they did in May.
If this sounds familiar, it isn't your fault, nor a sign that something is wrong. It's one of the least talked-about effects of the end of term, and it has a fairly clear explanation.
The tiredness you can't see
Children finish the school year drained. For months they've carried the early mornings, the rules, the constant stimulation and the social demand of being among many other children every day. The body holds up while there's structure holding it. When that structure disappears almost overnight, it lets go of everything it had been storing.
Sometimes that shows up as easy tears, as tantrums that seemed long gone, or as unsettled sleep for a couple of weeks. It's better not to read it as a step backwards; it's more like a release — the child's version of the tiredness we adults only notice once we finally stop.
Why sleep comes undone right now
What's striking is that the disruption shows up at the start of the holidays, before summer has even settled in. Several reasons line up at once:
- The structure falls away all at once. School set the whole day: when to get up, when to eat, the blocks of activity. When all of that vanishes within twenty-four hours, the child's internal clock is left with no time cues and takes a few days to recalibrate.
- There's more light and more heat. As summer arrives, nightfall comes much later. The body keeps getting the message that "it's still daytime" until late into the evening, and the heat of the first nights fragments sleep even when the child is exhausted.
- Too much excitement, not enough of the good kind of tiredness. The first days off bring overstimulation: plans, cousins, screens that loosen up, schedules that stretch. And at the same time there's usually less of the orderly physical exertion that recess and the daily journeys used to provide.
- Even when the change is good, it's still a change. For a young child, any transition stirs something inside, even when it's heading toward something they want. The body takes a while to believe that now it's time for something else.
What helps in the first weeks
The key is to understand that this is a landing phase, not summer for good. There's no need to force-correct anything; what's needed is to accompany while the body finds its new rhythm.
Let them sleep in for a few days. If they catch up on hours, give them those hours. The end-of-term slump is paid off by sleeping, and a child who's been carrying months of early mornings needs that margin to empty out the tiredness.
Hold the close of the night even if the hour wanders. Keep the story and the goodnight to the day even if they go to bed later. That recognisable sequence is the signal that tells the body the day is ending, even when everything else has shifted.
Don't fill the schedule all at once. After months at full tilt, a child needs days with no plan. The boredom of the first days off is therapeutic: it leaves room to wind down.
Take care of the last hour of the day. Lowering the stimulation and the light in the final stretch helps the body understand it's night, even if it's still bright outside. It's not about blacking everything out, but about shifting from "day mode" to "night mode" with a certain gentleness.
And, above all, give it time. Most of these disruptions sort themselves out within a week or two, once the body gets used to the new shape of the day. If after that they're still clearly sleeping badly, then it is worth looking more calmly at what's going on.
And here we should be honest about the evidence
As with almost everything around children's sleep, some of these pieces are well studied and others less so. That evening light and heat worsen rest is fairly well established, including in young children, who are especially sensitive to light in the last hours of the day. That suddenly losing the schedule throws off the internal clock fits with what's known about sleep during holidays, though much of it has been measured in children older than Semillita's. And the "end-of-term tiredness" is mostly what families and clinicians observe, rather than something confirmed in a laboratory. None of this is cause for alarm: if your child sleeps a bit worse these days and is otherwise fine, the most likely thing is that the body will readjust on its own.
And then, the long summer
Once that first landing phase is over, the deeper question of the holidays arrives: do you have to keep the routines at all costs, or can you loosen them without guilt? That's a subject in itself —telling apart what truly anchors your child from what is only the clock— and we'll devote its own article to it very soon.
A ritual that withstands the mess
When the first nights of the holidays come undone, it helps to have a ritual that doesn't depend on the time or the place. In Thank You for Today, the close of the day isn't going to bed at an exact hour, but saying goodnight to things one by one until the body stops resisting. It works in their own bed, at the grandparents' house, or on a summer night that ran on too long — which is exactly what they need in these days when nothing is in its place yet.
Thank You for Today
A Bedtime Story
Acorn is a little squirrel bursting with energy who, at bedtime, feels that his toys still need him to keep playing. Instead of telling him to stop, Grandma Squirrel suggests a special agreement: say goodnight to each toy, remembering all the fun they had together during the day. Little by little, Acorn discovers that taking care of his toys is also a way of taking care of himself.
Read this children's story in the Semillita app
