It starts before you even get their shoes off. Your child walks through the door and something in them has shifted— their shoulders are tense, their voice is sharper or quieter than usual, and their eyes don’t quite meet yours.
Nothing obvious happened, you look for scraped knees, wait for a tearful story or think you missed a call from a teacher… but you know it in your gut: they’ve brought something home with them that isn’t theirs.
Maybe a friend’s bad mood rubbed off on them, the tension in the classroom was too much to process, the overwhelm of a noisy grocery store was their last straw…


