Why our kids hate Mondays

Last time, I wrote about that strange January feeling, the one where life suddenly expects you to be back to normal even though your body and brain are still moving at a much slower pace. That odd sense of being nudged, or sometimes shoved, back into routines before you’ve quite landed.

Since then, I’ve realised that January doesn’t just happen once a year. We experience it again, quietly and repeatedly, every single Monday.

Sunday evening rolls around and there’s often a subtle shift in the air. Even if nothing is said out loud, the energy changes. Bags are put by the door, clothes are laid out, alarms are checked. There’s a sense that tomorrow matters, that Monday needs to go well, because somehow it sets the tone for everything that follows.

For parents of neurospicy kids, that feeling can be especially heavy. Mondays aren’t just another weekday, they’re a transition point, and transitions take effort. A lot of it. Your child is moving from the freedom and softness of the weekend into the structure and demands of school. From home, where they’re known and understood, into an environment that often asks them to adapt, comply, and cope for long stretches of time. That’s a big ask for any child, and for neurodivergent kids it can feel enormous.

When Monday mornings are wobbly, it’s very easy to start questioning everything. You wonder if you should be firmer, more organised, more on top of things. You might feel that familiar knot of anxiety forming, because if Monday has gone badly, it can feel like the whole week is already slipping away.

But this is where I think we’ve absorbed a story that doesn’t actually help us or our children.

We’ve come to believe that Monday is a test, and that a good Monday means a good week, while a difficult one means we’ve already failed. That idea puts a huge amount of pressure on a very small window of time.

In reality, children don’t experience time like that. They don’t see a week as a block that needs to start neatly. They live in moments. A hard Monday morning isn’t a prediction, it’s just information about how that moment felt.

Often what we see as resistance or bad behaviour on a Monday is actually a nervous system struggling with change. It’s the same discomfort many of us feel in January, just played out on a smaller, weekly scale. We’re asking children to switch gears quickly and smoothly, even when their brains don’t work that way.

When we respond by tightening routines or pushing harder, what they often feel is that they’re getting it wrong. That their difficulty is a problem that needs fixing, rather than a signal that they need a bit more support to settle.

What helps is the same thing that helps in January, permission to ease in.

That might mean slower mornings where you can manage it, fewer words before they’re properly awake, or simply not expecting emotional regulation to be perfect straight away. It might mean letting go of the idea that Monday has to look a certain way and focusing instead on helping your child feel safe enough to get through it.

I often remind parents that Monday mornings are not the time for big conversations, new rules, or ambitious resets. Just as January isn’t the month to reinvent your entire life, Monday isn’t the moment to fix everything before breakfast. It’s what I call a 'landing day' and that applies to you as well. If you feel tense on a Sunday night, that doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong. It means you’re anticipating a transition that you know can be tricky.

That awareness is part of being an attuned parent, not a failing.

When we stop treating Monday like a pass or fail moment, something softens. Children feel less pressure to perform, parents feel less urgency to control the outcome, and the week is allowed to unfold gradually instead of being decided in the first hour.

January shows us that big resets take time.

Mondays quietly remind us that the small ones do too.