Every parent knows the moment.
The front door bursts open. Shoes fly in one direction, schoolbags land in another, and suddenly the kitchen sounds like a football stadium crossed with a sweet shop.
Children arriving home from school can often seem unbelievably hyper, talking at lightning speed, bouncing from room to room, raiding cupboards for snacks, and somehow managing to ask 14 questions in under a minute.
After spending hours sitting still, concentrating, following rules, and trying their best to behave in class, many children release all that bottled-up energy the second they get home. For younger kids, especially, home is the one place where they feel completely safe letting their emotions spill out.
And while the noise and chaos can test the patience of even the calmest parent, many experts say it’s important to remember what it really means.
Home is their safe place. The place where they can finally exhale.
And it’s not always bad behaviour.
Sometimes the excitement is a mix of hunger, tiredness, overstimulation, and relief that the school day is finally over.
Australian entrepreneur and lifestyle content creator, Steph Pase has built up over a million followers by sharing the unfiltered realities of motherhood, ADHD, and home styling, and has even coined the viral phrase ‘Stephing.’
She believes she has found the magic to keeping the kids calm after school and has shared the hack on her social media.
6 ‘weird after school rules’ one mum swears by
Steph has what she calls 6 Weird Rules for keeping a calm household when the kids come in from school.
She explained: “A few months ago, I was standing in the kitchen watching my girls punch on over a pink cup and genuinely wondered if it was just us.”
And then I asked myself, “Has it always been this hard?”
No. It hadn’t. I’d just quietly let my systems slip. The quiet little weird rules that used to hold our afternoons together had fallen off one by one, and I didn’t notice until I was crying in the pantry again.
Steph says she has now rebuilt these rules and while not every parent will agree with her approach, it’s interesting nonetheless.
She says these worked when nothing else did and in the post below, she explains why.
