Guest blogger Tiffani lives with her three right-brained kids and one left-brained hubby in Erie. When not blogging the minute yet incredibly exciting details of her life at Child’s Play or dreaming up ways to look productive and organized without actually having to be productive and organized, she runs her own natural bath and body company, Serendipity Bath Co.

For the past three years, the annual buy-a-thon known as Back-to-School month has been met with cheers and applause by my older kids. For them, it means that all the school kids return to class while they get back their free reign at the Zoo, Science Museum, and outdoor parks again. You see, we are homeschoolers. We grudgingly share our territory outside of school with the masses in the few months during summer but can’t wait to claim it back again in September.

It wasn’t always this way for us. My now 11-year-old daughter had Back to School from K-3rd. Not a long span in terms of a total K-12 education, but for her it was an eternity. Back to School wasn’t accompanied by the normal jitters and fears most kids get. It became an exercise in full blown anxiety. It became a tortuous descent into tears and pleadings not to make her go back to ‘that place’.

I watched her go from a vibrant, curious, busy, talkative, humorous, excitable girl during the summer into a withdrawn, quiet, bored, anxious, combative girl by the time school started. I made sure to introduce her to her new teacher well ahead of time in case it was a stranger anxiety issue. I started the “school schedule” in the morning two weeks prior in case it was a timing issue. I let her pick out all her own fun school gear in case it was an aesthetic issue. I prepared all her favorite foods for her bagged lunch in case it was a gastronomical issue.

If she was a newborn, this phenomenon would be called “Failure to Thrive,” and I was baffled, and then angry, and then sad, and then I started looking for answers…but it took me until the end of 3rd grade to find any. Read on …