Maybe pop your seatbelt on?

Last weekend my girl and I took the Eurostar to Paris. Just the two of us. A post-GCSE trip to remember. We shopped, we ate our way round the city. The highlight for Lily was eating a TikTok-famous frozen Greek yoghurt with Dubai chocolate topping.

On the way home, we were about to board the train only to be suddenly stopped.

No explanation. Just a platform full of people standing still, not knowing why. Eventually a guard came on and told us there might be a fault. Not exactly what you want to hear, ten minutes from departure. We ended up waiting almost an hour before they let us board, no real answer given, just told to get on when they said so.

It reminded me of something we say all the time in the programme.

Imagine you're on a bumpy flight and the pilot comes on the tannoy. "Not entirely sure what's going on up here, but would you mind staying seated? And, if it's alright with you, maybe pop your seatbelt on?"

If you're a nervous flyer, that sentence isn't ideal. Why is he asking me. He's supposed to know.

That's the exact feeling Lily used to have of me at school drop off.

We think we're the ones assessing our kids.

We're not.

They're assessing us. Constantly, and mostly outside their own awareness. When a child hits an ambiguous or stressful moment, they don't just process it alone. They check the face and body of the adult next to them to work out how much danger to register. Psychologists call it social referencing. Your kid isn't reading your words at drop off. They're reading your face, your voice, your shoulders, how fast you're breathing. That's the actual data they're using to decide how afraid to be.

So when we ask, in a slightly wobbly voice, "Is it okay if I go now?" That's the pilot asking permission to fasten the seatbelt. Well intentioned. Also terrifying, if you're the one strapped in with no idea what's coming.

What the turbulence actually looks like

Some kids cry at the school gate. Some don't. Crying at drop off doesn't predict how their day will go, or how confident they'll be by 9am. It's not a verdict on your parenting either. It's mostly a readout of how that particular child handles transition, and highly sensitive, neurodivergent, deeply attuned kids often find transition disproportionately hard. Not because something's wrong with them. Because their stress response is more reactive, full stop. Yours might be too.

In that moment your child needs two things at once. To feel that what they're feeling is real. And to know it hasn't taken you over.

That's the whole job. Not eliminating the feeling. Not being swept away by it either.

What being the pilot actually sounds like

You don't pretend the turbulence isn't happening. You don't perform calm you don't feel. You say, essentially: I hear you back there. And I've got this.

It's easier said than done. I know the feeling of dread, upset and feeling physically sick.

But here are a few things I did that helped.

I kept the goodbye short. Lingering doesn't build safety, it usually just stretches the uncertainty out for both of you.

I made a plan that was specific, not vague. Not "I'll see you later" but "I'm picking you up at 3.15, we're walking home the long way with the dog." A concrete plan gives an anxious system something to hold onto.

I stopped rehearsing worst case scenarios on the walk back to the car. Instead I deliberately held an image of her mid morning, in class, asking a question, sitting with a good friend at break.

I redefined what a good drop off actually meant. I stopped measuring it by whether she walked in smiling. I started measuring it by whether I stayed regulated. That was the part actually in my control. Everything else wasn't.

I've had drop offs that were genuinely horrendous. Lily being peeled off me screaming by a well meaning teacher, more than once. What I learned, slowly and the hard way, is that the moment my steadiness stopped depending on her being okay first, things started, gradually, to shift for her too.

My only real job was to work out how to remain the pilot in those moments.

Lily is sixteen now. She navigated Paris better than I did. The train, in the end, was fine. I never mentioned my uncertainty to her, and the whole situation passed her by.

It's strange to remember a child who once wouldn't leave my side. If I'd understood sooner what she actually needed of me, I'd have spent a lot less energy trying to talk her out of feelings, and a lot more building my own confidence first.

She was never asking me to fix the turbulence. She was asking if the pilot had this.

Emma