School stress and perfectionism
For the kid who cries over homework, rips up the drawing that wasn't right, or can't make it through the school doors on Monday morning. Ages 3 to 17.
Book a Free 15-Minute Consultation3 to 17
San Jose and Redwood City
Weekly, 50 minutes
Every four weeks, every case
Free, 15 minutes
For parents
The teacher says she’s doing great. The email home is glowing. The report card is fine. And then it’s 8:45 on a Tuesday night.
What you’re seeing at home
Crying over a worksheet, erasing until the paper tears, asking a question no seven-year-old should have to ask: “Why can’t I do anything right?”
Your teen awake past midnight refreshing the grade portal.
The essay that never gets started because it can’t come out perfect, so he takes the zero instead.
The test that was fine, and the hour of panic before it that wasn’t.
The stomachache that shows up every Sunday night and never once on a Saturday.
What you hear when you say it
“I wish mine studied too hard.”
“She’s fine, look at her grades.”
“Just tell him to relax.”
As if you haven’t. As if relax is a lever you forgot to pull.
Nobody at school sees it, and that’s the loneliest part. You’re the only witness to what school actually costs your kid.
Other parents would kill for a kid who cares this much, and here you are, worried about the caring. That instinct is worth listening to.
I'm Hannah Ly, LMFT. Since 2012 I've worked with exactly these families, most of them right here: the second grader who won't start the drawing, the teen taking the zero instead of turning in something imperfect, and the parents watching it happen and being the only ones who see it.
My job is to see what school has come to mean for your kid, and then to help you see it too.
There's a team here now. Every therapist trained under me, and their cases come through me every week, so your kid gets the same approach whoever they see. I take every consultation call, and you can ask for a specific therapist.
Not a different kid. The same kid, with a lot less riding on every assignment.
Perfectionism is fear wearing a good report card, not high standards.
A child who melts down over one wrong answer isn't being dramatic. Somewhere along the way their worth got tied to the outcome, and now every assignment is a referendum on whether they're okay.
It's why "just try your best" doesn't land. The problem was never the standard. It's what the child believes happens to them if they fall short.
It's almost never defiance and almost never laziness. The longer it runs, the harder the pattern is to interrupt. Earlier is better.
Out here, the pressure starts young. We work in the South Bay and on the Peninsula, with kids from the competitive charter schools, the private prep schools, and the public schools where the college conversation starts in elementary. Kids here absorb the exchange rate early: what a grade converts to, what eighth grade means for high school, what high school means for everything after.
And the parents we see are mostly people who are good at solving things. You've optimized the schedule, hired the tutor, read the articles. This is the thing that doesn't respond to optimizing, and that is not a you problem. A scared nervous system doesn't take input the way a calendar does.
The pressure is real, and a therapy hour doesn't remove it. What changes is what your child does with it, and whether their sense of who they are is still tied to how they performed this week.
The Sunday-night stomachache, the morning meltdown, the car that won't leave the driveway. School refusal is almost always anxiety, and it's the version where earlier matters most. Every missed week makes the doors heavier.
The twenty-minute worksheet that takes two hours and ends in tears. The kid who stopped doing homework entirely. The homework is rarely the problem; it's what being judged on it has come to mean.
Blanking on material they knew cold the night before. Panic in the hallway, the midnight grade-portal refresh. Test anxiety lives in the body, which is why knowing the material doesn't fix it.
Ripping up the drawing that wasn't right. Erasing until the paper tears. Taking the zero instead of turning in something imperfect. It shows up as early as preschool.
The kid running on empty who can't name why. Grinding through activities they stopped enjoying, because stopping feels like falling behind. It looks like laziness from the outside and feels like drowning from the inside.
The kid whose whole identity is being the smart one, until the first thing that doesn't come easily. We help them build a self that's bigger than their transcript.
We're not against achievement. Plenty of the kids we see will go on to do impressive things, and we'll be glad for them.
What we're against is achievement as identity. School says success is who you are. The calendar says it. The group chat says it. Therapy is one hour a week where nobody says it.
The strange part, the part parents don't expect: the performance usually holds up fine. There's just a lot less riding on it.
Where we're the wrong fit
If what you want from therapy is a calmer version of the same message, a kid who performs better with less friction, we're the wrong practice. If you want a kid whose okay-ness doesn't ride on Friday's test, that's the therapy we do.
In the playroom, failure is survivable. The tower falls and gets rebuilt, the game is lost and the kid is still okay, and we're right there while they discover it. Mistake tolerance is built through experience, not explanation.
For the panic that lives in the body: the test-day nausea, the frozen essay, the 1am spiral. We work on where the fear started, not just how to breathe through it.
What to say after a bad grade, how to praise without feeding the machine, and how to stop the homework table from being a nightly battlefield.
Tell us the 8:45pm version, not just the report card version. We'll tell you honestly whether we're the right fit and which therapist on our team we think fits your child best, usually one of our other therapists, trained and supervised by Hannah.
History, the school picture, and what you're seeing at home. You know your kid better than anyone, and we need that before we start.
Play therapy for younger kids. Conversation and Brainspotting for teens. Either way, sessions move at your child's pace.
For the homework table and everything around it, so what happens in session carries into the evenings at home.
Yes, and sooner is better. School refusal is almost always anxiety, and we address what's underneath while you rebuild a gradual return routine at home. The longer the pattern runs, the more it takes to interrupt.
Very often, yes. Homework refusal with meltdowns usually means schoolwork has come to stand for something bigger, being judged, falling short, disappointing someone, and the child is avoiding the feeling rather than the worksheet. Punishing the refusal tends to make it worse, because it adds pressure to the exact place the pressure is coming from. Therapy works on what the homework has come to mean.
Yes, and they solve different problems. Tutoring helps when a child doesn't understand the material. Therapy helps when a child understands the material and still can't get through it, because of panic, perfectionism, or avoidance. If your child knew it at home and blanked at school, or won't start work they're capable of, the problem isn't academic.
Expectation is good for kids. Fear isn't. The line is whether your child can miss, lose, or fail and still feel okay about themselves afterward. If they can't, the pressure has stopped producing effort and started producing symptoms.
Sessions run $200 to $300 depending on the therapist, with parent coaching every four weeks in every case, billed at the session rate. We are private pay and do not bill insurance, but we provide superbills you can submit for out-of-network reimbursement.
Signs of a struggling child that are easy to miss, why advice and discipline often fall short, and when it makes sense to see a child therapist.
Ways to help an anxious child at home, from steady routines to modeling calm, and how to tell when it is time to see a child therapist in San Jose.
Why small things set off big meltdowns, what is usually underneath them, and which common reactions make things worse, from a San Jose child therapist.
All of our therapists work with school stress every week. The consultation call is where we figure out which one is the right match for your child, based on age, what's going on, and your schedule.
