You do not have to wait for a crisis. Most families do not arrive with one anyway. They arrive with a change that has not gone away: a child who has stopped saying how school went, a fifteen-year-old who has folded inwards, a stomach ache that turns up every Monday.
And underneath, the question that has been sitting in the kitchen for a month: is this a phase, or does he need help?
Nobody can answer that from a page, and this is not here to diagnose your child. What it can do is sort out which things are worth weighing, and stop every slammed door becoming a case file.
What you might be seeing
In a younger child: stomach aches or headaches before school, sleeping badly, crying more than they used to, eating less, saying less. The body speaks before the vocabulary arrives.
In a teenager: irritability, marks dropping, pulling away from their friends rather than from you, and answers short enough that you cannot tell what state they are in. I’m fine closing the door is not the same thing as being fine, and it is also not the same thing as an emergency.
In the house: you talk carefully. You argue about whether to push or wait. The siblings can feel it. One adult is sure they are handling it badly and the other is sure it will pass.
The test that actually helps
A tantrum after a no is not, by itself, a reason to consult. Children get angry. Teenagers slam doors. Being unbearable at fourteen is within the ordinary range.
Three things matter more than the incidents:
How often. Once a fortnight is a bad mood. Most days is a pattern.
How long it has been going. Weeks and months, not one heavy week.
Whether their life is shrinking. This is the one that decides it. School, friends, sleep, food, the things they used to enjoy doing — if the circle those sit in is getting smaller, that is the signal, whatever the mood looks like on a given evening.
None of the three is a diagnosis. Together, held over time, they are a good reason to have someone look properly instead of the family guessing for another term.
Why it is often harder to read from abroad
Families who have moved here run into two specific traps, and they pull in opposite directions.
The first is attributing everything to the move. A child who has changed country, language, school and friendship group in one go has a great deal to absorb, and a difficult few months is genuinely expected. So the first term gets written off, and then the first year, and it’s the move becomes the explanation for a second year in which nothing improved. The move is a reasonable explanation for a slope that flattens out. It is not an explanation for one that keeps going down.
The second is the opposite: reading normal upheaval as damage, because you are already carrying some guilt about having brought them here. That guilt makes it very hard to see the child in front of you rather than the decision behind you.
There is also a practical trap. Back home you knew roughly how this worked — you would have gone to the GP, or the school would have started something. Here you may not know what the route is, whether it costs, or who to ask, so the question stays in the kitchen for months longer than it would have done at home. If that is where you are, the thing you need first is not a decision about therapy. It is one conversation that tells you what the options actually are.
And a worry that comes up more than people admit: whether a “label” picked up in Spain follows the child if you move again. What a psychologist does is describe how a child is functioning and what helps; a medical diagnosis is a doctor’s, made with their own examination. Neither is a permanent stamp, and a school in another country will form its own view regardless. Fear of the word is not a good reason to spend a year not asking the question.
What is worth doing meanwhile
Look at the plain things. Sleep, food, screens, and whether there is any part of the week with no performance in it. A change the family can actually keep up on a Wednesday is worth more than one long conversation on a Sunday.
Ask without interrogating. Does it hurt more when we think about school, or on Saturday too? You are after a clue, not a confession.
Name what matters to you, briefly. I care that you can go, and that you can rest. I’m not asking you to like Mondays. Teenagers take a short sentence better than an analysis of their life.
Aim for a small step, not a restart. If the morning is a war, the target is not enthusiasm. It might be getting dressed with less shouting. Something that becomes possible, not something that becomes ideal.
Stop making every exchange a check. I’m here; you don’t have to tell me everything is often enough, and it leaves the door open in a way that questions close.
Line the adults up. If school is seeing it too, talk to them directly. The child should not be carrying messages between the adults.
Nobody can promise that in a fortnight they will be who they were. What is realistic is identifying a few concrete things that make the week more liveable, and finding out whether there is more going on underneath.
When to ask
When several of these have held for weeks rather than days: the same physical complaints in the same situations; avoidance growing; the two of you no longer agreeing whether to push or let it be; the school or the doctor having named it already; a teenager whose withdrawal is not a two-day sulk; routines already changed without it being enough.
You do not need a crisis, and you do not need to come about every slammed door. If should we take him to someone? has been sitting in your kitchen for a month, that is already the answer to whether it is worth a conversation.
If what you are seeing is specifically that school has become a fight every morning, that case is looked at in more detail here. If the worry is about development rather than mood — language, attention, learning, a gap that is not closing — that is a different question, and it is set out here.
Talking it through in English
Fernando Ruiz Martínez is a psychologist and neuropsychologist in Granada (Col. M-39091), working in English or Spanish — which tends to matter for a child who is doing the rest of their day in their second language and should not have to do this in it as well.
Sessions are online, or at your home in Granada. The first conversation is free and can be by phone or video call. It is usually the parents on it, and its whole purpose is to work out whether anything is needed at all.