Children in Brazilian public schools have experienced obstacles in the schooling process that impact their school trajectories. A master’s level study, guided by listening to eight children attending the early years of elementary school, aimed to analyze the feelings of these children regarding their difficulties in the schooling process. In this article, we present some results from this larger study, based on the theoretical framework of Cultural-Historical Psychology, with an emphasis on age periodization, the affective-cognitive unity, and the unfolding of the teaching-learning process. Workshops with aesthetic mediation and semi-structured interviews were conducted with the children, who expressed feelings such as sadness, fear, and insecurity related to the difficulties they experienced in the schooling process. Thus, by ensuring visibility and centrality to children’s narratives on topics that affect them, this article reiterates the importance of developing cognitive-affective functional processes in the school context.