School started last week and I’m not going to lie – there was smoke behind me as I ran, arms flailing, heels clicking, away from the building where my children would be for the next six hours.
I. Love. School. I love it. It’s my favourite thing in the world.
I was home all summer with my seven and nine-year-olds. We were all more than ready to see Labour Day come and pass.
School rocks, because…
I try to be a stickler about bedtimes but, in the summer, I find it a much harder sell to the kids. So, as a compromise, we extended bedtime by a whopping half hour. The kids felt like it was a real coup and we felt like we were giving in a little without totally causing irreparable damage that we’d have to deal with come fall. But we’re back baby! Bedtime is back to its rightful place and I have that blessed half hour of my night back.
School is ground zero for children’s schedules. Take away school, take away the schedule. I mean, as it is, most extra curriculars stop in the summer, because school’s out! School is the great equalizer. It’s like back in school means back in dance and swimming and everything else that makes our days predictable and easier to expect and manage.
I know that some parents absolutely love being home together in the summer, when parents are able to be home together in the summer. But the reality is, if you’re a working parent, camp is expensive AF and there is real guilt missing out on these few summer days sitting in an office rather than taking the kids to an amusement park. If you’re home, you’re listening to bored kids complain and either you find ways to entertain them or you endure the complaining. Either way, it gets tedious. Once they’re back in school, everything just feels a bit more, predictable.
I love my children all the time, but honestly, the summer was too damn long. By the end of it, they didn’t like each other, they didn’t like me, and, while I do love them always, I really didn’t like them very much. We were all so insanely sick of each other. Now that there’s some separation, it’s mostly back to where it takes us more than five minutes to get on each other’s nerves. Yay.
I make new school resolutions because honestly, by the end of the year, everything is a complete shit show. I don’t think I looked in their agendas one day in June (sorry to my kids’ teachers!). Lunches looked like they were packed by three-year-olds, we were late getting up and rushing out every morning. We were off the rails. But it’s a new year! This year we’re going to get and keep our shit together and we’re going to rock it!
Printer-friendly version