Bog Snorkeling: How Do You Deal With Back-To-School Stress as a Parent?
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What is it about the end of summer and the beginning of the school year, ladies, that leads to SO.MUCH.OVERWHELM. My brain feels like I I have been swimming underwater through murky waters and so when I saw that they literally had bog snorkeling champsionships in Wales a few days ago, I thought, that describes it perfectly! (I now feel like this should be made into a song, perhaps similar to “Tub Thumping” from the 90s.) So let’s discuss — are you also overwhelmed and stressed around back-to-school time? How do you deal with back-t0-school stress as a parent?
How I Deal with Back-to-School Stress as a Parent
These are the sources of some of my big back-to-school stresses:
End of summer stress! My goodness it went by fast… we got nothing from our bucket list done… and so many things fell by the wayside. For example, the “read for 15 minutes daily” rule at the beginning of the summer seemed so eminently doable — but let me tell you, we have fought and nagged about it for approximately three hours, resulting in posssssssssibly four hours of reading. Winning. And then you start thinking about how you only GET 18 of these summers with your kids and my goodness my oldest just turned 8… and it just isn’t fair.
Last minute vacations! One of my besties had a destination wedding on August 17, and we took a little last-minute roadtrip over Labor Day Weekend — and somehow going on those trips and planning for those trips has exhausted me.
School-related purchases! Both of my kids somehow went through a growth spurt in just the last month, and my eldest is big enough to care about what clothes he wears — so gone are the days of buying a bunch of 5Ts, ripping them open and throwing them in the washer and voilà, new wardrobe. Noooo… now we have to try them on, and assess if they’re too long, and I don’t know, which Star Wars shirt looks better? I tend to opt out of school supply purchasing requirements by just paying an absurd amount to have them all boxed up and ready for us the first day (thank goodness for 1st Day School Supplies!) but in the past I’ve gone to multiple stores to find the properly sized pencil box…
The kids are crazy and stressed: Understandably, they’re stressed out about going back to school — but that just means we’re dealing with disturbed sleep, meltdowns, freakouts, brotherly fights — and pretty much ALL of us have a very short fuse right now.
New schedules and routines: We’re all trying to adapt to new schedules and routines — I now have to think about packing lunches in the morning whereas I had the whole summer off. Unlike in previous years, both kids are in a nut-free classroom this year, which means that my stockpile of Uncrustables is now null and void… and of course both kids have randomly decided they will not eat anything else I packed in previous years. So we’ve been doing a lot of taste tests.
(Finally, this is a ME thing, but:) My eldest turned 8: Between travel for the wedding and the start of school we probably didn’t need anything else — but lots of family came from near and far to celebrate his birthday, which was lovely but always brings about its own kind of stress.
Fun fact: all of these little things count as emotional labor, and as we’ve discussed before, it disproportionately falls on moms. ANYWAY: I’ve been feeling totally overwhelmed with back-to-school stress as a parent. Some things I think I’ll do next year:
Get on school sleep schedules ahead of time. This primarily is about bedtime right now — we’re totally guilty of “summer bedtime” where they stay up later because it’s light out and we’re less strict about bedtimes. But for those of you who are blessed with children who sleep in (maybe once mine are teens? sigh) then I can see this being very much about wake-up times.
Avoid last-minute travel. I really didn’t have a choice this year because, like I said, one of my besties got married… but it really solidified how a mid-August vacation just makes me crazy.
Practice self-care more. Book a massage for the first week of school — sign up for a new workout class — schedule a date night — splurge on a small purchase you’ve wanted, like a book or a new nail polish color. (This was our last discussion on ways to self-care ideas for working moms.)
Delegate or “nope” more things. We talked about this when we rounded up holiday delegating ideas — you can assign some tasks to other people (even virtual assistants!) and you can just say NOPE to a lot of things as well.
How about you, ladies — are you feeling overwhelmed? How do you cope with back-to-school stress as a parent?
I’ve never wanted to be a stay-at-home mom more than the past 3 weeks. The intensity of trying to kill it as a lawyer while simultaneously trying to kill it as a mom is hard enough, but the start of school is on another level. I’m just trying to make it to autumnal equinox without suffering some sort of a mental break. It will get better by then, right??
The week that school starts is a nightmare – meet the teacher/ supply drop in the middle of the day, no summer daycare but no after-school care yet, and open houses/ curriculum nights/ back to school picnics in the evenings. DH and I both have started blocking that whole week to work from home, and taking the Friday as PTO. We fill in for other friends who can’t be home all week and usually have a gaggle of kids at our house and with us at these events. Our schools get out at 1:30 on Fridays so we spend the morning relaxing individually – no house projects! – then pick the kids up and do a low-stress activity together like pedicures or reading at the bookstore or going to the movies. Our school has a back-to-school pizza event that Friday evening, so then our extroverted selves can recharge with friends before going to bed early.
It’s a total privilege to be able to work from home with a lighter workload that week, and we’re lucky to have roles/ teams where we can be transparent about working minimally during the day and catching up in the evenings and over the weekend. It’s getting easier to actually work a full day during the day as the kids get older, since school age kids can play in the backyard with minimal supervision for several hours at a time. That’s why we open our house to any friends who can’t take it off or would have to lose pay to make it to a 2:00 supply drop off. (Also because our kids are less in our hair when they have friends over.)
The last week before school starts is always a logistical nightmare for us. There is literally no day camp in our area that operates that week, school open house is one afternoon that week, and we always seem to end up trying to cram in doctor and dentist appointments that week to avoid missing school. Sports practice is always on some weird transitional schedule. I usually end up taking the entire week off to play SAHM, which is so much less stressful than trying to work from home in little snatches around all of the events.
My least stressful time of year is the first few weeks after school starts. Other than back-to-school night and one or two other evening meetings at school, it’s smooth sailing. We are back into a consistent routine instead of the crazy patchwork of camps, family visits, etc. that is the summer. The kid is excited to be in a new grade and is motivated to stay organized. The homework load tends to be lighter than normal and there usually aren’t any big projects assigned for the first few weeks. The ridiculously long sports competition season hasn’t started yet. There isn’t the same pressure to make Great Big Fun Stuff happen every single weekend that there is during the summer. Even at work, it feels like back-to-school is a nice fresh start. I love it.