Going Into 9th Grade in 2 Months: Low-Stress Practical Tips for Parents
I was folding mismatched soccer socks last Wednesday when my 13-year-old, Lila, looked up from TikTok and said, “Mom, high school starts in two months. What if I eat lunch in the bathroom?” The video she was watching featured a 10th grader recounting her own terrible first month of 9th grade, and Lila had rewatched it twice in 10 minutes while I sorted laundry. I almost gave her the automatic line I gave my son when he was getting ready for 9th grade four years ago: “It’ll be fine, you’ll make friends.” But I stopped, because I remembered how that went for us.
Four years ago, when my oldest, Jake, was heading into 9th grade, I turned into a different person. I printed three copies of his schedule, bought every single item on the supply list before July even started, signed him up for two summer orientation camps and a pre-season cross country workout, and quizzed him on his locker combination every night for a month. He was so burnt out by the time school started that he slept through his first period on day three. By mid-October, he’d quit cross country, stopped talking about his classes, and spent every weekend playing video games until 2 a.m. I talked to his 9th grade counselor after that, and she told me something I still remember: most parents try to fix all the uncertainty two months out, and that just makes the uncertainty bigger. That stuck with me, so this time around with Lila, we’re doing things differently.
First, we’re skipping the big, crowded group orientation walk-through most schools host in June. We did that with Jake, when the building was packed with hundreds of 8th graders and their parents, all herding from the gym to the main hallway like lost cattle. Jake couldn’t even hear me when I asked where his biology class was, and by the time we got home, he was so irritable he refused to talk about school for two weeks. This time, we’re going to go the Friday before school starts, at 9 a.m., when the building is almost empty. We’ll walk from homeroom to each of her four core classes, stop at the bathroom closest to her locker, and point out where the lunch line and the nurse’s office are. It’ll take 15 minutes, max, and she’ll actually remember where everything is. No crowds, no pressure to rush through to keep up with the group.
Next, we’re not pre-signing up for any extracurriculars right now. A lot of parents I know are already registering their kids for travel teams and honor societies two months out, but every 9th grade teacher I’ve talked to says most kids sign up for too much too fast, then burn out before fall break. Right now, all we did was write one thing Lila is vaguely curious about on the fridge: creative writing club. That’s it. We didn’t fill out any forms, didn’t pay any fees, didn’t commit to anything. When school starts, the club fair is the first week, she can go talk to the people running it, see if it’s actually what she thinks it is, and try it for a month before she decides to stick with it. When Jake signed up for three clubs and a sport before school even started, he ended up hating two of them, and felt guilty quitting for months. Now we have a rule: you get one try at a time, no guilt if it’s not for you.
Third, we’re shifting our sleep schedule slowly, starting now, not the night before school starts. Lila’s been staying up until 12:30 a.m. reading and waking up at 9:30 a.m. all summer. When Jake started 9th grade, I tried to make him go from waking up at 10 to waking up at 7 in one week. He was cranky, tired, and falling asleep in class for the first month. This time, we’re pushing his wake up time 15 minutes earlier every Sunday. Two months out from the first day of school, that gets us from 9:30 to 7:00 without any big shock. No alarms at 6 a.m. halfway through July, no fights about bedtime. It’s small, but it’s working so far. We also practice packing a lunch once a month on Sundays, just so she knows how to fit her water bottle and her favorite snack in her bag, and she can pick what she likes instead of me shoving things she won’t eat in there.
Fourth, we already talked about what happens if the first week is bad. I don’t say “it’ll be fine” anymore, because that just makes kids think you don’t get how scary it is. Instead, I said to Lila, “If you eat lunch in the bathroom the first week, that’s okay. We can get your favorite salted caramel ice cream after school, and you can tell me every single bad part, and we don’t have to change anything or fix anything that night. We can wait a month, and see how it goes, and then change things if you still hate it.” That’s it. No big speech about putting yourself out there, no pushing her to call someone she barely knows to make plans. When Jake had his bad first week, I kept asking him if he made friends, if he liked his teachers, if everything was okay, and he just shut down. Giving him permission to have a bad start takes the pressure off.
We still haven’t bought any school supplies yet, and Lila still brings up the bathroom lunch thing once every few days. I don’t know if her first year will be easy, or if she’ll love it, or if she’ll end up hating half her classes like Jake did. I do know that all the big, fancy plans I made four years ago didn’t help half as much as the small, slow changes we’re making this time around. Some days it feels like we’re not doing enough, two months out, with all the other parents posting their back to school hauls on Instagram. But so far, Lila’s still talking about her worries, instead of shutting them down, and that feels like enough for right now.
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