Why I’m Panicking About Summer Break Ending (And 3 Small Things That Are Helping)
Last night I stood in the grocery store checkout line, staring at a display of neon spiral notebooks and 5-packs of glue sticks, and my chest got tight. My 7-year-old was propped in the cart seat next to me, licking crumbs off a free chocolate chip cookie and drawing lopsided dinosaurs on the back of my receipt with a broken crayon he fished out of my purse. The cashier smiled and asked if I was getting ready for back to school, and I laughed and said “Sort of” while my heart hammered so hard I could feel it in my ears.
It’s not the supply list, or even the return to 6am wake-up calls after three months of rolling out of bed whenever we want. Last year, his first year of elementary school, ended with a lot of tears—mostly his, but a fair share of mine too. I got three calls from the school nurse in the first month about stomach aches that came from nerves, he forgot his inhaler so many times I started keeping a spare in my car just to run it in, and I can still feel the rush of those first September mornings: me yelling to put shoes on, him hiding under the dining table because he missed the cat, me spilling coffee on my work laptop before I even got to the parking lot, then sitting there crying because I’d messed up the first month and it was only September 12.
This summer was different. We didn’t book any expensive camps or cross-country road trips. We slept in until 8:30 most days, ate popsicles for breakfast on days it was too hot to move, went to the community pool every Wednesday, and he learned to ride his bike without training wheels in our driveway. It was messy, and half the time our house looked like a tornado hit it, but it was ours. It was slow. Now that it’s winding down, all that old panic from last year came roaring back before I even noticed it.
I called my sister, a 3rd grade teacher at the same school, after the grocery store incident, venting, and she didn’t say the usual “it’ll be fine” or “he’ll adjust” stuff that doesn’t help when your chest is tight. She just asked me what I was actually scared of, then gave me three small, concrete things to try that don’t require a whole weekend of planning or any fancy products.
First, start shifting the routine 10 minutes at a time, not cold turkey on the first day. She said most of the first week meltdowns—for kids and parents—come from the sudden jolt of going from waking up an hour and a half later to jumping straight into a strict schedule. Instead of flipping a switch next week, we’ve been moving our wake up time 10 minutes earlier every three days. Right now we’re up at 8, which is only 10 minutes earlier than we were two weeks ago, and by the first day we’ll be at 7:20, which is only 10 minutes earlier than that. It’s barely noticeable. We also added a 10 minute “calm work” time after breakfast every day—nothing big, no workbooks or flash cards. Yesterday we wrote one sentence about his trip to the pool on a scrap paper, he drew a shark next to it, and we were done. It’s just enough to get his brain used to sitting still for a few minutes a day, no stress involved.
Second, I wrote down the three worst things that happened last year, and made one tiny fix for each. I used to lie awake going over every bad moment from last first grade, thinking I had to fix everything all at once. But that’s what makes the panic worse—you turn 3 small problems into a huge mountain. So I got a piece of paper and wrote them down: 1) He always forgot his inhaler. 2) Morning rushing made both of us yell. 3) He got hungry an hour before lunch and couldn’t focus. Then I added one tiny fix to each: 1) I paid $5 to get a second inhaler from the pharmacy, and it’s going to stay in his desk all year. No more sending it back and forth, no more remembering to pack it. 2) I now lay out both our clothes and pack his snack the night before, instead of doing it at 7am when we’re already running late. It takes two minutes, right before I go to bed, and it cuts out 90% of the morning rush. 3) I keep a stash of granola bars in my car, and he’ll keep one in his backpack to eat if he gets hungry before lunch. His teacher said that’s fine, so that’s that. None of these fixes are big, but they take the three things that caused the most stress last year off the table.
Third, we’re doing a low-key “goodbye summer” thing this weekend, no big party or stressful meet-the-teacher rush. A friend of mine told me she does this every year: let the kid pick exactly what they want to do for the last full weekend of break, no plans, no rules. My son picked a giant ice cream sundae from the shop downtown, a bike ride to the park, and a quick walk over to the school to peek at the playground. That’s it. He doesn’t want to go meet his teacher early or tour the classroom, he just wants to see that the playground still has the big slide he liked last year. It’s enough to make the first day feel a little less unknown, without adding another thing to my to-do list.
Yesterday, my son looked over my shoulder while I was crossing things off the supply list and said “I get to sit next to Jax again, right? He said he’s in my class this year.” When I said yes, he just grinned and went back to building with his legos. He’s not panicking, not even a little. That’s the thing I keep forgetting—my panic is mostly mine, carried over from last year’s hard days, not something he’s feeling right now.
I still haven’t bought all the supplies yet. I still avoid looking at the first day date on my calendar because it makes my chest tight. I don’t know if he’ll have stomach aches the first week, or if I’ll forget something important, or if I’ll end up crying in the parking lot again. But the extra inhaler is sitting by the front door, I’ve started laying out clothes the night before, and we’re waking up 10 minutes earlier every few days. This weekend we’ll get our ice cream and our dinosaur notebook, and that’s enough for right now.
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