Are You Supposed To Be Happy Your Kids Are Back In School? What No One Talks About
I stood at my kitchen sink 10 minutes after dropping the kids off for their first day, coffee gone lukewarm, a neon pink ankle sock crumpled by the back door and half a strawberry Pop-Tart left on the counter. My neighbor texted five minutes prior: “Freedom!!! Wine before noon anyone??? 😂” The Instagram feed on my phone was full of it too: grinning parents holding empty coffee mugs with captions yelling “best day of the year!” and memes about counting down to back to school all summer.
I leaned against the counter and stared at the quiet living room. I wasn’t jumping for joy. I also wasn’t sobbing into my dish soap about how my babies were growing up too fast. I just… felt neutral. Sort of soft around the edges, a little tired, and very much not the uncomplicated happy everyone seemed to be talking about.
My two are going into third grade and sixth grade this year, so this is our sixth back-to-school season, and I’ve noticed a pattern: the question “aren’t you so happy they’re back?” comes up every single year, like there’s only one right answer. If you say yes, you’re a burnt out parent who doesn’t love time with her kids. If you say no, you’re the clingy parent who can’t let go. I talked to my older son’s homeroom teacher at back-to-school night last week, and she said she hears the same guilt from both sides. Half the parents pull her aside to whisper “don’t tell anyone but I’m so glad they’re back” and the other half say “I feel terrible for saying it but I already miss having them home all day.”
What no one says out loud is that most of us are sitting somewhere in the middle. Summer isn’t the perfect highlight reel or the total disaster we see online. Some days we ate ice cream for lunch and watched fireflies after dark. Other days I yelled at them to stop fighting over the Xbox at 10am and hid in the bathroom to finish a work call. Back to school isn’t all freedom or all heartbreak. It’s just a transition, and transitions feel messy, no matter which side of the transition you’re on.
I’ve tried a few small things this year that have taken the pressure off, and they’ve worked better than any “self-care for back to school” list I’ve ever read. The first is: I stopped forcing myself to feel a certain way, and I do one small thing that matches whatever I’m feeling that day. If I wake up and I’m glad the house is quiet, I stop at the bakery on my way home from drop off and get the almond croissant I never get when the kids are around (they always steal half) and sit on the porch and eat it slow, no chores allowed. If I drop them off and I feel a little hollow, like the house is too quiet, I don’t force myself to power through my to-do list to “use my free time well.” I pull out the half-finished dinosaur puzzle my third grader and I started in July, and I work on it for 15 minutes before I do anything else. No guilt either way.
The second thing is super easy: I muted the “best day of the year back to school” reels on Instagram for the first month of school. I don’t need to see 20 posts a day about how excited everyone else is when I’m just trying to remember to pack extra glue sticks. If seeing other people’s joy makes you feel like you’re doing something wrong for feeling differently, just hit mute. It takes 10 seconds, and it makes a huge difference.
This also goes for parents who are actually really happy their kids are back, by the way. If you work full time, and summer meant juggling three different camps, begging relatives for childcare, and working four-hour shifts at 10pm after the kids went to bed, you get to be happy. You don’t have to apologize for being relieved that your kid is in a safe place all day and you don’t have to split your attention 10 ways anymore. I have a friend who’s an ER nurse, she has three kids under 10, she told me she cried happy tears in her car after drop off last week. She felt guilty saying it out loud, like it meant she didn’t love her kids. But loving your kids doesn’t mean you have to love a chaotic, exhausting summer that leaves you burnt out by mid-August.
It’s two weeks into the school year now. This morning, I waited 18 minutes in car line, reminded my sixth grader three times to grab his gym shoes, and waved as he walked into the middle school building without turning around. My third grader slipped a crumpled drawing of a dragon into my palm before he ran off to meet his friend at the playground. I drove home, and today I felt a little happy: I have a work meeting this afternoon that I don’t have to cut short to pick up someone from camp, and the house will be quiet while I take it. I also felt a little twinge, because that dragon drawing will go on my fridge, and it reminded me that last month he was sitting at the same kitchen table drawing dragons while we ate breakfast at 9am, no rush.
The answer to “are you happy your kids are back in school” doesn’t have to be yes, and it doesn’t have to be no. It can be both, some days. It can be nothing in particular. The pressure to feel one way is the only bad part, most days. Right now, I’m going to go put that dragon drawing on the fridge, and then I’m going to work on that puzzle. It doesn’t fit anyone’s idea of the perfect back to school feeling, but it fits mine.
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