Funny First Day of School Responses: What Kids’ Offhand Answers Actually Tell Parents
The bus pulled up to our stop last Wednesday, the first day of school, and I was leaning against a telephone pole holding a crumpled bag of cheddar goldfish and a half-melted popsicle I’d grabbed from the freezer on my way out. My 7-year-old Jax bounded off first, sneakers untied, backpack slipping off one shoulder. “How was the first day?” I asked, like every parent does before even a hello. He blinked at me for a second, then said, “There was a kid in my class who sneezed so hard his glasses fell right into his apple slice at lunch.” Then he grabbed the popsicle out of my hand and started walking toward the house, done talking.
My 10-year-old Lila got off next. I asked her the same question. She shrugged, adjusted her new middle school hoodie, and said, “Fine. Did you actually remember to buy the chocolate chip cookie dough I put on the list?” My 16-year-old, who drives herself to high school, texted me at 3pm when school let out: “Vending machine ate my $5 and fire alarm went off during bio. 2 out of 10, would not recommend.”
That night, I pulled up my local mom group to see what other parents were sharing, and half the feed was just these same kinds of responses: “Kindergartener’s only comment: My teacher’s hamster is fat. Can I go play?” “Eighth grader: My locker combo is wrong and I don’t care enough to fix it tomorrow.” “First grader: The drinking fountain squirts too hard and got my socks wet.” They’re funny, people share them laughing, but scrolling through the comments, I saw the same question popping up over and over: Is it weird that they won’t actually tell me how their day was? Should I be worried something’s wrong?
I get that panic. Five years ago, with my oldest starting elementary school, I would’ve pressed her for 20 minutes after a response like that. I’d follow up with “But did you have fun? Did you make any friends? Is your teacher nice?” until she’d start crying or just go mute, and I’d spend the night worrying I’d sent my kid to a terrible school where she was miserable. It took me a while to realize that these silly, off-topic, funny responses aren’t a dodge or a sign something’s wrong. They’re actually exactly what they seem: the only thing a kid’s overloaded brain can pull up after 7 hours of school.
When I was student teaching before I had kids, we learned that young kids can only hold 4 to 7 new pieces of information in their working memory at one time. On the first day of school, that memory is completely full: they’re remembering their new teacher’s name, which bathroom is theirs, where to put their backpack, the rules for lining up, who sits next to them, how to open their new lunch box. By the time they see you at pickup, their brain can’t dump all that into a neat, one-sentence answer to “How was your day?” It’s too big a question. The only thing that’s still bouncing around, easy to grab, is the weird, funny, memorable little moment that stuck out. That’s the response you get.
I’ve started testing small changes over the last few years that work way better than pressing for a summary. The first is I don’t ask any big questions the first 10 minutes after pickup. I just hand them a snack, let them zone out, walk home or sit in the car without prying. Most kids need that time to empty out a little of that full working memory before they can talk. The second is, when they give me that silly offhand response, I don’t redirect back to the big question. I just follow the thread they gave me. When Jax told me about the glasses in the apple slice, I didn’t say “But did you have a good day?” I said “Wait, what did he do after that? Did he still eat the apple?” That got him talking for 10 minutes: the kid dried his glasses off, the teacher gave him a new apple, they sat next to each other at recess and played four square, Jax already thinks he’s the coolest kid in class. None of that would’ve come out if I’d insisted on a summary first.
Another thing I do is I don’t panic if they still don’t say much. A one-sentence funny response is still a response. My 16-year-old’s 2 out of 10 rating doesn’t mean she hates high school, it just means that’s the most notable thing that happened to her that day, and she doesn’t want to talk about bio homework right now. By the end of the week, she was complaining about homework and gossiping about her friends over dinner, no prompting needed.
This year, I still catch myself leaning toward that “but how was it really?” question sometimes. It’s hard to unlearn the habit of wanting that neat, happy answer to the first day question. We’re all conditioned to ask for that big, summarizing response, and we worry when we don’t get it. But right now, our fridge is covered in Jax’s crayon drawing of the kid with glasses in the apple slice, Lila already ate all the cookie dough, and my 16-year-old got her $5 back from the vending machine the next day.
The funny, messy, off-topic responses ended up telling me everything I needed to know anyway. They’re all okay, they’re already making their own first day memories, and that’s all the answer I need right now. I’ll get to the big stuff later.
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