Back to School Burnout: What To Do When You’re At Your Limit Before School Even Starts
It’s 3:17 p.m. on the second-to-last Tuesday of August, and there’s sticky cherry popsicle juice crusted into the grout of my kitchen counter. The dryer just buzzed for the third time today, my phone won’t stop pinging with school emails, and my 11-year-old, Jax, who’s starting middle school this year, has been parked in front of Minecraft for three and a half hours. He just looked up over his laptop and asked if I can order the $80 branded backpack all the kids are wearing this year, because his old one “isn’t cool enough.” I opened my mouth to answer and what came out was sharper than I meant it: “Can you just get off that screen and do one thing I’ve asked you for? When are you going to finish that summer reading, anyway?” He shut his laptop so hard the table shook, got up, and slammed his bedroom door. I leaned against the counter, stared at the pile of permission slips on the table, and thought the thing you’re not supposed to say out loud: School’s almost here, and I don’t know how much more of this I can take.
This summer wasn’t even a bad one. My partner picked up extra shifts at the clinic, I worked my part-time graphic design projects around Jax’s schedule, we had a broken wrist from a bike crash that canceled his week of camp, we ate a lot of frozen pizza and went to the public pool twice a week. It was messy, it was fine, until the last two weeks. Suddenly every parent account I’m on is blowing up with tips: get them on a sleep schedule now! check off every supply list item! plan a special end of summer day to reset! I’ve seen a dozen posts about how the calm before school starts sets the tone for the whole year. Which is just a fancy way of saying if I’m already stressed now, I’m going to ruin the whole year for my kid.
I went next door that night to borrow a cup of sugar for cookies, and Linda, who’s taught 5th grade for 22 years, saw I was frayed, and made me sit on her porch with a glass of iced tea. She said she sees this every single year, from both parents and kids. No one talks about it, but the two weeks before school are the most stressful of the whole summer, for both of you. Kids pick up on the fact that everything’s about to change, even if they can’t put that feeling into words. They act lazy, or rude, or glued to their screens because that’s the only way they know how to soothe the nervousness they can’t name. Most of the time, it’s not that they don’t care about school. It’s that they’re scared they’ll mess it up.
I realized right then that I’d been so busy checking off my to-do list that I didn’t even ask Jax how he felt about starting middle school. His best friend got put in a different homeroom when schedules came out two weeks ago, and I’d just moved on after he shrugged and said it was fine when I asked. I walked back home, didn’t bang on his door and demand an apology, just knocked soft, opened it a crack, and tried what Linda suggested: “I snapped earlier, that was my bad. I’ve been stressed about all the school stuff, and I took it out on you. I’m also wondering—have you been feeling weird about starting middle school?”
He nodded, rolled over on his bed, and mumbled that he’s scared no one will sit with him at lunch, that the homework will be too hard, that everyone already has the cool backpack and he’ll be the weird one. I had no idea. All that time I thought he was just being lazy about summer reading, he was sitting on all that worry.
Linda gave me three small, concrete changes I’ve made this week, and they’ve already cut my stress in half. First, turn off all notifications for your school accounts, and only check them once a day for 15 minutes, after kids go to bed. Before this, I was stopping whatever I was doing every time a new email pinged, filling out a form or RSVPing on the spot, which left me feeling pulled in a dozen directions all day. Now I do it all at once at 8:30, when Jax is winding down in his room, and I don’t think about school admin the rest of the day. No more constant low-grade anxiety every time my phone buzzes.
Second, instead of nagging every day about summer reading or messy rooms, ask one 30-second question a day: “What’s one thing you’re worried about for school, and one thing you’re excited for?” It doesn’t force them to talk if they don’t want to, but it gives them permission to bring up the small worries that are bouncing around their head, before those worries turn into big fights about nothing.
Third, if you’re behind on shifting their sleep schedule, don’t drag it out for a week fighting about bedtime every night. For the three days before the first day of school, just wake them up 45 minutes earlier each day. That’s it. No need to force an early bedtime if they’re not tired—they’ll crash earlier that night on their own, no arguments. I did this the past two days, and Jax’s bedtime shifted from 11 to 9:30 without a single fight.
We found his old black soccer backpack in the back of his closet last night, the one with the side pocket for his water bottle, and he said actually, that’s fine. It’s not the cool one, but if no one likes him for the backpack he has, that’s their problem. He read 30 pages of his summer reading before bed just to get it done, and we crossed that off the list.
I still haven’t bought the 12-pack of colored pencils the updated supply list asked for, and I’m 90% sure I forgot to sign the field trip permission form. Last night we still had a fight about him leaving his wet towel on the clean sheets, and I still drank an extra glass of wine after dinner because I was tired.
School starts the day after tomorrow. I’m not going to be the parent that has everything perfectly ready, with all the forms filled out and the new outfits washed and the special first day breakfast planned. I’m still tired, and I still have moments where I look at the growing pile of school stuff on my counter and feel that same tightness in my chest. But today, we’re sitting on the porch eating popsicles, Jax is teaching our dog how to catch a tennis ball, and we haven’t fought about anything school related in 48 hours. That’s more than enough for me right now. We’ll figure out the rest as we go.
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