Back to School Burnout: What to Do When You’re Tapped Out Before School Even Starts
I stood at the kitchen counter at 1:47 p.m. last Tuesday, sticky cherry popsicle juice seeping through the spiral binding of the notebook I’d pulled out to map back-to-school shopping lists. My 8-year-old and 10-year-old were screaming over who got the last blue raspberry popsicle, the golden retriever had dragged a half-empty tube of kid sunscreen onto the back porch where it was oozing into the grout, and I’d just slammed my fist down hard enough to rattle the coffee mug. “Enough,” I’d yelled, and both kids froze. I didn’t yell that often, and we all knew it.
Camp ended two weeks ago, our big family beach trip is a distant memory, and we’re stuck in that no-man’s-land between summer freedom and the first day of school. Every parenting Instagram account I scroll through is full of “last days of summer bucket lists” and tips for making magical end-of-summer memories, and I can’t help but think: I don’t want to make a magical memory. I just want someone else to mediate the sibling fights and pack three lunches for six hours a day. I’m tapped out, and school hasn’t even started yet.
I texted my sister Jen, a 4th grade teacher who’s seen every version of back-to-school chaos, and she drove over 20 minutes that evening with a bag of chocolate chip cookies after wrapping up her first pre-service faculty meeting. She sat at my messy kitchen table, drank my leftover cold coffee, and nodded when I told her I don’t know how much more of this I can take. She said she feels exactly the same way. For teachers, the week before school is a blur of bulletin boards, new class lists, endless email chains, and getting your classroom ready before 20 small humans walk in the door. She’s usually just as burnt out before the first bell as parents are before the first drop-off.
What she told me next wasn’t the generic “take a bubble bath for self-care” advice I expected. She gave me three small, specific changes I could make that day, no fancy products or big plans required.
First, she told me to throw out any bucket list that had more than one item on it. All that pressure to make the end of summer special just adds more work to a plate that’s already overflowing. I had printed out a Pinterest list a month earlier that included making tie-dye shirts, visiting the local history museum, and hosting a backyard movie night with popcorn. None of those things sounded fun to me—they sounded like three more things I had to plan, shop for, and clean up after. That night, I crumpled the list and threw it in the trash. I told the kids we weren’t doing any big outings for the next two weeks unless someone’s birthday or a family emergency came up. They shrugged and went back to watching their cartoon.
Second, we added one small, low-effort daily routine instead of a bunch of big activities. Jen suggested a 45-minute block of independent outdoor time right after breakfast, where the kids have to work out their own problems unless it’s a real emergency (blood, broken bones, a snake in the fort). That gives me uninterrupted time to knock out work before the heat of the day gets bad, and it gets them out of my hair. After the 45 minutes is up, we do 15 minutes of unstructured snack time on the porch. I leave my phone on the kitchen counter, and we just eat crackers or popsicles and talk about whatever they want. Most days it’s just them arguing about which Minecraft character is better, but it’s enough connection without the work of planning a big activity.
Third, we started shifting sleep schedules 10 minutes at a time, instead of doing a big cold turkey switch the weekend before school. For the last two months, bedtime has been 9:30, and wake up is anywhere between 8 and 9. If I suddenly made them go to bed at 8 the week before school, we’d have two hours of fighting and complaining every night. Instead, we move bedtime 10 minutes earlier every night, and wake up 10 minutes earlier every morning. In 10 days, we’ll be at the school year schedule, and so far, the complaints have been minimal. It’s just a small enough change that no one gets too worked up about it.
It’s been five days since I made those changes, and it’s not like our house is suddenly peaceful and perfect. This morning, the kids fought over who got the blue toothbrush, the dog ate a whole box of crayons I’d left out on the table, and I still haven’t found the specific 2-pocket plastic folders the school list requires. I still get tired by 2 p.m. and count the days until the first bus pulls up to the corner.
But the constant edge of tension that was sitting in my chest all last week is gone. I got three full days of work done that I’d been putting off for a month, and the kids built a fort out of old scrap lumber in the backyard that they’ve spent every morning working on. No one asked me to play with them every five minutes, and we still get that small 15 minutes of connection every day that keeps everyone from feeling ignored.
I still have a mile-long to-do list for back to school, and I’m sure I’ll be running to the store for last minute supplies the night before the first day. That’s just how it goes, I think. We don’t have to be perfectly prepared, or make every moment of summer count, just to get through the lull between break and school. Right now, getting through one 45-minute block of outdoor time at a time is enough for me.
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