Why I Don’t Feel Entirely Happy My Kids Are Back At School (And That’s Okay)
Right at 8:15 this morning, I pulled away from the elementary school drop-off line, waved at my first-grader as he joined the crowd of neon backpacks bobbing toward the door, and headed home. My neighbor texted 10 minutes later: “Enjoy the silence! I’m celebrating with a second coffee and no tiny humans asking me for anything for 6 whole hours 😎” I leaned against my kitchen counter, stared at the half-unpacked box of extra crayons on the table, and couldn’t bring myself to type back “Me too!” The house was quiet, the dishwasher was running, and I didn’t have to break up a fight over who got to pour the orange juice for the first time in 10 weeks. But I wasn’t happy. Not all the way, anyway.
This summer, my 7-year-old followed me everywhere. He sat on the closed toilet lid while I showered, waiting for me to get out so he could show me a new pill bug he’d found. He brought me three dandelions a day, every day, and left them on my desk when I was on work calls. My 11-year-old, just starting middle school, spent the entire month of July camped out on the living room rug building a 1,300-piece Lego set we bought on sale at Target. We ate popsicles for dinner twice when it was 95 degrees and the AC couldn’t keep up, and we forgot to do bedtime reading most nights because we were too busy watching bad skate videos on YouTube. It was messy, it was loud, I drank more wine after bedtime this summer than I did the entire year before, and I wouldn’t have traded it.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t parts I love about having them back in school. I got an entire 25-minute uninterrupted meeting on Wednesday that didn’t get cut short by a kid asking where the extra band-aids are. I went to the grocery store alone last night and got everything on my list in 20 minutes, instead of an hour and a half of stopping to stare at the Halloween candy display and negotiating a pre-dinner cookie. I don’t have to come up with a new activity for a rainy day every other week. I can fold laundry without a kid “helping” by unfolding it right after I’m done. That’s all nice. It’s just not the uncomplicated joy everyone posts about on Instagram.
I talked to my sister, who’s a 4th grade teacher, about this last weekend. She said she sees it every year: parents either come in on the first day beaming like they just won the lottery, or crying in the parking lot, and they all feel weird if they don’t fit into one of those two boxes. But kids feel the same way about going back to school, right? Most kids don’t love every part of it, and they don’t hate every part of it. They’re excited to see their friends, and nervous about new teachers, and sad they don’t get to stay up late playing anymore. So why do we pressure ourselves as parents to feel only one thing?
The first day after school, my oldest got in the car and I almost launched into the usual: “How was your first day? Do you like your teacher? Did you make any friends?” Then I remembered what my sister said: kids just got through six hours of being told what to do and being “on” for adults, they don’t want to be interrogated the second they sit down. So I just handed him the granola bar I had stashed in the console, and said “I got your favorite sour candy too, whenever you want it.” We drove all the way home without talking about school, and 10 minutes after we got in the house, he sat down next to me on the couch and started telling me about the kid who sits next to him who brought a gaming controller to lunch. That’s way better than any forced check-in I would have prompted.
For me, I stopped pretending I feel one way or the other. When people ask me if I’m happy they’re back, I don’t lie and say I’m over the moon, and I don’t say I’m miserable. I just say “It’s nice to have a little time to myself, but I miss them during the day.” That takes all the pressure off. I also started a silly little routine: right after drop off, I make my coffee, and I write down one dumb summer memory in the notes app on my phone. Last week it was “Jake found a dead frog and wanted to keep it on the porch.” This week it was “Noah ate 4 popsicles in one day and didn’t even get a stomach ache.” It’s my small way of processing the shift, without dumping that quiet sadness on the kids. They don’t need to feel guilty for going to school, and I don’t need to feel guilty for missing them.
I have a friend who works full time as a nurse, she told me she cried in her car after drop off last week because she was so relieved to get back to her routine and not have to pay for expensive summer daycare. She said she felt like a bad mom for being happy, like that meant she didn’t love her kids. But that’s such a silly standard. You can be happy to have your routine back and love your kids more than anything. Those two things don’t cancel each other out.
Today I picked the boys up from school, and Jake told me he hates that he has to do math homework every night, and Noah told me his locker is too high up and he can’t reach his gym shoes. We got home, they had snacks, I helped Noah jam his locker combination into a note on his phone, and we ate leftovers for dinner. After they went to bed, I walked past the living room and saw that half-built Lego Millennium Falcon is still sitting on the coffee table, missing that one tiny laser piece we looked for all summer. The house is quiet now, just like it was this morning. Some days I’ll pour my second coffee and enjoy every minute of the quiet. Some days I’ll check the clock every hour waiting for the bell to ring. There’s no right way to feel about it. It’s just the way it is, when your kids keep growing and moving on to the next thing, and you’re just right here, walking with them.
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