Why I’m At My Breaking Point Before School Even Starts (And 3 Small Things That Actually Help)
It’s 2:14 on a Wednesday afternoon, and I’m leaning against my kitchen fridge holding a soda that’s gone warm, staring at a puddle of blue popsicle juice seeping into the cream rug I bought three months ago. My 10-year-old and 7-year-old are yelling over who got the last bigger popsicle, our golden retriever just trotted out of the dining room with the other half of the discarded one hanging out of his mouth, and I just checked the district school calendar for the third time to confirm: first day is next Monday. Not the Monday after next, like I’d written on my fridge calendar wrong. For a second, all I can think is, I don’t know how much more of this I can take.
This isn’t the “I hate summer” rant you might be expecting. I loved the slow mornings the first month, the late nights catching fireflies in the backyard, the week we spent at my in-laws’ lake cottage back in July. But by the third week of August, when the novelty of no schedules has worn off, when every Instagram feed is full of “best summer ever” highlight reels and back to school checklists that are 20 items long, when you realize you’ve picked up 1000 Lego pieces off the floor in as many days, the whole thing just unravels. I used to think this was just me—proof I’m bad at being a stay-at-home mom, that I don’t give my kids enough memorable experiences, that I’m counting down the days just to get rid of them. Then I texted my best friend at 2:15 that afternoon, and she texted back a photo of herself sitting in her minivan in the Target parking lot eating a king-size Snickers, hiding from her three kids. My sister, a 4th grade teacher who’s been prepping her classroom for two weeks, called me that night and said she’d eaten an entire bag of pretzels in her car after a day of setting up desks, and she’s also counting down, but not because she doesn’t love her kids or her students. Transitions are just tiring, she said. Even good transitions. The in-between period between the end of one routine and the start of the next is just messy, and no one talks about how draining it is.
After I cleaned up the popsicle mess (the stain’s still there, for the record) I tossed the big back to school to-do list I’d printed off Pinterest, and started doing three small things that actually take the edge off, no big overhauls required.
First: I scrapped any plans for a “last great summer adventure.” I’d had a hike to a nearby waterfall on the calendar for this weekend, something I’d been telling the kids we’d do for weeks, because I felt like we needed one more big fun thing to end the summer right. I canceled it. Instead, I told the kids we were having a “do-nothing day” on Saturday. No chores, no errands, no photos for anyone’s feed. We’d order whatever pizza they wanted, watch the old Batman cartoons I loved as a kid, and camp out on the living room couch. They didn’t complain. My 10-year-old actually said he was tired of getting in the car and walking a lot. We didn’t do anything that anyone would post about, but that day was the first day I didn’t feel like I was running on fumes in three weeks. The reality is, most of the burnout this time of year doesn’t come from too little fun—it comes from too many expectations. If you’re already at your limit, you don’t owe anyone a big adventure. A low-effort lazy day is way better for everyone than a stressed-out day of forcing fun.
Second, I adjusted our sleep schedules 15 minutes at a time, not all at once. Last year, I tried to go from 10 PM bedtime to 8:30 PM in one night, and I ended up with two kids bouncing off the walls for two hours, coming out for more water, more stories, more everything, and I went to bed mad and exhausted. This year, I just shift bedtime 15 minutes earlier every other day. That’s it. No big talks, no punishment if they get up. If they’re not tired, they can read in bed, but lights go out 15 minutes earlier. We started two weeks ago, and by next Monday we’ll be right at our school year bedtime, and there hasn’t been a single fight. It’s small, it’s slow, and it’s way less stressful than trying to fix a month of late summer nights in 24 hours.
Third, I do one small back to school task a day, and let each kid pick one small fun thing to start. I used to cram all the back to school shopping and form-filling into one weekend, and that would leave me so drained I’d snap at the kids over nothing for three days after. Now, I just do one thing a day. Today, I filled out the three health forms the school sent. Tomorrow, we’ll pick up notebooks and folders. The weekend before school, we’ll get new sneakers. I also take each kid alone for 20 minutes to let them pick one small thing they want for the first day—no budget over $5. My 10-year-old picked a pack of glow-in-the-dark gel pens. My 7-year-old picked a sparkly unicorn eraser. It gives them something small to look forward to, it lets them have a say in the back to school stuff, and I don’t have to spend a whole day running from store to store with two bored, hungry kids fighting in the cart.
Today, I still stepped on a stray Lego when I got out of bed this morning, and the kids fought over the TV remote 10 minutes after breakfast, and I still haven’t ordered my oldest’s new PE uniform yet. The blue popsicle stain on the rug is still there, too. I still have moments where I lean against the counter and think I can’t make it another week. But that’s okay. No one talks about this last stretch of summer being hard, but it is. It’s okay to admit you’re tired, even if you love your kids, even if you’re excited for school to start. These three small things don’t fix everything. They don’t get all my boxes checked, or make the house clean, or give my kids a perfect summer to remember. But they take enough of the edge off that I can get through the day without leaning against the fridge wanting to cry. Next week, school will start, we’ll fall into a new routine, and this messy in-between will be over. For now, I’m just taking it one 15-minute bedtime shift and one lazy day at a time.
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