Why You Don’t Have To Be Happy Your Kids Are Back At School: Parenting Tips For Mixed Back-To-School Feelings
First Tuesday after school started, I’m leaning against my kitchen counter at 8:17 am, coffee in hand, staring at the neon rain boot my 7-year-old left by the door. He mumbled through his toast this morning that he didn’t need it, even though the weather app blared a thunderstorm warning for dismissal. The house is quiet. No one’s yelling that the other took their blue toothbrush. No one’s begging for a snack five minutes after breakfast. I scroll through my mom group feed, and every other post is screaming about freedom: “Wine o’clock starts at noon! Best day of the year!” I swirl my coffee, and I don’t feel happy. I don’t even feel sad, really. I just feel… off, like I forgot something I was supposed to do. I spent all August counting down to this day, so why don’t I feel the joy everyone else is posting about?
I spent this summer a mess, honestly. The first two weeks, we had back-to-back colds that cycled through every one of us. I canceled three different work deadlines because someone was throwing up at 2 am. My 10-year-old had daily basketball practice that started at 8 am, which meant I was dragging my still-half-asleep 7-year-old out of the house before the sun was even warm, arguing with him about putting on socks. By the end of July, I had a first day of school countdown on my phone, updating it every night. I bought a new jar of my fancy coffee, planned to deep clean the closets, finish the half-written book I’ve been working on for a year. I was ready. I thought I’d be happy.
I ran into my neighbor Sarah, a 4th grade teacher, getting the mail last Wednesday, and she mentioned she’d seen it all that first week. One mom did cartwheels across the parking lot when she dropped her kid off. Another mom hid in her car crying for 20 minutes. What no one talks about, she said, is that most people are both. She told me that as a teacher, she sees every year how parents are pushed to pick a lane: you’re either the eager parent who’s ready for routine, or the emotional mess who can’t let their baby go. But most parents are right in the middle, and that middle space isn’t talked about.
That makes sense, when you stop to think about it. Summer with kids at home isn’t just chaos, it’s a whole different way of being a parent. When they’re home all day, you’re not just the person who packs lunch and signs homework. You’re the referee, the activity director, the impromptu art assistant, the person who stops what you’re doing to go look at a cool worm someone found on the sidewalk. When they go back to school, that part of your job gets put on pause. Even if you wanted the pause, it’s still a small shift that can leave you off balance. It’s not that you don’t want them to go to school, to learn, to have their own friends and their own life. It’s just that the version of your family that existed for 10 weeks is gone, and that quiet shift doesn’t get talked about.
I started doing a few small things that have helped, not to fix the feeling, just to make it easier to live with. First, I keep a 3×5 card and a pen taped to the side of my fridge. Every morning after drop off, I write down whatever I’m feeling in one line, no filtering. Some days it’s “So glad no one is asking me for anything right now.” Some days it’s “Sad I don’t get to eat popsicles on the porch at 2 pm.” It takes 10 seconds, and it keeps me from feeling like I’m a bad parent for feeling whatever I’m feeling. No one sees it but me, so there’s no judgment.
Second, I started leaving my house 15 minutes earlier for pickup, and I sit in my car in the parking lot until dismissal. Before, I’d rush straight from finishing work to the school, jumping straight from my quiet alone time into the chaos of after school snacks, homework arguments, and soccer cleat hunts. Now I just sit there. I listen to a podcast that my kids would think is boring, or I just watch the other parents walk in. It gives me time to shift gears, instead of feeling like I’m being pulled from one role to another without a breath.
Third, I picked one small summer routine to keep doing every weekend. This summer, we had popsicles on the porch right after lunch every Saturday. Now, even with school and soccer and all the fall activities, we still do that. It doesn’t take any extra planning, it’s just 10 minutes of the messy, slow summer vibe that I actually liked, even when I was complaining about the heat. Last weekend, my 10-year-old complained that it was too cold for popsicles, but he still ate one. My 7-year-old dripped blue popsicle on his new school shirt, and I didn’t even yell. It was nice.
I still have days where I stare at the quiet house and feel that weird off feeling. I still see all the posts about how great it is to have kids back in school, and sometimes I feel like I’m doing something wrong for not feeling that all the time. I also have days where I’m so giddy for the quiet that I reheat my coffee three times just because I can keep forgetting it on the counter. There’s no right way to feel, after all. If you’re over the moon that school started, that’s fine. If you’re crying into your cereal every morning, that’s fine too.
Today, the neon rain boot is still by the door, but I remembered to throw it in my car for dismissal this afternoon. The 3×5 card on my fridge says “Excited for the weekend, glad for quiet today.” Some feelings don’t need to be fixed. They just need to be named, and then you go on with your day. We’re still figuring it out, week by week, and that’s okay.
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