The other day on Facebook, a hilarious mom blogger friend of mine posted about going Back-to-School shopping with her two sons. “Where can I get my back to bulls–t wardrobe?” she asked. “Back to pickups, back to dropoffs, back to phoney-baloney interactions with other parents, back to . . .” you get the picture.
Suffice it to say, she was not looking forward to the advent of the school year.
General wisdom would have parents believe it’s the most amazing of times — but for a lot of people, the return to school heralds a return to a whole lot of stress.
Not their kid’s stress, mind you. Their own.
So with that in mind, I’m proposing six ways for parents to Chill the Hell Out for Back to School. Granted, some of the frenzy is unavoidable — but some of it isn’t. And I believe following some or all of the points below will minimize your own anxiety, making a more pleasant school year for the whole family.
Here’s my Chill-Out Challenge for you:
1. Remember you’re not the one going back to school
I know, this can be a hard one. Say the words “third grade” to me, and I’m assaulted by memories of a playground bully/classic mean girl named Erika, whose name I have emphatically not changed for the purpose of this article. (She doesn’t live in the US, though, so I feel safe wimpily calling her out from afar.) Anyway. Most of us have psychic wounds — our Erikas, if you will — from school. But when it comes to relating to your child’s school experience, try to check most of your own memories at the door.
Notice I didn’t call out negative memories specifically, because I think overemphasizing your own experience in school, be it negative or positive, can affect the way your kid experiences it. Did you have the best time ever in middle school? That’s great, but it doesn’t mean your child will, and they’ll feel even worse if they know that mom’s junior high years totally rocked.
Let them have their own experience. (Besides, the adult world is enough like junior high without you reliving seventh grade through your child.)
2. Pick your battles
It’s a pretty good rule of thumb for life in general — but an even better rule for dealing with your child’s teacher. Is your child’s teacher pretty good? Then trust them, and for the love of God, don’t try to nitpick their every last decision.
If your child knows you’re doing this, it sends a terrible message — that their teacher’s authority can and should be questioned constantly. Let the teacher have the relationship with your child, and don’t jump in to challenge every point missed on a test. If you have serious concerns, express them.
But if you find that you’re airing your “serious concerns” every few days, take a step back and reconsider: The serious problem? Well, it might just be you.
3. Avoid negative parents
There’s a culture of discontent in parenting these days; it’s almost become a weird type of status symbol, a way of signifying how selective you are, how very much more you are accustomed to.
The parent that’s never quite happy with the pediatrician, the menu at school, the way soccer practice is being conducted, etc. Want a change in outlook? Try not hanging out with these Eeyores of the parenting world. You’ll be amazed at how much it changes your own viewpoint — and how many other, much cooler parents there are out there.
4. Boring is its own fantastic lesson
Our kids mean everything to us. We want them to get the best of everything. And sure, it’s hard to watch your kids deal with an uninspired teacher, or having a lackluster year of school. But you know what one of the best lessons out there is? The lesson that not everything is fascinating, magical, top-notch, that boredom can happen, that adults are not all smart and so on.
These are valuable insights that will stay with your children well into adulthood — and most certainly into the professional world. A co-worker once told me he believed his experience at a lousy school made him the person he is now. “I learned early on that there was a lot of mediocrity in life, and it was up to me to rise above it,” he said.
I thought his take on this was awesome and while I’m not saying we should throw caution to the wind and not care at all about the quality of our kids’ schools, let’s also remember that it’s not the sum total of existence. People get over boredom. They don’t get over being denied the chance to develop resilience or grit.
5. If you’re a working parent, you can’t go to every event — and that’s fine
I don’t know when or why this sudden explosion of parental participation events started; it used to be that parents attended the odd play, maybe a choir concert and that was about it. At many schools, this is no longer the case — there are many occasions in which (daytime) parental participation is expected, giving the truly small-minded parents of the class (see No. 3) the opportunity to issue catty comments about how “sad” it is that Jimmy’s mom couldn’t make it. You know what’s sad? Jimmy’s parents not being able to pay their mortgage.
So I say to working parents: Pick the events you can reasonably expect to attend, feel guilty for five minutes about the ones you can’t, then let go of that guilt and move on. And think of my friend Bob (totally not his name), who once told me he used to get teased by other kids because his mother worked and couldn’t always participate in every school event. “And you know what? Good for her,” he wrote me recently. “She would have gone crazy staying at home all day, so it was better for all of us that she was living her own life and doing something that gave her satisfaction.” (Bob grew up to be a lovely, well-mannered, sensitive, successful guy that any mother would be insanely proud to have raised, by the way.)
If I were Bob’s mom, I’d have T-shirts made up saying, “I Worked and All I Got Was This Amazing, Sensitive, Kind Individual As My Son.” So you see, whenever you feel guilty, just think of Bob and how he turned out.
6. Don’t do your kids’ homework for them
It is absolutely wild that I even have to write this — that parents that do their kids’ homework exist. I’m not talking about helping them — I’m talking about DOING the homework.
For the most part, I try not to be judgmental about other people’s parenting, but in this case, I am blasting, nay, radiating judgment at anyone who does this. And I ask them: What good can you possibly think you are doing for your kids?
Trust them to do their own work, even if you have to bug them. Let it be theirs. Let them have ownership, mistakes and all. And if they fail, let them fail — at least the failure will be their own to learn from.