First Published in the Tri Town Transcript Oct 12, 2017
By Esther C. Baird
So it’s October. We’re back into the swing of things now. We make lunches and we drive. We figure out how to be in three places at once. It’s tricky, but we’ve got this. It no longer wakes us up at night in a dead sweat.
Right? All cool? Back into the swing… wait, what? No? Not swinging?
Me either. In fact, I’m pretty sure my swing flew off the chain and I’m hurtling into the upper atmosphere where I expect to combust in a ball of unsigned homework folders and soggy chicken tenders.
September ate me alive. So much so that our calm, and amazingly sane, head of school sent me a personal letter last week about my attitude this October. (By that I mean she sent it to all school parents, and it was about our children’s attitudes, but let’s not bog down in the details.)
Dear parents, Some of your children [you] may experience a delayed sense of stress and anxiety that often erupts in the third and fourth weeks of school rather than the first few days.
Ok sure, I’d keep an eye on possible delayed stress from the full weight of September crushing the very essence of my life out through my pores.
In other news, we’d been spending our weekends, decluttering. Our eldest daughter wanted to have a harvest party in October, and we needed to clear some space. Specifically, our two girls decided they wanted to declutter the playroom. Music to a mother’s ears right? Sure except…
“Why would you get rid of that rainbow blanket? And what about this set of nerf arrows??” I asked, as I checked on their progress.
“Mommy,” my youngest said patiently, “we’re trying to get rid of the toys that we don’t use so it’s more like a cool hangout spot.”
I stared at them.
“We shouldn’t have let her up here,” my eldest said quietly.
The youngest pointed. “Look, we’re clearing the book shelf to make room for the games we DO play, see?”
I gasped. “The books?”
I cringed when I saw the piles of children’s books sitting against the wall.
“We can donate them to other children,” the eldest explained.
The girls looked to my husband who stood nearby. He was clearly on their side.
“You put ‘The Giving Tree’ into a donation pile!?!” I spluttered. “Absolutely not. The tree, it’s just a stump at the end, it needs the little boy, it needs…” I was at a loss.
This is a very normal and typical response to starting over after a period of time away.
My eldest put her hand on her hip. Where did she get that sassy move from? I looked down at my arm. Nevermind.
She sighed. “We’re older now. We want to have my middle school class over and hang out — play manhunt outside, have a fire in the fire pit, and if it rains we can chill up here.”
But this was the room where they did crafts and built forts and dressed up! Chilling was for wine, and moms, and moms with wine sitting on sad tree stumps whose little children keep getting older and busier.
Encouragement, predictability and structure are most helpful when supporting an anxious spirit.
My husband interjected. “I think we should let the girls make piles to sort. We’re just moving a few couches, and look, we kept your Fisher Price castle.” He pointed at the play castle from my childhood.
Ok. I mean, ok then. The castle was there with all the furniture and round-headed Little People that a child could choke on, marking it as an authentic 1970s toy. So maybe there wasn’t that much change.
Students [Parents] at transition points can often experience bouts of angst that will dissipate with time and a measure of grace.
“Mommy,” my youngest smiled. “It will be ok. Look I found this, and I knew you’d want it.”
She handed me a weathered photo in a touristy, paper frame, from a steamboat ride we’d taken. It was of my own mother and me, when the girls were little, the youngest still a toddler. The girls were frowning and clearly not impressed with the boat trip they’d just taken. But my mother and I were all smiles and laughter because, presumably, no one had fallen off.
I loved the picture. And my girls knew that, and had kept it. And maybe they knew how to keep the swing swinging here in October, while still growing up into new spaces and things.
The good news is that it won’t last, and the antidotes: patience, consistency and encouragement, are in ample supply!