My 12yo hates school.
I’ve documented some of his issues in the past – ADHD, bullies, anxiety – but that’s not what I’m talking about today. Today I’m talking about how he hates school the same way every kid hates school: it’s boring, there’s homework, and it’s more fun to stay home and play video games.
In many ways, my 7yo’s experience is the opposite. Whereas Detective Munch had the end of elementary and his transition into middle school upended by Covid, my 7yo had his initial school experience delayed by it. He hadn’t done a ton of daycare – it’s expensive! – but he’s a social guy, so he was excited to start pre-K and make new friends - and then the pandemic kept him home. When he finally got a chance to go inside his school, he was champing at the bit.
He’s about as enthusiastic a student as you can get. He’s always in a good mood, is teachers adore him, he’s friends with everyone, and he loves to learn. And he still tries to stay home whenever he can! Because even when you love school, you’d rather skip it and do whatever you want to do all day. (I get it. I feel the same way about work!)
Starting next week - yes, here in NYC, school doesn’t end until next week. Calm down. It also doesn’t start until after Labor Day. - they’ll both have two-and-a-half months of staying home.
My kids can’t wait. And while Mom and Buried and I understand – summer is a sacred time in a kid’s life – we also sort of wish they went to a year-round school. Because filling these next 2.5 months will not be easy!
The good news is that Mom and Buried will be home with them, and I still work from home three days a week, so we don’t need to put them in camp all summer long, which is good, because holy cow camp is expensive! (We’re not a camp family to begin with so it’s no huge loss.) The bad news is that they’ll be home with us most of the time, and they’ll need to be entertained much of the time, either by us (read: Mom and Buried, because while I’ll be home, I’ll be working) or, inevitably, by screens.
I am not above letting screens babysit my kids from time to time. That said, two full months of it seems a tad egregious. So we bit the bullet and signed them up for a little bit of camp, and we’ll be doing a little traveling, but that still means most of summer is unaccounted for, which means the kids will be fairly bored, which means they’ll grow increasingly annoying.
We do what we can.
Mom and Buried has a solid history of Mom Camp, i.e., keeping the kids occupied with activities (museums, parks, exploring the city) and play dates with their friends, and I’ll take advantage of my flexible schedule when I can. But two months is a long time, despite the fact that when September comes it will feel like it flew by, and my kids are far enough apart in age that finding joint activities can be tough, and my wife has MS and so can’t go balls to the wall all summer long, and I won’t be available to help most of the time because I’ll be working my ass off just to afford the couple of weeks of camp!
We’ll manage, and the kids will have plenty of fun, but summer vacation isn’t exactly a vacation for parents.
So while my kids will rejoice when school ends - and so will my wife, tbh, because in spite of it all, she loves summer and having extra time with the kids – I’ll be counting the days until school starts again.
Social Media Round-up
Pop Culture Stuff
We’re watching BEEF on Netflix. It’s intense and nerve-wracking and in some ways hits painfully close to home, but the performances are great, and the plot twists are continually surprising. So far. We’re also checking out Black Mirror - we’ve seen the first two, which are clever (Joan is Awful) and horrifying (Loch Henry). I’m excited to watch the rest but Mom and Buried may not stick around for all of them - especially the more scary/sci-fi-oriented episodes.
We’re going to see The Cure tomorrow night. I’m not a superfan - love the hits, like some of the deep cuts, am not a completist by any means - but it’s a chance to see a great band play live, and I’ll almost always take that.
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