As I sit here …there is a brief moment of silence. Tara is napping and I have about 30 minutes before heading to pick up the kids from their last day of Summer Camp. There they are celebrating with pizza and movies apparently.
The kids managed two weeks of the day camp this year. Adam enjoyed it a lot as the kids he had issues with last year were not there and Caity managed okay…..her enjoyment diminished with each day as she realizes that this is the lead up to going back to school.
Caity is very anxious about going back to school. I find this really sad. Not because I am terribly rah rah about school…but she seems to THRIVE at school. The teachers and students in Kindergarten all seemed to adore her and she got stunning report cards to boot!
But I really think the summer break is a tad too long and especially for people like us who didn’t have the kids booked up with parentless activities throughout. Adam and Caity were hanging with me and my mom when they weren’t running around with their friends and they get used to us being there for them any time of the day.
I think the thought that she will be out of touch for a FULL day is now really sinking in as a bad thing instead of just a fact and I feel terrible for her.
She is such an emotional little soul. A total firebrand…rage, joy, upset will speed through her system at dizzying speeds that I cannot keep up with.
We have been trying to ease her fears in that the school year will be eased into over time and that she will be just fine. And I do think she will be fine….once things settle down, but for now I have a clingy emotional little girl who is very relieved that today was the last day of summer camp…even though she grudgingly admits to enjoying it and liking the girls there.
It has been a low key summer. Again. No big trips, no big upheavals. Patrick working and me staying fairly close to home with them spending more time in ‘free play’ than organized activities.
We will pack in a few more day events in the next week and are slowly struggling with getting them back to sleeping at a decent time. Something that feels almost impossible considering the shock we are met with EVERY SINGLE NIGHT when we try to get Adam to start winding down and prepping for bed.
At least with it getting darker a tad earlier, we can lure them in a bit easier.
I am not sure how Adam feels about school. He keeps his feelings to himself more so than his sister. The most I have heard is about which teacher he hopes to get, and some mention of the friends he wants to see again….but nothing about how he feels. I think honestly, that he is pretty ambivalent about school.
Adam tends to be more fatalistic about things. He will face the ‘worst’ rather than see the bright side of a situation. He tends to give up rather easily instead of thinking of solutions to an issue. The other day there was a ‘miscommunication’ between himself and a friend. He walked up to me and said that was it and his friend would not be playing with him anymore. He explained to me what had happened and when I suggested that he go and apologize, he looked quite surprised that that would be a solution…which it was.
The boys mind works in mysterious ways.
We WERE supposed to be working on Summer Journals, but that has been a bit of a bust…bad parent me. And they haven’t done huge amounts of reading…but what I have seen of reading and crafts, and so on doesn’t look like they have deteriorated too much.
Instead the school will have to deal with semi feral, over video stimulated, sun burned kids who will be horrified at the thought of sitting longer than five minutes at ANY task and are hungry all the time.
Good luck.
NaomiJesson says
I have been having the same reactions from my son. He loves when I am around more & finds it even harder when I go to work now that we have been together more. I am scared he will have a few meltdowns about going to Kindergarten this year :*(.
Harriet says
Love those feral children on summer. I’m sure they will all adjust just fine once they realize just how MUCH the LOVE routine 😉