Bittersweet: The Art of Back to School
Here’s the deal. I had a completely different post halfway written to share this week. It was all about advocating for your kids as we head into the school year. And then I had a conversation with one of our kids that changed my direction for Just Chaos and Coffee this week. I think we can all benefit from the lesson I learned (again). So let’s go!
Bittersweet.
One of my very favorite authors is Shauna Niequist. I have every single one of her books and have read them all multiple times. She’s that good of a story teller, cook, and person. Shauna’s books are mostly collections of essays, short reflections to start or end your day with, and cookbooks. Cooking for me is a form of self-care and while I am not a fancy or complicated cook by any stretch of the imagination, I enjoy it because it’s one of the few things in my life that has a definitive start to the process and I can see the end product within a reasonable amount of time. Shauna’s book Bittersweet is truly one of my favorites because she dives deep into the concept of how in cooking and thus in life we need both the bitter parts and the sweet parts to appreciate both. For me, the transition this year from summer to back to school is 100% bittersweet. Summer has been so, so sweet and good to our family this year. I’m in a different mindset with work and have been much more intentional about shutting down when I am “supposed to” and picking work back up after spending quality time with my family. We have laughed so much these last 12 weeks. The schedule has included slower mornings for the kids and lots of outside time and just opportunities for the kids to be kids. There have also been tears because let’s be real. Parenting elementary age children is just plain hard some days. Yet overall, summer has been a sweet season.
This week though, as conversations shifted to prepping kids for schedule changes, getting some of our “regular programming” routines back on line, and all of the 489 forms that have to be filled out actually filled out, I felt all of our anxiety levels increase. We are all excited for school to start. Our family thrives on routine and structure and the kids being in school is a natural vehicle for that. Even with that knowledge there is a certain level of bitter, like dark chocolate has, that I know we’re facing. The slower mornings of summer will be over when school starts. The internal regulation that is just easier for our kids to access in the summer because they have less to manage externally will be harder to get to. And that became so very evident one evening this week when one of our kids was very clearly struggling, pushing boundaries, and simply shut down. It was one of those moments where if we had tried to talk it through then, nobody would have benefitted from that discussion. The next morning, however, I had a break in between meetings and took 15 minutes to reset with them. We talked about what they were feeling underneath the big behaviors from the night before and with some help, they shared that the realization that school is right around the corner hit them big and they’re anxious. Navigating all of the social aspects of school for this specific kid continues to be a challenge. And their little brain was just going haywire. So we took a few minutes and talked about how GOOD this summer has been. How much their Daddy and I have enjoyed watching them grow, play with neighbor friends, and just enjoy being a kid without the pressures of school. And yes, starting school does change things and it can leave a little bit of a bitter taste in our mouths as we leave summer behind and adjust to back to school. But if we stayed in the sweet for too long, it would stop being sweet. The bitter balances it out. The bitter tasting parts of life are what actually help us learn, grow, adjust, and change for the better. I didn’t go into all of this with our kiddo, but enough to help them start to begin to be able to learn to appreciate both. I also reminded them how proud we are of them trying new things. How important it is to be kind (our family rule is that we don’t negatively comment or make fun of something about a person that they can’t change within 30 seconds). How smart they are. How capable they are. I reminded them that there are a lot of things they enjoy about school - it’s not all bitter - and to also look for the sweet things they can find about school.
The Art of Back to School.
And you know what? I needed that conversation just as much as they did. There’s an art to the back to school season, at least in our family. If we talk too much about it too early, the anxiety spikes for weeks leading up to the Big Day. If we put too much emphasis on how awesome this summer was, the big feelings of sadness become very hard to manage. Being reminded that life is full of bittersweet moments was exactly the strategy that this Mom (and her kid) needed this week. And you can bet I enjoyed a piece of that dark chocolate with my afternoon coffee, too!
Love you, mean it friends.