Back to School: Is it over yet?

As a parent of three school aged children myself (10th grade, 8th grade and 2nd grade), getting back into a routine and a structure that comes with the school year can be a positive. However, this is about the time, a month into the year, when the excitement begins to wane and the daily routine of checking backpacks and signing assignment notebooks can grate on my nerves. It seems that by the time we finish dinner, homework and activities it is bedtime (at least for me). I don’t know how many times in the last two weeks that my 2nd grader has complained about the lack of free time she has after school. Of course she actually says, “What, it is bed time, I haven’t even gotten to watch Spongebob today!” But it is the reality of the world our children live in. The expectations are higher than when we were in school and the stakes are higher. As my academically accomplished sophomore worries about getting into college because her GPA isn’t 3.5, and my 2nd grader has at least an hour of homework a night when I don’t remember even doing homework until high school, I wonder what all this is doing to their self-esteem and academic confidence. I certainly appreciate the fact that once they get into college and life beyond, they will be hard workers but what about the stress it all puts on our kids. Average and above average kids still have to work hard in school these days, but no student should have to work so hard that they feel like a failure or don’t feel positive about themselves as a learner. When the emotional perceptions begin to become negative that is the time to take note as a parent. Whenever your child is avoiding work or makes comments like, “I hate to read”, “I’m not good at tests”, “I’m not good at math”, those can be signs of struggles. We all avoid things that we don’t feel like we are good at, kids do the same thing. If your child begins to avoid or develop negative perceptions about learning, it is time to take a look at why. I hear a lot of parents tell me that their child will mature or outgrow the negative feelings but 9 times out of 10 they don’t. I just encourage you to keep your eyes and ears open to those signs as you move through this school year, because the world our children live in is very different and much more demanding than the world we grew up in, but the signals can be the same.