The most wonderful time of the year….or is it?

This morning you could hear the cheers of parents from around Alberta as the majority of students went back to class. It has widely been recognized that parents have that relief on their faces as Labour Day rolls around that the challenge of entertaining their kids, all day long, has finally come to an end. Now I know that the summer is designed to give kids (and teachers) a break from the grind of education and it also give parents a chance to reconnect with their children. For some fortunate families, they can spend the entire summer travelling and vacationing across the land. That lifestyle can take the edge off the summer grind of entertaining the youth, while the rest of us look for ways to get our kids away from their electronics for a day. The answer all along was the almighty school, and it’s back!

Not so fast parents! The return of reading, writing and arithmetic poses all sorts of new (age old) problems for families. Here’s my Hateful 8 list of why school is not necessarily the gift our parents always used to think it was:

  1. Kids hate to go to bed when the sun is up.

You know this is the biggest struggle in week 1. Kids traditionally have broken from their traditional bedtimes through the summer and reforming them to the standard is no small task. If you could bottle the energy being put into yelling “GET TO BED!” across this city tonight, you could power the oil sands.

2. Lunches.

Some parents have this down to a science where their kids make their own lunches. Others of us bang our heads against the wall to find the perfect combination of healthy and something that the schools will allow them to eat. If you are “lucky” enough to have teens you know that battle. They can’t take a lunch because it’s not cool yet they will eat everything and anything when they dig for it. Give up and let them fend for themselves.

3. School supplies.

It’s an amazing industry. They manufacturers of pens and pencils have made an art out of putting the cool in school. The days of school lists and foraging through stores looking for the correct duotang and correction tape have changed but make no mistake. If your kid shows up with some foreign notebook or pencil sharpener that wasn’t approved by the teacher, someone will know about it.

4. School fees.

I get it, the school board has no money. They have no way to fund all of the creative classes that your son or daughter has slected from their options list. Ultimately, we can do nothing about the machine that the school system has become but we are allowed to complain about it during the first week. Rage against the fees!

5. Homework

It’s a necessary evil to education and the schools have tried to curtail it but nothing turns your evening around more than to try and re-learn stochiometry, the parts of a flower or how to dissect math word problems. Why the hell do I care how fast a train is going if it left Chicago at 4pm Saturday? Because we want our kids to get into Harvard and this might come up on a SAT exam 12 years from now.

6. Clothes/shoes shopping

If you were one of those families wandering around the mall with that dreaded look on your face, I feel for you. I don’t know who came up with the rule that all kids should have new clothes to start school but they must be related to the Walton family of Walmarts. That propaganda has been haunting families for years. Is it to make them feel better against the new kids they will meet or so we as parents feel like our kids aren’t the little creeps they showed us all summer? I say we all send our kids to school with no socks as a show of force.

7. Crazy school schedules

Whatever happened to the days where school started at 9am sharp and kids rolled home at 3:30? Now we have kids in class before 8am and home early on Friday’s. How can any parent be expected to organize a work schedule around this schedule? Don’t even get me started on the way kids are bussed to school in this city. We aren’t going to change it people but I’m choosing to send my kids in late once a week as a way of telling them I simply can’t get my ass out of bed on time…

8. School borne illnesses

Yep these are back too. Ask yourself why doctors take 8 weeks off every summer. It’s because by mid-September they will be so busy raking in fees with runny noses, barking coughs and if you are really unlucky, the dreaded lice, cleaning process. You can’t stop these bugs from attacking your kids, you can only hope to contain them. Prepare to hose down your kids nightly to give you the best chance to avoid malaria.

I ask you again, why are we thrilled that the kids are back in school? The truth is they do actually learn stuff that will serve them well in life. They grow from social interactions and actually meet some pretty amazing kids. Do yourself a favour and stock up on beer and wine this weekend. You will need it at some point as it’s a long way until June. Hang in there parents!

Marco

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