08/30/2018
Weekend plans? 😂🤷🏽♀️
Okay, guys, it's time. I give you this wise, brilliant counsel every year at this time, and it is worth repeating because sometimes as moms we are dumb dumbs and forget this important PSA:
After the first week of school, here are your weekend plans: ZERO PLANS. Don't you dare head off to some Friday night situation with your kids thinking you are about to have some "First Week of School Friday Night Celebration" because what you will actually have is a Grade A Public Meltdown. Your kids are a living disaster. Their bodies and minds are exhausted beyond all measure, and they can handle exactly none additional stimulation. They used up all their energy capital getting through the first week of school, and now they are like pod people who need to be put on the couch with Popcorn Dinner and a movie and that is the end of this tale.
It doesn't matter if your plans are FUN and THINGS THEY LOVE and DELIGHTFUL because the only thing they can handle is nothing. No thing. Also? They don't want to talk about it. They don't want to give you a dissertation on where they sat for lunch and what the rules are and who are the new kids and what are they learning. This is all dead to them. Leave them alone. They don't want to talk or go to a loud restaurant or the trampoline park or your sister's birthday party.
Rent your movies, order your pizza, shelve your questions, and let them recover. This is 100% truer the younger your babies are. Your little kinder babies? They are almost physically dead. When Sydney was in kinder, we took the kids to the high school football game Friday night after the first week of school, and we threw her over our shoulder at halftime and RACED to the parking lot while she SCREAMED, I mean BLOODY SCREAMED about getting the wrong icee flavor like some sort of demon possessed child from an 80s movie. She was asleep before we got out of the parking lot.
Please acknowledge that you have received my instruction. No plans, no outings, no activities, no long conversations. Their little selves spent all their energy trying to figure out the cafeteria and the new seating charts and the weird unspoken social rules and if their clothes and backpacks were right and if their new teacher is going to love them or not. They have nothing left, so let's not make them navigate "a fun trip to the mall."
Recovery weekend! Trust your friend Jen!
