Starting over

     

Summer Smiles!

All three of my little (and not-so-little) people went back to school yesterday after 2 months of  summer.  It was a bitter-sweet moment. The younger two were positively brimming with enthusiasm; they were missing their friends and football sessions, but one look at my eldest's face was enough to stem my own enthusiasm. She starts 9th grade and each year the pressure mounts.

Summer has been a glorious mishmash of the lovely treats London has to offer (museums, parks, plays, rainy days...), the excitement of a full-on family monsoon wedding (well all the hungama minus the rain) and a final couple of weeks of complete and utter lazing about (reading at all hours, summer blockbusters, watching the Olympics on TV and no real meals). The result has been astounding- the kids seem to all have grown taller, happier and more articulate.

I have always loved the back-to-school time of year; in fact my new year resolutions tend to coincide with the new school year rather than the calendar one. Usually the resolutions have to do with always having boxes on fresh pencils on hand, adding more activities to the kids' already busy schedules, vowing to become more organized, hoping to teach them to be organized, spending more time reviewing homework with them and try to be pre-emptive (i.e. read the syllabus at the beginning of the term and not at the end) and others in a similar vein. Suffice it to say that by the end of term the day counts as a success if I didn't forget to pick a kid from school and everyone made it to bed more or less fed.

This year has been different. As the summer progressed and bed times grew later and later I realized I actually liked my children. They are curious, intelligent and very funny individuals. Somehow running around all year trying to stick to a schedule I never stopped to actually consider them and I suspect that even if I had, I wouldn't have seen them as I did this summer. I'm ashamed to admit that more often than I care to remember I have stopped them in the middle of a potentially truly interesting question to remind them to do their homework. I have seen their bright, inquisitive faces fall become sullen as I always point to the clock and the schedule.

The day before schools resumed I read a book review in the morning paper- Teach Your Children Well: Parenting for Authentic Success by Madeline Levine. The book's subtitle is Parenting for Authentic Success. According to the author we should be aiming for our children's wellbeing as opposed to pushing them to be "successful". The skills we should be honing are the ability to cope and make friends. The book is on my wish list (since there is no Kindle edition yet). But in the meantime, I do have a new year resolution: help my children have more fun.

P.S. Thirteen days to the next holiday :)