Night Buddies takes place almost entirely after lights out, so we pay more attention than most people to when it actually gets dark. And right now it’s getting dark fast. October is the month that takes the light. Most of the country loses somewhere around an hour of daylight between the first and the thirty-first […]
At some point in the school year, the backpack becomes its own ecosystem. It sits by the door with a slight lean. It’s noticeably heavier than it was two weeks ago, and it has a strange smell that isn’t quite food but isn’t quite gym shoe either. You’ve asked, and your child claims that it’s […]
Remember the third week of June when bedtime stopped being a time and became a suggestion? Nobody decided this; it just happened, one late sunset and one “just one more episode” at a time. Suddenly the kid who used to be asleep by 8:30 p.m. is now negotiating at 10:45 p.m. with the confidence of […]
You have the list. It came home on a photocopied sheet or landed in your inbox, and it is strangely specific. Not just a folder, but a red folder with prongs and no pockets. Not markers, but a particular count of a particular kind. You walk into the store with a plan and a cart, […]
Every summer, parents worry about the reading slide. Will their children lose ground on math? Will the writing get rusty? Will September arrive to find everything they learned last year quietly leaking out of their heads? It is a real thing, and it is the slide everybody already knows to watch for. But there is […]
The registration form is sitting open on your laptop. Fall soccer, dance, band, or the swim team, they have done for three years running. You mention it at dinner, expecting a shrug and a yes, and instead your child puts down their fork and says they do not want to do it again. And something […]
Somewhere around nine o’clock, you are going to regret this. The tent will be crooked. Someone will need to come inside to use the bathroom twice. A kid who has been begging for this all week will announce that the ground is too hard, the bugs are too loud, and can they please just sleep […]
Few things rattle a parent quite like catching their kid in a lie. Not a little one either, but a look-you-in-the-eye, completely made-up lie about something you already know the truth about. In that moment, it is hard not to spiral and think, if they can lie to me this easily, what else are they […]
Summer can be filled with small asks. Can I ride my bike to Jacob’s house? Can I stay home while you run to the store? Can I walk to the corner and back by myself? And so often a parent’s instinct is to say not yet. Maybe when you are older. Maybe next year. Summer […]
The first few days of summer break have a honeymoon quality. Everyone is relaxed, the rules are loose, and if your middle grader spends a long morning glued to a screen, well, they earned it. They survived a whole school year. Then day four arrives, and the loose arrangement you never actually agreed to has […]
The last day of school has a particular energy. Backpacks hit the floor. Folders get recycled. And somewhere in the back of every parent’s mind, a quiet concern surfaces: will they read anything this summer, or will the whole thing just slide? The summer reading slide is real. Kids who don’t read over the break […]
The last weeks of school look like excitement from the outside. Field days, yearbook signings, countdown chains taped to bedroom doors. The excitement is real, but for many middle graders, something else is running quietly in the background. This is a transition, and transitions are complicated at any age. At eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, […]