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 […]
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 […]
While May is filled with end-of-school activities, June is basically a month-long exhale. School winds down, schedules loosen up, and suddenly, there is actual time to do things just because they sound fun. Lucky for you, June comes loaded with unofficial holidays that are exactly that kind of fun. Here are the ones worth putting […]
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, […]
It’s raining. School is out or winding down for the day. Your middle grader has exhausted their usual options and has arrived in the kitchen to deliver the news: they are bored. Completely, desperately, nothing-to-do bored. The instinct, especially on a rainy afternoon with nowhere to be, is to fix it. Suggest something. Hand them […]
Every year around this time, millions of people fill out brackets predicting which college basketball team will take the championship. Most of those brackets are busted by the end of the first weekend. And yet, people love it. There is something genuinely fun about setting up a tournament, picking your favorites, and watching the whole […]
It starts gradually. Bedtime gets pushed back a little. Then a little more. You walk past their room at 10:00 p.m., and there’s still a light on. By the time spring break rolls around, your middle grader has somehow flipped into a schedule that would make a college student feel comfortable. Sound familiar? You’re not […]
There’s a specific kind of exhaustion that settles in around this time of year. It’s not the tired that comes from a busy holiday season or the jolt of going back in January. It’s quieter than that. The school year is just … long. The excitement of fall is a distant memory, spring break is […]
There’s a specific kind of sickness that hits hardest in February. Not sick enough to sleep all day, but definitely too sick for school. Your middle grader is home on the couch, alternating between complaining about being bored and insisting they feel fine enough to get back to their video games. Welcome to the sick […]