So Long Summer

When I realized I was having twins at the beginning of the summer, I thought to myself, this is the perfect time for children 5 and 6 to arrive, if such a thing can have a perfect time. There is no homework, no afterschool activities, no 8:00 am start of the school day. Nowhere I really needed to be, nowhere my kids needed to be. No real schedule, no real stress.

But as the summer has come to a close, and we have finally gone “back to school,” I can’t tell you how relieved I am summer is over. These past two weeks between camp and school were tough.

My kids sat around in their pajamas till 10 or 11 am, watching some show called “Dance Moms,” with packets of “summer homework” on their laps, staring at the TV while spacily brushing up on math, grammar, and reading skills. “I’m never gonna finish,” they cried out occasionally during a commercial. “Just do your best,” I called back, while really thinking, just be quiet and leave me alone and don’t you know that only losers actually do summer homework.

I then yelled at them to get dressed, and said things like “you can’t lie around in your pajamas all day,” or “it’s time to get moving” when really there was nowhere to move to. Each day I tried to come up with some activity for the afternoon, which somehow always involved eating something unhealthy. A long bike ride for pizza or ice cream. Tennis followed by pizza and French fries. Back to school shopping and grabbing lunch—again, pizza and ice cream. Going to the beach and the snack bar, for you guessed it, ice cream, or when I wanted to be strict, frozen yogurt.

And at some point every day there was usually a playdate. Some friends insisted on taking one of mine to their house—feeling sorry for me with my double load of babies—and to those friends I am very thankful. But others sent their kids to my house, and in some cases committed what I call “playdate rape.” It is a forceful, unsolicited dish-off of a child unto another child. And unfortunately, these playdates can sometimes go around the clock. There are no pickup times, because it’s summer, and no one has anywhere to go or anything to do.

In my community the playdate rape takes place most frequently on Saturdays, where everyone sees each other at synagogue and scrambles around to try to send their kids out. Some parents strategically send their children to shul with a bag of clothes, some casual Saturday afternoon attire—a bag that says, “hey, I’m ready to come over to your house.” I call this child a playdate slut. Sometimes their bag is actually an overnight bag, in the hopes they get really lucky and get to spend the night.

Playdate or no playdate, though, the end of each day was the real killer these past few weeks, because there was no end of the day. There was no bedtime, at least none that I was able to properly enforce. There was no compelling reason to insist my kids go to bed, and so I barely even tried. This meant there was no quiet time in my house where only my husband and I were up, where it actually felt relaxing to be home. Instead, we did things like family nighttime basketball, family movie night, family dance contests, you name it, and by the time these evening activities were over, my kids were tired and falling apart and the cycle began again the next day.

But it’s over. They are back to school, and that means back to routine, back to a schedule. Set bedtimes, less TV, more reading, learning, afterschool activities, healthier meals. It all comes together this time of year, as our children’s structured, and, yes, hectic lives begin anew. There is no question, I am going to have a tough couple of weeks now juggling two infants with the demands on my time from my older four, but I am excited for the re-introduction of routine.

I am trying to get my twins on a schedule right now, trying to get them eating four times a day, four hours apart, and getting them to do longer stretches at night. (And, since I have twins, I have the added challenge of making sure they do the same four feeds, and the same long stretches as each other—how do people do this?????) We all know it is not easy imposing a daily schedule on two or three month old babies—we get crying and resistance, not to mention very little sleep for a while. But I know from four previous times that this is what babies need, and that children, like adults, need structure and routine in their lives to thrive and grow.