It’s still hot outside, but in just a few days the summer break will end. Kids everywhere will pack up their freshly 
bought school supplies and board those familiar yellow buses.
As a kid, I loved to see summer break come to an end and the new school year start, because it meant my birthday was just around the corner. What kid doesn’t look forward to their birthday?
However, now as a parent, the end of summer break is bittersweet. My birthday is still certain to arrive right after the start of the new school year, but it’s no longer as a big a celebration as you get older, is it? More importantly, the other consequences that come with the beginning of school far outshine birthday candles.
On one hand, I’m excited for my kids to resume school. A new year means new teachers, new friends and new experiences. They’ll learn new skills and continue to grow both mentally and physically. Therein lie my mixed feelings.
When you first bring home your new bundle of joy, all your hopes and dreams are wrapped tightly in a pastel receiving blanket. The children are so tiny that all the ideas of school, growing up and moving out seem far away. Then the first day of school arrives, and from the moment you watch your kindergartner wave from the school bus for the first time, life hits fast forward. All of a sudden years begin to fly by, measured by school grades, accomplishments and activities.
It seems like yesterday that I watched our now 13-year-old skip happily into her new kindergarten classroom, her plaid skirt shifting and her pigtails bouncing. This year she starts the eighth grade, and I’m pretty sure she won’t be wearing a plaid skirt or pigtails.
Life really does move faster than we anticipate. As new parents, we sit sleep-deprived listening to other experienced parents tell us how quickly our children will grow up and how soon we’ll be carting them off to college instead of carting them to the grocery store in a car seat. At the time, as we pray for a full eight hours of sleep, we can’t imagine the moment when we’ll have a peaceful house and our children will be grown up. In some ways we begin to wish for that quiet.
Then we get what we wish for, and everything changes again.
In five years my daughter will be in college, and responsible for her own decisions. My son turns 9 years old in a few weeks, and the other night I realized that I’m about halfway through the official period of raising him. Halfway? That just doesn’t seem possible.
Where did the past nine years go? Did I sleepwalk through them? I’m not nearly ready for either of them to grow up. I’d like to press the pause button and keep them at the age they are right now. Yes, even when they are driving me crazy with their ridiculous requests and childish antics.
As life moves along each day and week, I don’t really have the time to reflect on how quickly my kids are growing up. Sure, there are tiny moments when it hits me that my son has grown 2 inches or my daughter is becoming more mature. However, the beginning of a new school year allows me the space I need to reflect on the past year as well as to look forward — thus my reason for wanting to hit pause.
I know each of my kids will have a fantastic year. I know that they need new experiences in order to grow healthy and strong, and I know that by embracing their growth, I’m helping them to become productive adults. But I still hope that while I watch them embark on their new adventures this school year, I can find some way to keep them young and close to me.
I can’t prevent the day that will find me packing boxes to take to the new dorm instead of lunch boxes, but I can make the most of each school year now. Maybe that can be my new reason for embracing the end of summer break — the chance to share brand new experiences with my kids. The bittersweet feeling will most likely still be there, but at least I’m enjoying the time I have now with each of them.
STACEY HARRIS lives in LaPorte with her husband and two children. She is an account manager for a national advertising agency.
