Time for school yet?

It's funny. As I sat down to write this, I came across a forgotten blog I wrote last year right around this time. In it, I complain about the very same things that are bugging me today. It must be a theme with me, this summer exhaustion. It's not so much that I'm itching to get the kids out of my jurisdiction, it's just that they are on one another's nerves in a big way right now. I think it all comes down to that state dreaded by kids and parents alike: b-o-r-e-d-o-m.

My kids seem to wake up bored, and in this house, my boys' ennui (yes, I used the thesaurus to come up with that word!) leads to bickering. I'm embarrassed to detail the boys' fights here, because really, the worst of it is between Ben and Paul, and I feel that at 8 and 5, they should be getting beyond this. Usually it's a chorus of something like this: "Mom! Paul spit at me!" "Well, MOM, that's because Ben pinched me!" This happens every day. This morning, during another battle, I asked Mark if he now understood why I hang on to my sanity only by a thread. Yes indeed he did.

One of my aunts who has two sons said that when her boys were growing up, she simply refused to be dragged into their arguments. The fighting never stopped anyway, she reasoned, and the boys weren't happy with her resolutions. I can see a lot of wisdom in that, and I've tried and failed to adopt that strategy for myself. I don't know if it's my temperament or the fact that unlike my aunt and uncle, who lived on a farm and had lots of land and could put some distance between themselves and the malcontents, I must stay in close proximity to the boys. Whatever the case, I seem to have difficulty extricating myself from their fights. As a result, most days my patience is worn thin by roughly 8:30 a.m.

I remember very well what summer boredom felt like when I was a kid, and my brothers and I got ourselves into the very same situations that drive me nuts now (perhaps this is my comeuppance?). Though I can keenly recall the feeling, I can't understand it anymore. It's just another one of those disconnects between kids and adults. Like every other parent, all I can think now is, what I wouldn't give to have that much free time on my hands.

My cousin who has older kids once told me how she loves the summer, the fact that it's carefree and unscheduled. I'm simply not there yet. Somehow, for my kids carefree and unscheduled ends up being a recipe for disaster. I'll take heart in what she said, though, and hope that someday summer will like that for me. Until then, I might casually note that there are 38 more days until school starts.