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THE EXAM WEATHER may not have shown up as promised this month, overall, but one thing that never fails to make its presence felt for parents up and down the country is the return of the ever-increasing end-of-school activities.
From plays, concerts, sports days, dress-up days, field trips, discos, fundraisers, craft fairs, parents V children football matches, demonstrations, grandparents’ days, prizegiving, and graduations, the entire month, more or less, gets hijacked by a jam-packed few weeks of end-of-school and after-school activities. Many parents can simply no longer keep up.
In the United States, they’ve even coined a phrase for it – ‘Maycember’. It’s the “manic time of year when parents find themselves drowning in end-of-school activities, sporting events, concerts, awards and teacher appreciation days.”
Even though I hate to agree with an ick-inducing portmanteau such as that, this month feels eerily similar to the run-up to Christmas in terms of stress levels and calling it ‘Junecember’ might not be far off the mark.
When I was in primary school, we had one end-of-year play for the entire school and a sports day, which took place on a Saturday. This year, my two young children have not one, but two school plays, a sports day, a field trip, as well as the end-of-year performances in their two after-school activities each.
It should be noted that all of these things will take place during the middle of the working day. I’ll take three afternoons off so I can keep up with my children’s events, and that includes having the luxury of being able to tag-team with my other half. I don’t know how those parenting solo manage the end-of-school-year juggle.
It’s not just the physical events, either. No, it’s all the emails and WhatsApp notifications for all of the above, plus the endless organising of costumes, permission slips, whip-rounds and gifts for the teachers. And who could forget the always reliable last-minute ‘reminder’ that the school is going to squeeze in a funny jumper day in between all of these celebrations and “Could your child come to school dressed in said funny jumper tomorrow?”
Or one of those dreaded off-the-cuff updates from your kid along the lines of, “Oh by the way, Mum I need 12 tin cans and six shoe boxes for an end-of-school-year science project tomorrow,” just before they go to bed.
I can already feel the ‘why-did-you-have-children-if-all-you-do-is-complain-brigade’ begin to foam at the mouth, so before I trigger them any further, let me reassure them. It’s not that parents don’t want to go to these events or that we don’t love celebrating our kids, far from it. We adore seeing our children show off their accomplishments, be they big or small. We enjoy being part of their school and after-school communities and will even happily sit through scenes of let’s face it, sometimes excruciating plays, just to see our child’s moment to shine as a sheep or fairy or whatever role they’ve been given to perform.
But the truth is, as much as I love it, I also want the sheer volume of them to stop, because I cannot possibly keep up, and I don’t know many working parents who can.
The guilt is awful. Either you’ve got to take time off work to attend, or you feel like the worst parent in the world for not being able to go. Working parents can already often feel guilt for their choices and missing your child’s end-of-school play or concert or sports day is a dagger right in the middle of your heart. Young children, in particular, expect you as their parent to show up for them at these events and when you cannot, it can be difficult to explain why. You could argue you’re teaching them valuable life lessons, but telling a five-year-old you won’t be at sports day because you cannot switch another shift or take any more time off work, or that you have no one to call on to help you juggle any more, is not for the faint-hearted.
It’s a universal feeling every working parent will know all too well. Singer Kelly Clarkson recently weighed in on the debate, speaking on Kylie Kelce’s Not Gonna Lie podcast, she said; “I don’t know when the school systems thought it would be a good plan for families and their emotional stability to start having performances at 10 a.m. during the week,” she fumed. “This just in: A lot of us work!”
While it’s safe to assume someone like Kelly Clarkson has the means to ensure she can juggle better than the rest of us, it’s interesting to hear that even those we assume are flying it, find it all very stressful too.
And that’s the other key thing here, parents today are burned out that being one now comes with a health warning. Last year, the US Surgeon General issued stark health guidance for those of us with children.
So what’s the solution? Many will argue that events could be held in the evening, but that presents issues for teachers who would need to stay late. It should be noted that teachers with children of their own presumably miss out on their school year activities too. Maybe if schools dialled back on the sheer number of end-of-school-year events, it would be a help, and at least parents might be able to get to one event, rather than multiple occasions.
For now, working parents will juggle on and make bits of themselves while we keep the show on the road. Roll on the summer holidays, when the juggle will be much easier, right???
Niamh O’Reilly is a freelance writer and wrangler of two small boys, who is winging her way through motherhood, her forties and her eyeliner.
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