Summer on the fall solstice

I tend to read too much symbolism into the weather – the pathetic fallacy, I believe it’s called – but having a one-day blast of 80-degree weather yesterday felt reassuring. It reminded me that even though we’ve had crisp, cool weather after since the week school began, fall is still very, very young. In fact, despite the heat, it began only yesterday. “Fall arrived on a summer day!” Tim observed, amused. But he’s right, and for me it served as a comforting reminder that we’re only a little way into the new school year, and it’s okay if I don’t quite have the routine down pat yet.

For us, school has been in session for only two weeks and two days, after all. It’s tempting to start off with firm resolutions and expect everything to fall into place, but it’s helpful to remember that when it comes to establishing good habits, you actually do get second chances. In fact, if the common neurological lore is true and it takes three weeks to instill a habit, we still have at least another week to go before we can expect the patterns of the new school year to be set in stone.

I suppose it’s obvious that I’m building up to an excuse. Well, not an excuse, exactly. More like an explanation. An explanation to myself, as to why the few guidelines the kids and I agreed to at the start of the school year in theory are still taking shape in practice.

It was a simple back-to-school contract. I wrote these rules: Homework must be done before any screen time (TV, video games, computer games) takes place. No arguing about whether it’s a take-the-bus or pick-up-at-school day. No wearing the same shirt on consecutive days. Oh, and have fun.

We’re doing really well with the second one. Holly enjoys being on the bus because she sees friends who are not in her class; Tim’s not crazy about it but recognizes it’s brief enough to be painless since he’s the last one on and the first one off. And the fourth rule is falling into place beautifully: both kids love their teachers and classes, and are definitely having fun. The others? We still have a way to go.

The homework rule has stayed in effect but not without a lot of vigilance on my part. The kids argue that they want a break from schoolwork when they come home from school, and if anything, they point out, it would make sense to get screen time first and then hit the books later, once they’ve had a chance to refresh their minds. It’s a compelling argument, but common sense tells me to ensure they get their necessary work done before they lounge around playing video games, no matter that there’s a certain logic to doing it the other way around.

And the shirts on consecutive days? For some reason, that’s one of the toughest. It used to be just Tim; now Holly too has narrowed her clothing preferences down to two or three items. I try to beat the system by putting what they’ve worn immediately in the dirty laundry – even if it doesn’t really seem dirty – just so there’s no chance they’ll wear in the next day, but then I frequently end up running the laundry and it’s clean again. And yesterday I let Holly convince me that the prohibition against wearing the same shirt two days in a row wasn’t operative if one day she wore a sweatshirt over it and the next day she didn’t, since to observers it will appear that she was wearing two different tops on those two days.

I was starting to feel like I was losing my grip on the starting-the-new-year principles we’d agreed upon. But then this one-day summer blast hit us yesterday, and I felt exonerated. It underscored for me the fact that the school year is still young. Why, we’re barely even past summer yet: just look at the thermometer! Third and sixth grade are still new to us. The ink on the back-to-school contract is barely dry. We’ll work out the details soon enough. It’s only just becoming fall now, and there’s still plenty of time to instill good fall habits.