Summer-itis

I have summer-itis.  Is it even called that anymore?  I don’t know.  That’s what we called it when I was in high school, anway.  I have an acute case of “school-is-almost-over-and-I-can’t-wait!”  The crazy thing about it is that I’m not the one who is in school.  It’s my kids!  I’m so tired of homework, papers to sign, activities to keep track of, school mornings, lunches, and herding everyone out the door.  We have a week of school left and I am so ready to be done.

My daughter has one project left, and it is insane!  She’s supposed to build an electrical circuit that can turn on a light bulb.  Seriously?  She’s in the 4th grade.  I didn’t ever have to do this.  Not even in college. (Of course, I didn’t study electrical engineering, but that is beside the point.)  How is a 9 year old supposed to know how to do this?  The obvious answer is; they’re not. Mom and Dad are supposed to do it… I mean help them do it.

I am feeling so overwhelmed by this project that I nearly had an emotional breakdown about it the other night.  I had to go for a walk and pray some peace into my soul.

Also, I’m at the point that I just don’t care. It doesn’t matter to me if she gets it done or not.  I don’t care if she gets a zero on her last project of the year.  I just don’t want to deal with it.  But…I know that I should care.  It should matter to me and I should be excited about helping her with it.  I feel a lot of pressure for her project to be amazing because I know that there are kids in her class who have engineers for parents and the bar will be set pretty high.

Honestly, I think the problem is that the project is making me feel stupid.  I don’t have the slightest idea how to begin.  I’ve had to google it and even then, anything but the most basic of instructions looks like a foreign language to me.  So, it’s easier for me to mentally check out of this thing than to do the work it will take to learn enough about electrical circuits to help my 9 year old daughter build one for a school project.  It’s just hard for me to accept that I am already at the point of not understanding my children’s homework.  I didn’t think this would happen until high school.  Lord help me when we get to there!

Of course, the situation isn’t helped by the fact that, as a grown-up with a full-time job in the corporate world, there will be no summer vacation for me.  I tend to forget that though, in the race to the end of the school year. But then, one day I realize, yes, summer is coming, but the care-free days of playing in the pool, reading fun books and hanging out with friends every day are gone.  I have responsibilities that don’t go away just because summer is here.  And then, I get a bit depressed.  Yeah, there are weekends and I’ll probably take a few days off here and there, but it’s not the same. Maybe someday I will have summers like that again.   I think that's something I'm going to have to pray about.