Help! I just opened my child’s backpack
End of school year cleanout yields a few surprises
Leader: Good morning, and thank you for taking time out of your schedules to be here today. I know the end of the school year is an especially busy time.
Parent support group (in unison): Good morning.
Leader: At the end of last session, I passed around suggestion cards, and several of you, OK all of you, said you’d like to use this week’s session to talk about backpacks.
Parent support group (in unison): God, help us.
Leader: If I’m understanding your notes, you find the backpacks to be a bit unsettling as school winds to a close. Disorganized vessels, if you will, carrying the memory-laden odds and ends of a year gone by.
Parent No. 1: They’re tiny dumpsters. Parent No. 2: My son’s should be condemned. I need a hazmat suit to go near it.
Parent No. 3: I have donated my daughter’s to science.
Leader: What I’m hearing you say is that they’re unclean.
Parent No. 4: It’s not just that. I keep finding stuff in my son’s backpack that I needed to know about months ago.
Parent No. 5: I just found out I owe $95 for Chromebook repairs. I didn’t even know my son had a Chromebook.
Parent No. 4: Did you check his backpack for it?
Parent No. 3: I just found a library book that was due in November. My daughter said it was for a book report about Thanksgiving. We never wrote a book report about Thanksgiving!
Leader: I’m hearing you take ownership of responsibilities that should be your child’s to bear.
Parent No. 1: I carry my son’s backpack. We walk to school, and I carry his backpack. We walk home from school, and I carry his backpack. I feel like that should be his responsibility to bear or whatever. Parent No. 2: Same.
Parent No. 3: Do your kids bring their garbage home from lunch?
Parent No. 4: What is that about? I’m like, “Guys. Do they not have garbage cans in the cafeteria? Why am I emptying collapsed Capri Sun pouches and flattened Go-Gurts out of your lunch box?”
Parent No. 5: I haven’t seen my son’s lunch box since March.
Parent No. 4: Did you check his backpack for it?
Leader: I like the way you’re coming together over the shared experience of parental duties that can feel, at times, overwhelming. I hope that we can allow some time to talk about tangible steps that will ease that sense of pressure, that feeling that our children are not exercising their executive functioning skills, if you will, and are relying on us to clean up their messes, both literal and metaphorical.
Parent No. 1: Next year, I’m sending her to school with a paper bag. A straight-up paper bag from Jewel, and when it gets too heavy or slimy or whatever, it breaks. Parent No. 2: That’s brilliant. Parent No. 1: It breaks, and we toss it — no, we light it on fire. And we start over fresh the next day with a new one.
Parent No. 2: I want to light something on fire.
Parent No 5: I have the Chromebook repair bill with me.
Leader: These are perfectly normal feelings you’re having. The end of the school year is full of triggers — reminders of days and weeks and months passed, farewells to classmates and teachers, transitions into exciting new chapters ...
Parent No. 2: Homework that was due in April.
Parent No. 3: I just found an invitation to STEM Night. Wasn’t that thing in March?
Parent No. 5: It was in March! My son actually won an award that night. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen it since ...
Parent No. 4: Did you check his backpack for it?