Posted August 16, Reviewed by Devon Frye. I'm sitting here the night before my first kid starts kindergarten, and we are planning out routines, making sure folders are full of completed papers, and trying to get both kids to do mundane things adults take for granted, like shower and eat dinner in under two hours.
I'm working on a checklist to try to optimize this process, when, for the 50,,th time today, said kindergartener begins screeching at the top of her lungs for no apparent reason.
She has been fighting with her brother, having epic meltdowns, and falling to pieces over what appears to be nothing almost every other hour these past few days. As the adult, of course, I have it more together and am coping well with the start of a new school yearβfor us, the first real school year. Attributing it up until now to outside circumstances, like work and new projects, I've chosen my solution accordingly. For the past week, I've retreated almost fully into the soothing lull of productivity hacks and process outlines.
All of which require staring at my phone for hours and ignoring all other spheres of my life. Given my current state, when my daughter screams, it rattles me from my hyperfocus. And if you've ever been hyperfocused, you know interruption of any kind, but particularly the loud noise kind, kicks off a Level 1 Trauma -like response. So, I drop my phone and screech her name in a pitch so high that even my husband, a veteran to both my and her emotional outbursts, winces.
I immediately feel terrible and slip onto the verge of crying. She is so wound up, and, I realize in that moment, so am I. Why do transitions, even traditionally cheerful ones, like having a child, starting kindergarten, graduating from college, or getting a new job, give us such insidious, primal anxiety? It pretends to be daily stress. Nothing new to see here, nothing to get upset about.
