IT HAPPENS every year, so I don't know why I don't prepare myself effectively beforehand. As I was picking up my younger children from primary school yesterday, their smiling teacher handed me a piece of paper which signalled the end of the school year, and perhaps my sanity along with it.
As I walked back to the car I passed parents huddled in frightened groups comforting each other. There were whispers of "Dear God, why me?" There were people speaking in hushed tones about what on earth they were going to do with their children for two full months, others shaking their fists at the sky and cursing the "bloody ceaseless Irish rain" that keeps the kids indoors, bored and ceaselessly complaining.
Most of the ashen faced parents – even the most positive and optimist among their number – knew that when the final school bell of the year tolls, it marks the slow descent into darkness, madness and chaos for us and indeed our children. I think the only people who look forward to the summer holidays are teachers.
Most of us knew that the initial euphoria about not having to iron uniforms or find stray school shoes five minutes before class starts wears off after about three days. After that, it is almost guaranteed that we will soon have had about all we can take of children complaining about the food, the boredom, their siblings, the heat, the rain, the nothing on the TV-ness and computer games, and the realisation will kick in that we have nearly 60 days of this left to endure.
But almost all of us have been this soldier before. We were here at this exact juncture last year, the year before and the year before that. Some of us – and I count myself in this group – are school summer holiday veterans with the mental scars to prove it.
As someone who has 16 tours of school summer holiday madness under my belt, I offer you this advice: prepare, lower expectations, expect rain, bickering and boredom. Just hold on and tell yourself it will soon be September. And buy wine.
Yes, we will buy a week's groceries on a Saturday which will be consumed completely by Monday afternoon. Yes it will rain incessantly for the entire summer and the place will turn into a tropical paradise as soon as the school bell chimes to herald the new term beginning.
Yes, our children will be bored, they will spend all our money either going places or on things for their computer games. Yes, if we work we will work just to pay babysitters during the school holidays. Yes, if we are lucky enough to go on holiday, as soon as school's out we will be paying three times the price for the privilege. After all, there is something a little special about listening to your children fighting and complaining about being bored, tired and hungry in a location other than your own living room.
Yes, our teenagers will go to bed late and get up late, regardless of what time you need to go to work in the morning. Yes, younger children will want to go to the beach every day – to hell with your job. Children don't care about trivialities such as work, they care only about computer games and ice cream. It's a scientifically proven fact.
Just hang in there and remember you are strong and got through this before. Soon it will be the start of the new term and we can hand our children back to the people whose job it is to look after them and teach them stuff.
In the meantime I wish you luck. Stay strong, it's only 56 days. We will survive.
