Back to School = Mommy Guilt

Today is the first day of school, and I have a confession: I never wanted to be a stay-at-home mom until my kids were in school.

My mommy guilt is full blown today. I don't mean the, wouldn't it be great if I could have cookies and milk for the kids after school kind of guilt. My guilt is more, wouldn't it be great if they had an hour of just free play time a day. The kids are essentially gone for 12 hours a day. They go to school at 7:50 a.m. and after school gets out at 2:50 p.m., they go to an after school program until 5:30 p.m. From there, we have either soccer practice or swimming practice at 6:00 p.m. We get home around 7:00 p.m. and then it is supper and homework (about 45 minutes to an hour) and bedtime at 8:30 p.m.

My second confession is that because of our tight schedule, I have been reluctant to force the kids to read for 30 minutes at night. The kids hate reading, and I am more inclined, because of my guilt, to let them play for 30 minutes with their Legos than read a book. Which means their reading scores are at the bottom of average and teachers chastise us for not having the kids read at home. To which I've always wanted to retort that a better solution in my opinion would be a longer school day.

In fact, I find it very interesting that as a child, I don't remember having much homework in elementary school. Sports also did not start until middle school. Something has happened, and I don't think it is a good thing. The schools, and therefore, the kids, are expected to learn more in elementary school and there aren't enough hours in the day for the extra learning. So, teachers pass the homework on to the kids and the parents. At the same time, society has moved sports to start in kindergarten and 1st grade. If you wait until the kids are in middle school, they are behind the other kids, and I can only imagine the psychological repercussions.

Because I feel it is so important to just have play time for kids, I feel like the entire society has moved to a system that gives kids with stay-at-home moms an advantage. At least until the kids are old enough to be latch-key kids and stay at home by themselves after school.