the questions aren’t procrastination
For a long time I thought she wasn't listening. I thought she was procrastinating, buying time, running out the clock on a morning she didn't want to move through. What I understand now is that the questions were never procrastination. They were a form of self-reassurance.
the 5:50am briefing
I have been awake since 4:30am, not because an alarm went off — I stopped needing one months ago — but because my brain has quietly decided that this is simply when the day begins now. I get up at 5:30. At exactly 5:50am I go into her room. Not at 5:48 and not at 5:52 but at 5:50.
the art of shutting up (which I have not mastered)
She says she needs a minute. I say okay. Then I wait two minutes, which in school avoidance parenting years is approximately one geological epoch, and I go back in. On the art of shutting up — and why I haven't mastered it yet.
if you're in the middle of it — the slow mornings, the sunday evenings, the conversations with the school that don't go the way you needed them to —
this is for you.
get a note in your inbox each week. no advice you haven't already tried. just a parent who's in it too, and the occasional thing that's actually helped.