All the emotions as my children head back to school and my youngest enters his final year of primary

I’m a ball of emotions this morning with all three children back to school today. Year 10 and the start of GCSEs for my eldest, year 8 for my middle, and year 6 for my youngest.

Our last first day of primary; our last year at a school we absolutely love.

I keep seeing memes of parents celebrating dropping their kids off for the first day back, and while I get how stressful the school holiday/work juggle is and what a relief it is to get back to routine, sometimes feel I’m in a tiny minority of feeling genuinely sad that the holidays are over. I really miss them when they’re not here.

This summer was the first year since having children that I’ve been in an employed job. I’ve always worked the summer holidays, but it’s been as a self-employed person so I juggled my hours to have the days with the kids and then worked the evenings and early mornings. It was exhausting but it worked for us. It was certainly different this year with my husband and I juggling office days and work from home days between us, and fitting in freelance work around that. There was a lot more screen time for the kids than I’d like, a lot less days out and quality family time than I’d like.

We were lucky to have our holiday to Croatia and a long weekend to Brecon. But adventures have been few and far between this summer, and there hasn’t even been much chance to chill out with the kids. They’re old enough to entertain themselves to a degree but it was pretty boring for them and I guess I’m feeling guilty about that. I’ve booked a couple of hours off work this morning because I know I need time on the first day back to sit with my emotions, to say goodbye to the summer, and to get ready for the long slog until half term, as we get back to routine.

There’s no right or wrong emotions when it comes to back to school.

But to anyone feeling a little fragile this morning, I empathise and I’m sending you a big hug.

Photos are all really old ones from the archives. Not many new ones this summer.

This post originally appeared on the Cardiff Mummy Says Instagram and Facebook pages and was published here at a later date