Susie O’Brien: How this year’s first day of school is unlike any other

School’s back and we can finally enjoy an empty house — but the expectations for parents have never been higher.

Expectations have never been higher for parents.

School’s baaack!!!!

In our house the end of school holidays means no more picking fights, 24-hour screen marathons or crying for no reason — that’s me, not the kids.

There’s an exquisite joy that comes with an empty house, particularly after last year’s home schooling.

Remote learning didn’t go so well in our house. I was remote. The kids were learning how to look like they were learning when they were really playing computer games.

On the last day of holidays, they spent a few hours doing summer homework projects they were supposed to spend six weeks on.

My biggest concern now they’re back is that they will continue their home schooling routines and wander out of class at five minute intervals to aimlessly saunter around while stuffing their mouths with food.

Experts say you need to “get back into your school routine” but ours often involved last-minute panic, routine lateness and sibling squabbling.

Expectations have never been higher for parents.

What I want is someone else’s routine. Someone who’s calm and organised.

Of course, parents always start the school year with high expectations.

On the first day back, lunches are made the night before, kids go to bed early (with no phones in their rooms) and their clothes are all laid out.

By Monday it will be back to the last-minute rush of tired kids, missing hats and a sandwich-free lunch — not because they’re organic no-carb, no-gluten vegans but because we discovered there was no bread at 8.30am.

Sadly, expectations have never been higher. Not for the kids, for parents.

It’s the first day of primary school and already I have to decide whether to enrol my year sixer in a stomp dance course (right up his alley) or French extension classes (mais, non).

My daughter’s high school hasn’t even gone back yet and I’m being hassled about buying school photos. This year will I be a cheapskate parent (buy the basic photo pack for $40) or perfect parent (premium pack for $50)? Or I could mortgage the house for the pleasure of seeing her smiling face on a range of bookmarks, gift tags and doorstops.

Even going shopping for school supplies is harder than ever.

No longer will a few HB pencils, notebooks and a glue stick cut it. Lead pencils are now eco-friendly and called “graphite pencils”. I also needed the Officeworks online decoder to help me work out what a “dotted thirds book” was, not to mention a “polly wallet” and a “process diary”.

And don’t get me started on lunch boxes.

Once again, I will not be baking sweet potato frittata, banana chia biscuits, or smashed pea and goat cheese sandwiches like good mums are meant to.

I won’t be shaping rice into sushi moulds, cutting sandwiches into the shape of unicorns and adding plastic eyes or removing grapes from the stalks and cutting them in half. No love notes, no zucchini zoodles, no hot and cold bento boxes.

I say no to lunch box ideas that involve any more effort than pitching an apple into a school bag from across the room and bulk-preparing frozen cheese sandwiches.

Nor will my kids be making their own lunches unsupervised. They’d end up with fairy bread for lunch and a pot of jam for recess.

I also refuse to do back-to-school photos. I don’t need my sloppy half-arsed crisis parenting on display.

I say no to lunch box ideas that involve any more effort than pitching an apple into a school bag from across the room and bulk-preparing frozen cheese sandwiches.

I’ll bet your Facebook feed is full of shots where kids are bribed with lunch box treats to stand still and look cute on cue and hold up mini blackboards showing their age and year level. The latest trend is to have the youngest pretending to cry and holding up a sign that says: “I wouldn’t be agree to be in this horrible photo unless I got to hold up this sign”.

As you know, if it’s not on Facebook, it didn’t really happen.

I am also trying to get my head around all the COVID rules.

Students don’t have to wear masks in the classroom but they are meant to wear them if they’re less than 1.5m apart.

Schools are now allowed to let parents in through the gates but they’d prefer we stay away.

And schools aren’t temperature-testing kids, but if they’ve got a fever they have to go home.

Good luck with your back-to-school adventures.

Just make sure your kids know not to sneeze, cough, sniff or wheeze near a teacher. Not because they might get them sick, but because they might be sent home under COVID protocols.

You really wouldn’t want that, would you?

Susie O’Brien’s new book, The Secret of Half-arsed Parenting, is out on Feb 2