Once you've had kids for a while, you realize that whenever something new or different is coming up, you'll have to go through a whole series of phases where both you and the kids go crazy for a while. It's ok, it always happens, and there's nothing you can do to keep these phases from happening. You just have to live through them.
The 8 Phases of a Kid's Transition into Something New:
1. Anticipation of the upcoming change
2. Worrying about it
3. Stressing and not sleeping because the change is coming
4. The first day: chaos
5. Surviving the first week
6. More change! Change the thing that was already different
7. Surviving a second week of chaos
8. The new thing becomes the routine
Of couse, some of these phases even have sub-phases that involve crying, tantrums, faking illness and sometimes even children begging their parents to "please please don't make me go to that place again!"
It takes time, but eventually the chaos is toned down and kids accept their fate, even beginning to not hate it too much. After a couple of weeks, everyone gets a good nights sleep and the normalcy begins to return.
As we move into the third week of 7th grade, I'm hoping that this is the week where our transition becomes more of a routine. We've been living in chaos for months now with our renovation and the start of school added to that. I'm ready for things to calm down to a dull roar again.
I'm still waiting for that first good nights sleep, though...
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