To the moms with kids ages nine to fifteen. You are in the messy middle.
I wish someone had told me about the busyness of this stage before I was fully in it.
I really think of this stage from late elementary through middle school, but you are not “completely off the hook” until your kids can drive themselves, so I set the age range up to fifteen years old.
This stage kinda comes out of nowhere, and it is also a slow burn. You have recovered and almost forgotten how hectic life was from the newborn to the kindergarten stage.
All of these things are good, great even!
I absolutely love looking back at this time of parenting. Yes, it was busy, and there were times that I would look at our monthly calendar and cry. But that is the gift of being on the other side. Being able to appreciate that it was both incredibly busy, challenging, and some of the best parenting years we experienced.
I often like to look at seasons in life like I am training for or running the race. Some are sprints and some are marathons.
The messy middle is an endurance race mixed with speed challenges.
Each activity your child is involved in comes with a unique way of scheduling and communicating.
Some activities you need to stay for, and others can be drop off. Some require uniforms, and some are fairly hefty in cost. Your kids can’t drive yet, so coordinating transportation can rival the skills of an air traffic controller.
All is not lost, though. You can absolutely thrive in this season of life. You just need to be on your “A game” and understand that you are “running the race”. As the kids say, it’s time to “lock in”.
Organization, hydration, nutrition, and sleep
are my top priorities in a busy season.
Your year will ebb and flow alongside the activities your family is involved in, and according to your school calendar.
Organization– Gather all of the calendars for school, activities, and sports. Input them in your favorite online calendar. I use Google Calendar. I have created a blank spreadsheet for you to use in case you would like to bulk upload your dates and details all at once.
Make sure to share the calendars with your spouse and your kids if they are old enough to have access.
Communication – Get to know the communication styles of each activity. Make sure you have the proper apps, settings and are following all the right social accounts. This is important for real-time messages like time, location, and weather events.
Just a note while I am thinking about calendars and communication. Expect things to run long, plan to sit in your car at pick up. Plan to grab your wallet and run out of the house for a time change that was lost in translation. This season of life requires immaculate coordination and incredible flexibility at once.
Treat yourself to snacks, a cute reusable water bottle, and books that you may leave in the car or even audiobooks to listen to while you wait. There is no use in getting frustrated; it’s part of the gig.
Hydration – I know we are all carrying around reusable water bottles, but how much are you “actually” drinking? Here is the thing. I don’t want to have to pee and use a porta-potty at the baseball field, or (gasps from horror) have to run into the activity I am sitting outside waiting to pick my child up from. It never fails that the soon as you leave your car, they will be let out, or worse, you could walk in and interrupt what is going on, the other children will see that your child has a parent and doesn’t magically transport themselves to and from said activity, all while not having a driver’s license. Please read this with the sarcasm it was written with, but in all reality, if I know I will be out and about, I am unknowingly not drinking as much, and that all does add up to a mild dehydration we may not be aware of. This absolutely will affect your energy levels.
I like to use an electrolyte to help stay hydrated. I love Liquid IV, but I know that LMNT is super popular at the moment, and then there is always good ‘ole coconut water.
Nutrition– You may be seeing your evenings and weekends go from almost completely open to practices twice a week in the evenings, add in a school sport, and then travel on the weekends for a club sport. This not only means that you and your kids need to be sustained all day long, but you also have much less time to cook.
We did not meal plan, but we did batch cook. We added a freezer to the garage and batch-cooked a few key meals and main parts to the meal so that we could quickly make dinner.
This looked like batch cooking pancakes from scratch, having chili, sala chicken, grilled chicken, ground beef, and shredded pork cooked and portioned out. This way, we could pick and choose how to use the meat or pull out a whole meal. By the time some rice is cooked and veggies are roasted the meat has been reheated.
We also bulk prepped high-nutrition snacks for the kids to have in their backpacks for after school. This included lots of trail mix varieties. Baked goods as well as protein bars and meat sticks / jerky.
Sleep– Sleep should be listed first. It’s the foundation of everything else. The studies on the benefits of sleep make me want to sleep all the time. (I’m kidding- but I do take my sleep very seriously now.) If you need back up on convincing your kids to sleep more, here is a study recently done on college athletes.
Communicating what is needed from each family member during peak busy times is key. I have a blog post about how to hold a family meeting and communicate what is needed from everyone here.
Yes, you are in the thick of it. These are some challenging and important parenting years. The next stages are going to be both easier and more difficult.
