The key to stressing out a middle school child during the holidays is to actually start on it months in advance. The Power (as I will refer to the powers of middle school manipulation) has perfected its recipe:
1. Take away all free time from the preteen child. Require two hours of homework each night.
2. Take away all sunlight and vitamin D from the preteen child. School hours should be scheduled so they leave home at 8:30 and return at 5:00 due to bus routes. They will soon look as pale as the entire cast of Twilight.
3. Overfill the school with students. It will become a dog-eat-dog world in the cafeteria where those 15 minutes of freedom are filled with long waits in a stinky food line and nowhere to sit for the remaining three minutes you get for lunch.
4. Schedule 9 transitions in the school day. The child will no longer be able to tell time due to the constant ringing of the bells. And then, shuffle hundreds of students through the halls nine times a day that are 130% filled to capacity.
5. Simmer for 5 months. Sprinkle in tests, quizzes, group assignments with complete strangers, and one maniacal teacher that accepts only green ballpoint ink pen, just for fun.
6. Now is when the fun begins. Pile the Mondays on - stress from the teachers' expectations for projects, reports, essays, and rough drafts that get reviewed, critiqued, marked up again, etc. Require holiday concerts but don't allow any actual holiday music. Add in extra quizzes the last week of school so you have to turn in two projects one day, three quizzzes the next, and forget your expandable file at home that includes your hall passes that allow you to go to the restroom when you are desperate. Add in physical education where the last week of school requires you to perform all the physical tasks learned all year, including rope climbing and chin ups and sprint drills, which must be completed in the 9th period of the day, not to mention changing into gym clothes in an overpacked locker room because the 100 extra students in the sixth grade had to go somewhere.
7. Merry Christmas! Let's hope this year is a great one because all the life and joy have been sucked out of you!
:(
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