Parents, we’ve made it through May. We’ve earned a victory lap.

Add one part dance recitals, field trips, sports banquets, fundraisers, band concerts, graduations, awards ceremonies and then add in a pinch of lining up summer camps, mix with anything else you have to do as an independent adult and you’ve got the recipe for EMMS.

Credit: Contributed

Credit: Contributed

May brings out the Exhausted May Mom Syndrome in me. EMMS, of course, is not a real diagnosis in the diagnostic manual — as a mental health professional I should be up front and incredibly clear. But if I had my own manual of subclinical diagnoses, this would surely be one of them.

Some of the criteria would be as follows: Forgetting carpool duties; encouraging slacker behavior in school projects; not signing up for things you’re supposed to sign up for; losing emails that are entitled “Please read”; rolling in late to honors day programs; and failing to properly lotion children before sun-blazing field day activities.

Last week, my fourth grader said he needed a family cultural heritage food item to take to school with a presentation. I asked if he wanted to take Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups because he comes from a long lineage of candy eaters. He said “no” and reminded me that last year I sent in chicken nuggets and told him our deeply Southern heritage was loosely based on fried chicken. He was embarrassed last year and I could tell by the annoyed look on his face he was anticipating being embarrassed again this year.

I know the teachers are done. I’ve written about teacher burnout, principal flight from education and understaffed school systems. I get it. I know why they are assigning presentations and parent heavy projects. It’s not a negative thing. I’ve reminded the kids all year long, do your homework, listen in class, be respectful, turn your work in on time, participate when asked; but the end of May is a different me. Picture one of my hands grasping for the finish line ribbon and the other squeezing protein gel from a ripped packet into my mouth, face almost flat on the pavement with those tiny rubber orange track bits in my teeth.

I propose a teacher-parent truce. If you don’t assign projects that are heavy lifting for parent involvement or activities that need me to be at the school multiple days the last week of the school year, I’ll try and make sure my kid knows they should be at the desk listening to whatever you want to do that day with the glowing attentiveness of Day 1.

The finish line is close. Summer break is right around the corner and we’ll all get a change of pace that might not be any easier but will be at least different from the end of school year busyness we’re enduring now. This too shall pass.

Beth Collums is an Atlanta-based writer with a background as a child and family therapist. She focuses on the intersection of mental health, relationships and education.