The past couple weeks have been nuts. I work from home; I’m the mom to three girls and the days leading up to back-to-school were like none other. Even with the first day of school behind us, I still feel like I’m running a long sprint. My daughters are 14, 12 and 6 so I’m familiar with this time of year: the 4-5 weeks surrounding that first day of school.

In my house, it began when the end of Summer was in sight. Each of my girls started getting nervous and made comments about dreading the new year. Their moods and needs flipped into another dimension. To each her own version, but my two older girls binged Netflix, crammed their last-minute summer reading, played way too many videogames and slept in until noon. My youngest was extra clingy and demanded constant attention. All three increasingly tattled on each other and talked back to me.

Then of course, there was the eye-rolling and yelling… but that was mostly me. I usually take their shenanigans in...