What’s new with school, and what’s still the same
From new holidays to the same old coughs and germs, here’s a parent’s guide to what’s changed—and what never does—in the 2025 school year.
What’s New This Week ✏️
School Calendars Are Changing — New Holidays Parents Should Know About: You may have noticed that your child’s school is observing new holidays -- here’s a rundown of common additions and why they matter.
Why Schools Are Germ Pools and How to Keep Kids Healthy: Got the sniffles? You’re not alone -- and we can all thank our kids’ school! Here are some tips and tricks to help deal.
Nature’s Worst Parents — When Animal Moms and Dads Totally Drop the Ball: To help us sneak in a few laughs amidst the chaos, we can acknowledge that parenting is hard. Really hard. Just ask these animals, who aren’t bothered to do it! At least you’re not them!
What We’re Reading This Week 📖
Ordinary Workers (and Parents) Are Hiring Their Own EAs: From AI Agents to fractional Executive Assistants, non-executive working parents are shelling out for assistants to organize emails and calendars, keep the fridge stocked, schedule doctor appointments, and more. This is an audio intro by the author of the WSJ article.
Silicon Valley Wants To Help Me Make a Superbaby: A growing number of biotech companies can screen your embryos, comb through your DNA, and assign you and your future child odds on everything from developing a drug addiction to becoming obese. Some even estimate your unborn’s IQ. For a few thousand dollars, would you do it?
Kids Who Use Social Media Score Lower on Reading and Memory Tests: An ongoing study following 6,000 children from ages 9-10 is finding lower memory and reading scores with social media use a day by early adolescence. Even the slightest change in trajectory might mean that two, three, five years from now, there could be significant gaps between kids who might have been heavy users or not as heavy users.
How We’re Feeling This Week: 💔
Our amazing chess teacher emailed me this week to let me know she would no longer be teaching chess. I can’t say I was surprised. I was anticipating this day would come soon. She’s smart and charismatic, and I suspect she’s very talented in her true passion, theater. Chess was probably a way to pay the bills in her early years until she could pursue her “real” career fully.
It still broke my heart when I read her email. It affected me more than I had expected. I think because I could guess how it would it would make my daughter feel. She gets attached to people who have consistently been in her life, and she’s not great with change.
This chess teacher has come to our home for the last two plus years, giving our daughter private lessons that combine storytelling with chess tactics and strategies. (She’s with Storytime Chess — formerly known as Chess at Three — which I highly recommend.) Our daughter looked forward to every lesson. She was enthralled with the stories and the teacher.
When I told my daughter that this teacher would not be returning, she asked me: Then why did she say see you next time? I wanted to cry.
But this is life, and you can’t always plan ahead to soften the landings. In the last year, we also said goodbye to two nannies. My daughter sometimes cries when she thinks about them, and I think this will happen when she thinks about the chess teacher too.
Cheers,
Your Team at MomBrains