Brinley Child Summary: 8 Years Old

Daily life and schedule for this 8 year old girl who was raised on Babywise. See her daily life, activities she is involved in, and her daily schedule.

This is a summary for Brinley from 7.75 years old until 8 years old.

Brinley is my youngest child, and apparently when I was writing summaries for Brayden, my oldest child, at 8.25 I moved him into the preteen category.

I feel like the age of 8 is kind of between even “child” and “preteen”. While Brayden seemed old at 8, Brinley is my baby so I can’t even consider her a preteen. Youngest child life.

Here is a breakdown of life with Brinley during this time. Most of this time was during summer months, and all during 2020 life… you know.

Eating

Eating was good. Last time I shared that Brinley had started saying “Ew!” at meals, but she did not do that this time. We had told her it was not okay to do.

Sleeping

Sleeping had some difficulties. We ended up setting a bedtime of 8:30 for her. We didn’t have one at first in summer and there was too much variance going on. So we set it so she needed to be in bed by 8:30.

One reason we did this is she started stressing out at bedtime. She would worry about a lot of things and I thought a more consistent bedtime would help with that.

>>>Read: What To Do When Your Toddler/Child is Getting Out of Bed

Anxiety

I have found kids often have anxiety close to 8 years old.

Brinley had really elevated levels of anxiety in conjunction with the pandemic going on.

She worried about so much, and she really didn’t know how to even express it.

I feel like younger children struggle a lot with pandemic concerns but we don’t even realize it. They don’t know themselves well enough to recognize what they are worried about.

When we adults feel worried, we talk to our friends and colleagues. We look stuff up so we know what is going on.

But the little ones are so isolated in many ways.

Once I realized she was worried, I talked with her about her concerns. Once I tapped into it and got her talking, she just spilled out a long list of concerns, including:

• What if I get sick and don’t know it and then get someone else sick?
• What if school never opens again?
• What if I never see my friends again?
• What if coronovirus never goes away?

Sometimes we think we are protecting our children by not talking to them, and at some ages, we are. But children at younger ages than we realize know more than we realize.

Make sure you are talking to your kids. Don’t say, “Are you worried about COVID?” But get them talking about things and let them share their concerns if they have them.

I recognized that playing with our cats helped Brinley immensely. They basically are her service animals. When we would allow her to take a cat into her room for a bit each day (they are all outside cats), she was completely fine. So the animals were a huge thing for her.

>>>Read: Best Tips for Parenting an Anxious Child

School

The school year finished up fine. Brinley did her school each day quickly and without issue, but she missed school so much. So much.

During the summer, our governor announced that when school opened in the fall, masks would be mandated all day by all children.

I told my children that and Brinley said, “I don’t care! I am going back to school no matter what.”

Summer

Brinley had a nice summer. She missed her friends more than usual since she hadn’t seen them longer.

But we had a nice, simple summer.

We were able to go to Glacier National Park and also spend a long weekend in Lava Hot Springs, Idaho. It was less than we typically do in a summer, but we were super excited to get to do anything.

Extra Curricular

Here is what Brinley participated in during this time period.

• Piano lessons
• Soccer

Daily Schedule

Here is our summer schedule. She typically woke up between 7-7:30 and bedtime was 8:30:

Related Posts

• Brinley Child Summary: 7.75 Years Old
• Brinley Preteen Summary: 8.25 Years Old
• Brayden Child Summary: 8 Years Old!
• Kaitlyn Child Summary {8 Years Old}
• McKenna Child Summary: 8 Years Old!