Back to school and back to juggling schedules, homework, school and extracurricular activities. It gets crazy fast and it’s easy to feel like things are already getting a little out of control by the time Labor Day arrives. No matter how many first days you’ve been through, there is always room for one more helpful tip to ease the stress of the back-to-school rush. We have a few of them below that we hope will make your life a little easier as we get this exciting, but slightly stressful time of year under way.
- Set a solid morning and evening routine – Kids thrive on structure. That’s why setting a predictable routine in the morning and evening will make life easier for you and your children. Get up at the same time each morning and leave the house at the same time. For the moments in between, determine what time to eat breakfast, get dressed, and get in the car and on the road. In the evenings, set a routine for what time to eat dinner, when to do homework, chores, and go to bed. Determining the routine is easy—sticking to it can be the tricky part.
- Meal plan – Some days deciding what to eat for dinner is the biggest issue in the house, so free up the time spent talking and thinking about what to eat by meal prepping. Whether you take time on Sunday afternoon to look at everybody’s schedule for the upcoming week and plan what to cook each night or take it a step further and start preparing meals for the week on Sunday, anything you can do to take the guess work out of what to feed your family each night is going to get you ahead. If your children take lunch to school, make their lunch the night before so it is one less thing to do in the morning.
- Don’t procrastinate – It seems that even before the school year starts, the flyers and emails about field trips, class parties, special school events, signs up to provide class snacks, and afterschool activities start coming in. Don’t put these things aside with the idea that you’ll look at them later or when it gets closer to the time of the event. We are all guilty of that, but it can end up becoming something that gets lost in the shuffle and causes stress when you finally remember it at the very last minute. Go ahead and fill out the forms, mark the dates on your calendar, request the days off from work for the class party, pay the fees online, and identify friends and family to buy something for the school fundraiser, as soon as you get the notices. You’ll be happy you didn’t wait when you are fully prepared for these things when they come up.
- Get to know the teacher – Go to the parent nights and parent-teacher conferences. Introduce yourself to your child’s teacher, send regular check-in emails, and be as involved in your child’s academic and school life as you can be. Getting to know your child’s teacher and engaging in regular communication with him or her will be the easiest and best way to keep up with how your child is progressing in academics, behavior, and development. Being in the know in these areas will help you make the necessary adjustments in your morning and evening routine if you need to put more focus on one of them.
- Remember that perfection is not the goal – No parent is perfect, and no one expects you to be. Keep that in mind as this busy season gets off the ground. Don’t compare you or your child to others and keep in mind that nobody is doing it all and nobody can do it all. Everybody is just doing the best they can. Go easy on yourself and give yourself and your child grace. We are all moving at a few hundred miles per hour and mistakes, double booking, overscheduling, performing juggling acts, and stressing about it all, are to be expected. Perfection isn’t the goal. Your child’s academic success and personal development are the goals, and as long as you are moving in a positive direction toward that, you are doing just fine.