Transitioning your children from a summer of leisure to a return to school is never easy. It’s not easy on you, and it’s not easy on the kids. Amid all the turmoil and stress, it’s easy for a family home to become disorganised and messy.
By taking control of the situation and planning in advance, you can ease the burden on your children — and your home. Here are seven back-to-school tips that should help you to keep your family home in good order during this tricky time of the year.
1. Start the Back-to-School Process Early
You can’t expect your children to simply slip back into the rigid routines of school time after a summer of leisure. Two weeks before they go back to school, start to bring bedtimes forward a little. Also, impose a strict “getting up” time. Make breakfast a fairly formal affair at the usual time in the morning. Other steps such as introducing structured homework time can help your children to gradually become accustomed to rituals of the average school day.
2. Start a School Calendar
The average school term is littered with appointments for things like sports events, open evenings and extracurricular activities. Start a calendar in advance, and include every significant date you can think of. This should keep you organised, and ensure you’re not stressing about last-minute appointments.
3. Clean Your Home Early
Children tend to make a lot of mess during the school summer holidays. The last thing you want to be doing during those first few (highly stressful) days back at school is deep cleaning — so do it in advance. Create a cleaning checklist, and begin tackling it at least a week before school begins. And in an effort to get your children into a work mindset, make sure they have their own cleaning chores.
Tip: Perform an inventory of your cleaning products before you begin, and buy what you need. This is an important cleaning process, so make sure your vacuum cleaner is up to the job. A powerful cleaner with a host of attachments and the ability to be broken down into a handheld unit will help.
4. Make a Back-to-School Shopping List
Kids need a huge array of supplies at this time of year. As well as a school uniform, you probably need to buy shoes, stationery supplies, books, lunchboxes and much, much more. Keep stress and worry to a minimum by creating a shopping list at least a week before school reconvenes. Devote a day to back-to-school shopping, and get everything you need at the same time.
5. Plan Stress-Free Mornings
Those first few mornings of a new school term can be pretty tough on everyone concerned. There’s a lot of stress and anxiety in the average home, and that can affect academic achievement and familial relationships. Create an ideal morning schedule to take the stress away. Include things such as breakfast time, dressing time, pre-school relaxation time and leaving time. Try to think of every job and process, and add it to your list. Once you know everything is covered, you can relax a little — and let school mornings run their course.
6. Practice!
Once you’ve done your planning, shopping and cleaning, it’s time for some dry runs. The week before school reopens should be used to practice your morning routines. Go through every aspect of your morning, including the trip to the school gates. Then once the actual day arrives, you’ll all be in the swing of things.
7. Make Things Fun
Try not to take things too seriously — or at least create the impression that you’re not. Children pick up on stress, so protect them from it as best you can. One way to do this is to make school mornings fun. Don’t be afraid to play games or give your children a little relaxation time on school mornings.The more fun your children have, the less likely they are to make your life difficult during this stressful time of year.
The back-to-school time of year is always going to be tricky. But with planning, organisation and the right attitude, it can become a productive experience for everyone.