Smooth the Back to school transition

Smooth the Back-to-School Transition

Give Your Kids a Raise

At the beginning of the new school year, raise your children’s allowances. If possible, it is also good to add to the list of things your child is expected to buy for himself. By the end of high school, they should be buying clothing, toiletries and school supplies so that when they head off to college they know how to manage their money, because you won’t be around to supervise them any more.

Give Your Kids New Responsibilities

If your children know what they will be allowed to do at each age, they can look forward to each as a sort of rite of passage--proof that they are growing up. Here is a sample list: first grade, they can start cutting with a sharp knife, second grade they can light matches, third grade they can use an iron (with instruction, of course!) and in 4th grade their bedtime gets moved 30 minutes later. The list can go right up through when they can begin driving and dating. They will feel proud to be growing up, and so, can assume new responsibilities. You know your children and family best, so you may come up with a completely different list.

Invite New Friends Over

This is a way to get to know new classmates a little more quickly than they might just going to school together. Since they don’t know each other, they might feel a little shy, so they would probably appreciate having some activities planned for them. Food is always an exciting option, whether it is to make your own pizza, sundae, or a to decorate cupcakes. Watching a movie is a safe bet, but the kids won’t be getting to know each other. Working on a project side by side gives them opportunity to talk and see each other in action, with the promise of the prize of getting to eat their own creations, and without the pressure to compete.

Invite Old Friends Over

A reunion of old friends can be a lot of fun, especially if they haven’t seen each other over the summer, or if they ended up in different classes in school. They probably would be happy just to play, but you could plan some fun activities to make it special. They can make a silly movie of themselves, or make up a commercial for a popular product, or make a spoof of a t.v. show, and video tape it. Another fun activity might be to take goofy “school Pictures.” The first set could be advice on what not to wear, which will be way more fun to do than what to wear! You may want to raid the Halloween costumes for this...those bad teeth might be just the thing for these photos! Provide props and equipment, and let them go crazy.

Call a Family Meeting

This can set the tone for the whole year, to create an environment where family members can voice their concerns, about school or about home, and find solutions to problems as a group. If you follow through, and have these periodically throughout the year, they can be an amazing teaching tool. Your children can learn that they are not alone when facing a problem, they have a support group that will encourage them. They will see that problems do not mean the end of the world, but rather, that there are multiple ways to solve them. They will begin to learn the basics of problem solving. They will also learn to shoulder responsibility--that they can handle things on their own once they have a game plan, and that they won’t expect mom and dad to swoop in and solve every problem for them. Start the meeting with updating the master calendar with school breaks, ball games, concerts, and recitals so everyone knows when things are happening. Beginning with a neutral topic can get the conversion started before the harder topics are tackled. Then open it up for discussion. You may need to prime the pump with a small problem of your own to get the ball rolling--teach through example. Finally, end the family meeting with something fun, whether it is food or a board game. You want this to be a positive experience so they will be amenable to do it again.

Measure Growth

Tape a strip of paper to your child’s doorframe and make it a tradition to measure her height at the beginning and end of each school year. It’s a quick way to show your child how much she has grown. The paper enables you to take the growth chart with you incase you move--you can’t take the door frame with you! Use this time of measuring as an excuse to affirm all the things each child has learned to do in the past year so they can feel a sense of accomplishment of growing both physically and mentally. Their self confidence will grow as they begin to realize all the new skills they have mastered.

“Jitters Medicine”

If your child is feeling nervous about going to school, include some “medicine” in his lunch. Make a label like a prescription, and put it on a plastic bottle with instructions on how to take it. Put a come candy in the empty bottle (Include enough to share!) The surprise in his lunch is sure to make your child smile, and make his new friends jealous! If you use a real medicine bottle, make sure the old label is off, and that it is not child-proof--that would defeat the whole purpose!

First Week Predictions

Sometime during your child’s first week or two back at school, ask her to draw a diagram of the classroom. Then as she learns children’s names, have her write their names on the square representing each child’s desk. Give a prize when she has learned all the names. For extra fun, ask her to write a sentence about what she thinks the teacher and each child is like. Seal the paper in an envelope and set it aside until Christmas break. Then open it and read it again, and see how accurate first impressions were.

Lunch Box Messages

Include an encouraging note along with your child’s lunch. Girls seem to enjoy this at any age, but boys can get embarrassed pretty easily--as young as first or second grade. If you embarrass your son, you have defeated the whole point of sending an encouraging note! You can write it in a secret code that only he knows, or simply write “You rock!” with icing on a cookie or cupcake. A riddle or a joke would be a safe bet, too. Just including a funny surprise can brighten their day. For more ideas, check out the postitnote.com website.

A new school year can be so exciting and so scary, all at the same time! Here are some ideas to help calm the jitters and celebrate a new milestone.

Snack Time = Listen Time

Kids come home hungry, so take advantage of the fact that they sit still while they eat. It is the perfect time to sit down with them and give them your undivided attention. If you are careful not to make it feel like an interrogation, it can be a natural way to find out what happened during your child’s day at school. You will get lots of practice finding out which questions work and which don’t. “How was your day?” rarely gets more than a “Fine.” Don’t give up! Sometimes it helps to start by telling about your day. You may think this only works for elementary aged kids, but my daughter still thanks me for stopping what I was doing, and sitting with her as she ate her afternoon snack, and listening to her tell about her day...when she was in high school!

Problem Solving

Make choosing the next day’s clothing part of the bedtime routine the night before, and the next morning will probably feel a lot less hectic. Think through other aspects of what goes wrong in the morning, and come up with a strategy to combat that. If the kids fight over the bathroom, come up with strategies that will make sure everyone gets their turn. Your kids may come up with some creative solutions, too. A family meeting is a good way to get everyone talking about the problem instead trying to solve it in the middle of a fight. Solving family differences through a family meeting creates all kinds of learning opportunities for the kids--how to solve problems through talking rather than punching, how to articulate their own viewpoint, How to listen to the other person’s viewpoint, how to compromise, how to see things from another person’s perspective, that problems can be solved in multiple ways.

Trouble Shooting

If one of your children is having a hard time adjusting to the new school year, whether it is having problems with classmates or the teacher, or is not keeping up in class, here are some things to do to help:

1.Talk to your child and reassure your child that you want to hear about any problems they have--there is nothing you won’t talk about.
2.Tell him about a problem you faced as a child and how you handled it--whether badly or well.
3.Pray together to ask God for a solution to the problem.
4.Do something to counterbalance the bad--my daughter hung a paperclip from the ceiling. Each time she had to do something hard, she would add another paperclip. When the string of paperclips reached the floor, she would get a treat. You may need to set a shorter goal, just to help your child see light at the end of the tunnel!
5.Take steps to solve the problem, like meeting with the teacher, hiring a tutor, etc.

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