Back to School: Anxious or Excited?

– The day has finally come… Tomorrow your children will be in school! I can vividly remember being nervous the night before school started. Laying in bed and thinking of hundreds of things that may or may not happen on the first day.  Any transition is  difficult, but for children this is a new experience and they are stepping into a whole new world . If your child is starting school for the first time or entering a new school you may also feel pretty nervous yourself. I have listed some tips below to help you with this new transition.

1.Emphasize the good:

• Remind them of all of the fun they will have with friends.
• Make school supply shopping fun for them. Have them choose a couple of extra fun items which are not on their school supply list.
  
• Get them excited about uniforms. If you wore uniforms when you were a child try to find some of  the pictures to show them. This will help them relate to you when you were their age.
  

2. Communicate:

• Talk to your child about the school and provide them with as much information as possible.
• Go online: Most schools have a website. With your supervision, allow them to browse the school  website on their own. This will help them become more acquainted with the school and the environment they will be in.
• Talk about what makes them nervous about going to school.
  
• Share your school experience’s with them.
• Include your child when coming up with a school-night routine. Let them be the one to create it and then you can modify it.
• Remain calm and don’t let your nerves show. This will just make the situation worse.
  

3. Back to School Basics

• Get enough sleep:  Children ages 6 to 9 need roughly 10 hours of sleep a night. Make it a point to ease them into night time. Let them know how much time they have until it is bedtime. Also, reading a book before bedtime is always a plus!
• Breakfast: Ask them what they want to eat for breakfast and make sure it’s healthy. The last thing you want is a sugar rush on the first day of school. A healthy breakfast will keep their mind focused.
• Create a quiet homework area and make sure they have all of the supplies needed to complete their homework on a daily basis.
  
• Do not allow children to watch TV during homework. I suggest to turn all TV’s in the house off. If they can still hear it, their mind will be focused on the TV and not on their homework.
• Create a schedule and stick with it! If they would rather have a snack and relax for 30 minutes then do their homework, let them do it. Make sure they know homework needs to be completed every night. There cannot be any exceptions. Sports and other events that will come up should be secondary.

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