How to help your kids transition from summer to back-to-school

Transitioning for the lazy, carefree and unstructured days of summer with late nights and later mornings, to back to school, can be a serious challenge. Especially when you’re the chronicall late mom in your whole neighborhood country…

Every year in my household, we all have to go through what feels like a complete back-to-school brainwash. Getting back in the groove of going to bed, rising early, and getting ready in the morning, is a process! It’s like your brain goes through summer withdrawal, and refuses to consider anything remotely connected to schedules, order or alarm clocks for that matter…

For years, we’ve had to go through painful back-to-school transitions, filled with morning crisis, late school tickets, and leaving my brain on consignment between home, school and work… After a few traumatic starts to the school season, we’ve finally started learning… the hard way! The last thing you want is to have tired, stressed out and frazzled kids head back to school with limited focus and lots of resistance. Oh and parents looking for their phones while they’re speaking on it…

Here are 6 tips to go from the crazy days of summer to the structured schedule of back-to-school, as painlessly as possible:

1. Set goals with the kids

It helps to start with having a conversation about the upcoming change in schedule and structure ahead of time. Kids of school age will better adapt to the back-to-school transition when they know what to expect.

Starting a few weeks before school to talk to them about returning to school, and the changes that will happen may help make the transition smoother.

2. Start with fire drills

I don’t know about you, but in my neck of the woods, we need fire drills to get through certain transitions like back-to-school. A couple of weeks before school starts, try to set earlier bedtimes.

Start changing the routine progressively over the few weeks before school starts. It will help make it easier for both kids and parents.

3. Prepare the night before

I’m a veteran of what I call “working mom chronic lateness”. I’m from a long line of chronically late working moms. For years, my mornings have been the perfect image of chaos, complete rushing around trying to find backpacks, lunches, and matching socks.

The antidote to morning craziness? Preparing the night before. Trust me, it took me years of frantically scrambling in the morning to finally get it. From laying clothes out (down to the socks, because these little things will play with your fuzzy mind in the morning) to preparing backpacks and important documents the night before, getting ready ahead of time will make a world of difference.

4. Set a drop-off and pick-up zone in the house

If you’ve ever driven back home twice in the same morning because you forgot the kids’ lunch form, your cell phone and the baby’s left shoe, you know how important it is to have a pick-up and drop-off zone in the house. That’s the area where you drop off anything that you must take with you in the morning.

This includes backpacks, important forms, shoes, and pretty much anything that may skip your mind in the morning. I’m looking for one where you can also park your brain, but apparently it may still be in production…

5. Set an early time

No, you will not get up right on time and magically get ready in 15 minutes! No matter how much your tired brain tries to convince you that you can sleep for 5 more minutes, don’t do it! Instead, set your alarm extra early to give yourself enough time, in case your lens refuses to connect with your left eye, or the right side of your hair insists on remaining frizzy….

6. Give kids time hints

Give the kids a break! It’s hard to understand the concept of time, or that we only have about 7 minutes to get the hair done (I’m talking about kinky-curly-resistant-to-any-brush hair), swallow the cold breakfast and get strapped up in the car.

I used to start yelling like a sergeant general about 10 minutes before the bell rang (at school, while we were still home). Instead, give the kids hints about how much time they have left throughout the morning. This gives them a better sense of time, plus some hints as to when Mom is going to start losing it now…