Back to School

I started Ornaut in 2013, and we make bike apparel. The best part of Shopify for me is our ability to run the business as essentially non-technical people. We're able to admin everything on the back end, front end, and sell things online easily. If Shopify were a bike accessory, I think it would actually be the bicycle. It's the thing that you do the thing on. We run the business on Shopify. Start your free trial on Shopify.com. Hello, and welcome to the How Not to Screw Up Your Kids podcast. So, pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat, and enjoy the conversation. This is episode 30, and today I'm talking about all things back to school. We're talking about preparing our children's mindsets, cultivating curiosity, dealing with back to school anxieties, and creating a better life for them. So, this episode is for you, whether you have a five-year-old or a 20-something-year-old going back to university or work. I want you to kind of take all of these strategies and tips, not only for the traditional back to school, our children in their early years at school, but really thinking all the way through to those of us who've got young adults, whether they're going back to university itself or they're going back to the world of work. It's all about creating right habits as we go back. After having an extended break. So, this podcast episode is useful at all times of the year. So, the first, I'm going to share four tips. The first one is about creating some good habits. Now, when our children, teens, and young adults get that all-important break from school, university, and work, we want them to rest and relax. And that's super, super important. We can, however, very quickly fall into bad habits. Staying in PJs. Missing breakfast. Spending chunks of the day on digital devices. And not getting outside for fresh air. Now, these things are all important ways for us to unwind. Yet, we also need to be mindful that whatever we end up doing for an extended period of time becomes a habit. Whether that's a good one or a bad one, it's still a habit. And a habit by its nature is something we do habitually without thinking. So, now is the time to reflect on what's going on. What's going to be congruent? What's fitting with going back to school, university, and work? And what isn't? Now, this isn't to say that I don't think it's important to decompress. I do think it's important for us all to decompress. Our children, our teens, our young adults, even for us. And for some, the switch from decompression to full-on mode is one which can be made overnight. For others, that isn't the case. And so, it's important to start reeling it in. Little by little. So, the first thing, as is the case with so many things that I talk about, it's about doing a reflective audit. Now, when you've got really, really young children, so quite young school-aged children, you need to do part of that reflecting. You need to do it for them and look at, okay, what are the habits that have sort of allowed, what have we allowed to happen that we know for this particular child is likely to create potential issues when they go back? And you need to do that audit on a child-by-child basis. So, for example, let's say you've got one child who's been in their PJs the whole time and have, basically, they're not having breakfast. Now, you might have a child where you know when they go back to school, you're not going to have a problem with that. They're going to be able to instantly go from being in their PJs all day to just getting their uniform on. You know it's not a challenge that you particularly have with them in the mornings getting ready for school. So, you don't need to necessarily reel it in. If being in their PJs is a challenge. If that's a huge part of their decompression, that they're super relaxed, then I'm all for that. This isn't about regimenting our children, but it is trying to get us to consider in advance where might the challenges, where might the problems potentially be for each child and rather than the inevitable back to school or back to work blues that happened literally on the day before, whether that's the Sunday because they're going back on the Monday, whether that's Tuesday because they're going back on Wednesday. Whatever it is. Whatever it might be. We've all seen it. We've all suffered from it to some extent when we've had to go back to work. So, by doing this, it's about being conscious. It's about thinking in advance. It's about reflecting and then creating a very tailored and bespoke plan for each child. So, it's really looking at what are the things have we let slip? What are the things that for that particular child we might want to reel back in and which things can we let slide? Because let's face it. We could all do with a bit of relaxation. We want that to happen, but we want to just make sure that we do it the right way so that we can avoid what can sometimes be the inevitable fractions and frictions and stress on that first day back. So, the first one is to create some good habits and we need to do that by doing an audit for each child and then being realistic and being real about what you might then need to put back in for that particular child. So, that's the first one. The second one is get sleep back in check. Oh, this one's a tricky one and one which I know so many of you will be struggling with. Holidays usually mean bedtime routines are thrown out of the window. We all go to bed later. Technology creeps into the bedroom and we indulge our children and ourselves a little more than we would when we're all back at school, university and work. So, again, use this time to do a bedtime audit. And not only do the audit in terms of looking at reinstating the habits that you had before, but also do the audit to reinstate good habits and to assess which of the old habits are no longer serving you or your family. The whole beauty about having some period of holiday or time away is that we break from what we used to do. Yes, we fall into some bad habits, but what it allows us to do is it allows us then to reflect on what habits do we think would be really optimal? What would help everybody in terms of re-looking at the sleep routine and almost starting with a blank slate? If we could do it all over again, if we could reinstate it, if we could restart it, what would we want bedtime to look like? And I would also say that you need to audit your own sleep and bedtime routine. Are you leaving tasks until later in the day and then not sitting down to relax until late? So you then go to bed late, you then wake up later or you're going to wake up normal time and you have less sleep. So we need to do an audit on both sides. You know, I'm going to bang this drum about self-care. So our self-care has to start. It's the top of the list. It is the most important thing. And quite often our sleep is one of those that is completely neglected. Optimally as adults, the optimal amount of sleep is between seven and eight hours each night. And so often I hear parents that are getting considerably less than that because they are juggling things during the day, then trying to make up for lost time in the evening. And part of your audit is going to be looking at what time you go to bed, how much sleep you're getting. But part of that audit needs to be looking at what am I committing to? What am I saying yes to that actually is no longer serving me? And that's part of the pressure that I have. What do I need to begin to say? Thank you so much. I'm so incredibly flattered that you thought of me, but I don't have capacity. How can we start saying no? So we need to do the audit both for our sleep and also for our children's. And again, when we're looking at young children, we need to do that audit for them. And we need to then work out how we're going to reel that back in. Now, quite often our children end up in holidays going to bed considerably more than an hour or two hours later than they would typically go to bed. So let's not make a huge battle out of it, but let's be mindful of that. We're beginning to reel it in maybe half an hour at a time, maybe half an hour every two or three days. You'll know when you've done the audit what it looks like specifically for your family and for each child in your family. So for younger children, we're the instigators of this. For older children, as is the case in terms of creating good habits and looking back at habits that have been created during the extended break, we need to do this much more collaboratively. So it's about having discussions with our older. Teens and adults who are going back to work and just having a bit of a discussion. Use my favourite phrase. I've noticed that bedtime's got super, super late. We're not going, you're not going to bed till two, three o'clock in the morning. Trust me, that's what I hear. A lot of teens and young adults are going to bed that late. So it's about having that discussion, that acknowledgement that that is currently happening and then talking through how that won't serve when they're going back to school. And whilst we appreciate that, we're not going to go back to school. And whilst we appreciate that, no doubt they will make sure that they get the right amount of sleep when it's time to go back to school. It's thinking about what can we look at doing now and putting in place to begin to get that bedtime much more in check. It needs to be much more of a collaborative process when it comes to older children and teens, and we need to model good sleep patterns. So our sleep audit is not just about the timings that we get of going to sleep, but it's also what are we cultivating? cultivating in terms of sleep habits within environment that we go to sleep so do an audit about what started to sneak into bedrooms have laptops began to sneak in has there been films being watched on laptops devices coming in and then all of a sudden what should be a space that's all about sleep and relaxation has become a digital hub so not only get sleep back in check from a number of hours but also get sleep back in check in terms of what is happening in there and if you've got young children who have been using their bedrooms as places where they can play with maybe some of their Christmas presents or some digital devices because there's been lots of people around and they've had their own space that way begin to reel that back in begin to bring it downstairs so we're not creating challenges when it comes to going back to school because so often the challenges around going back to school it's almost as if there's a switch from I've been to having so much fun I've been doing lots of things what I want to do when I want to do it eating what I want sleeping when I want wearing what I want to suddenly going to this regimen what can be perceived as this regimented going back to school and so it's about making sure that we begin to kind of nudge the dial it's not because we shouldn't allow our children and our teens and our young adults to completely unwind and decompress of course we should but we also need to be mindful that these habits then become ones that we need to unbreak we need to break them to make going transitioning back easier so the first one is create some good habits the second is get sleep back in check the third is getting them back into the right mindset curiosity is a mindset which we can all cultivate in our children we just have to focus on it and I know it can be feel quite hard when we're actually on a physical break but we can do it now I'm personally not a fan of children doing schoolwork in the holidays unless they are studying for exams I think it creates battles at home over schoolwork which I think are counterproductive so many parents feel that they want to do catch up in the school holidays maybe your child is struggling with their maths or their English or maybe they're not writing as much so we feel by buying these workbooks possibly getting a tutor in that in some some ways we're helping and supporting our children and to start in some cases that can be helpful but the the challenge is that when we approach this catch up with that kind of mindset what happens is we create this friction that massively impacts family harmony because you end up being feeling like you're the enemy because you are trying to recreate school at home and for those of you can remember back to those days of homeschooling so many of the challenges that we faced as parents when it came to homeschooling is that our children associate home as their safe space as their decompression space as the place that they go to at the end of a school week and it's not the place that they have traditionally associated with their workbooks their worksheets other than their homework for those children who are old enough to be getting homework so I would really urge you to really consider how important is it for my child to be doing these workbooks these worksheets is it about me and my concern that my child is going to fall behind or is it actually about something that I've been encouraged to do from school because they are concerned now I know we want our children we want the best for our children we want them to academically do well we want them to excel but it should not be at the expense of some really important family connection time you are not their teacher you are their parent so instead we should be focusing around mindset rather than focusing on specific curriculum so for me it's about cultivating curiosity through reading how are you role modeling to your children that reading is something that happens for enjoyment so many parents battle with their children about getting them to read and yet when I ask them well how much reading do you do how often do you sit down and you read they're slightly scuppered because they're not doing it reading should be something that our children see as a pastime as something that they do to relax something that is enjoyable and not yet another school task so if we're not cultivating a culture and a mindset at home that books are pleasurable then we are always going to have battles with that so let's cultivate curiosity through reading are you sharing books with your children that interest them are you sharing challenging narrative books by reading chapters to you them with all of that passion and intonation that you might get if they were watching it on television because that ignites their imagination so we can cultivate this curiosity and this mindset through reading whether we go on family outings and these are not necessarily outings where you've got worksheets and you're speaking to your children in that sort of perspective but it's about thinking what passions and interests do my children have and how might we be able to focus in on that and expand that by doing something together as a family and then our children naturally learn so much from those experiences that we have whether it's collecting daisies when you're out on a walk whether it's looking at rocks at the beach all of these things encourage and promote discussion and that's what we want to do curiosity and a mindset because those are all transferable when we're looking at the school setting so the three tips so far are creating some good habits get sleep back in check and get them back into the right mindset now for older teens when we're talking about getting back into the right mindset it might just be helping them to switch away from a dependency on digital devices to getting them back switched on within conversational things so getting them tuned back in to family time connecting back to family time downstairs not that we want to disconnect them from their friends absolutely not but it's about switching them in that way and reconnecting them to their reading to as well as being part of that wider broader family in terms of going away and my fourth and final and probably for a lot of you one of the most important is about dealing with any back to school anxieties and i would encourage you to do this sooner rather than later so we quite often have children who are a little bit nervous and a little bit anxious about going back to school now these might be children who might typically have a little bit of a wobble from a sunday because they're not really looking forward to going back to school on the monday or they don't want to go back to university at the beginning of term or they don't particularly want to go back to work because their focus is very much thinking on that those anxieties and those worries and quite often the temptation for us is that oh do you know what they're having such a lovely time let's not open up that can of worms because we don't want to spoil what has been a really lovely time and something that's quite harmonious and to be honest i completely get the logic with that but equally what tends to happen is if we ignore it then oh my goodness me does it bite us on the bum when they go back or hit us really hard because we've not began to have those preparations and those discussions so how much you deal with this depends on how much of a worrier your child is and how much of the anxieties are there in terms of going back to school so you're going to need to do this in terms of a range of how nervous or anxious your child might be about going back to school so the first one is just being honest with yourselves it's not if you've got a child who was tearful going back to school after half term or is typically one that go that is a bit tearful and upset going back to school then it is not going to have suddenly disappeared just because they've been the most happy and the most cheerful person through all of the holidays so we're gonna have to deal with it and one of the ways that we can do that if there is a real separation issue if it's about the anxieties about going back to school then we can start preparing our children for that by beginning to create some separation from you in advance so maybe you might pop out a little bit more they might go and see grandparents a little bit so we're trying to create recreate a little bit of that anxiety that would be there with them going back to school but doing it in a bit of a controlled environment so it doesn't become suddenly this huge thing when they go back to school because they've spent so much time with their parents and they've spent so much time with their parents and they've spent so much time with going back to school because actually they're struggling with friendships or there might be some challenges around the social side of school then it's thinking through what can we put into place what can we do to help scaffold our child during these last few days these last couple of weeks before they go back to school around the friendships i'm a huge huge fan of playdates they are so important for young children teens and young adults although obviously i remember quite vividly youngest saying to me i asked her about would you like to arrange a play date and she said mommy we don't play we hang out so whatever it is that your children are doing whether it's a play date or hanging out or going to the cinema, if part of the challenge is around the social side, maybe they find friendships difficult, maybe they're not terribly confident, maybe you've got a dynamic in their year group and some pretty strong personalities, whatever it might be, it's thinking what can we put in place, how can we encourage and promote some of that boosting of that confidence in those social, around those social areas and that social arena that might help them when they transition back, who might we be able to organise some time with when we're talking about younger children, when we're talking with our older children where we're no longer arranging those sorts of things, how can we encourage them to stay connected with their friends, now it's not always possible to arrange catch-ups, they might not be able to physically meet in person but in this day and age when they're on their digital devices in so many ways, can we recreate some connection either through FaceTime or some way of them making sure that they've touched base because the reason why it's so important is that they've got something shared and experience a discussion which they can then take back with them and makes that transition back to school feel less overwhelming, so whether you've got a child who's anxious around the separation, whether it's a child who's anxious around the social aspect of it, we can put those things in place and if you've got a child where school is just challenging because maybe they're lacking in confidence around their academics, this is where again we might be looking at scaffolding, so it's understanding where are the challenges particularly for my child, what might we be able to put in place around their confidence, around their mindset, very specifically around growth mindset, so this isn't if you've got a child who's super anxious about schoolwork, maybe they think their spelling is awful and their handwriting and they hate English because they don't think they're creative and they think they're not going to be able to really bad at maths, my view is that that doesn't mean that what we do is that we fix it by giving them lots of English and giving them lots of maths to do, but instead rather than through formalised worksheets and workbooks, we can create and cultivate curiosity and an application of, let's say we've got a child who's super nervous about handwriting or lacks confidence in their spellings, maybe they can help you with a list of things to do that can encourage them to write things but they're not necessarily writing an essay, maybe we can encourage them to have a daily practice of gratitude where they write down three things that they're grateful for, again we're encouraging them to write but without the formalised aspect and what I would urge, although we have got an upcoming podcast very specifically about how we can create and cultivate a positive learning environment, is when our children are writing these things down, let's not check their spelling, what we're trying to do so much is to encourage them to write down three things that can encourage them to write. So often where you get these anxieties and lacking of confidence about writing is what we really just want to do is encourage our children to write for the sake of writing, to enjoy the creative process without then underlining, asking them to write it more neatly, asking them to re-spell it, whatever that might be, so it's really encouraging them that way. So we're dealing with the back-to-school anxieties in a way which is addressing the specific issue that your child has but dealing with it in a way that's not so much of a problem for them as it is for them. a gentle way in advance of them going back to school. So my four tips are create some good habits, so looking at some of the habits that we might need to reel in that have just sort of slightly expanded that might be problematic and look at it specifically for each child. Some of the habits that you might need to reel in will be specific for one child, will be different to another. Get sleep and the bedtime culture back in check and that includes your own. The third is getting our children back into the right mindset by cultivating a curiosity mindset and the fourth one is dealing with any back-to-school anxieties in advance. So my gift this week is my simple checklist. So head over to my free resource library at drmerryhand.com forward slash library where you will find the link to download the resource. All you need to do is pop in your email address and you'll get instant access not only to this week's resource, but all the other free resources across all my podcast episodes. As ever, if you have enjoyed this episode, I would love it if you could follow and review this podcast so that others can find us and we can spread the love. So until next time.