Many people know the saying “happy wife, happy life.” Parents understand another motto, “happy kids, or else!” This hits different as lazy summer days wind down and back to school season winds up. This time of year may be difficult for children, and parents may cringe at the thought of “I don’t want to go back to school” tantrums.
Fortunately there are techniques to help children and parents handle the transition with less foot stomping and more serenity. Every child is different, and what’s best may depend on age and personality, but here are five tried and true techniques (in no specific order) that can help you make this the best school year ever.
1. Practice empathy
Resist the urge to chastise your children for what you consider unreasonable. Pause, understand, and practice empathy with your childrens’ point of view. Whether in elementary or high school, a new year presents uncertainty, challenges, and anxiety. Many children don’t know how to manage that stress with poise. Heck, even many adults don’t! It’s a natural, visceral reaction for children to lash out with emotional tantrums.
Treat this as a valuable teaching moment and opportunity. But before you can teach, you must help your children settle down into an amicable state of mind that is ready to learn. You do that by helping and allowing them to express themselves and by empathizing. Calmly let them know you hear and understand them. Reinforce you are there to help and support them. Console and coddle if needed until they are composed for rational discussion.
2. Encourage communication
Communication goes hand and hand with empathy. We cannot understand each other if we cannot communicate. So make it a habit to have open and honest discussions with your children everyday. This doesn’t mean giving your children the third degree or talking at them with your opinions. Rather, encourage them to tell you about their day, what they think, and how they feel. Allow them to lead the conversation while you listen and learn.
Be careful not to pounce when you disagree, that may dissuade them from talking. Instead help them think through problems and discord on their own with guidance as needed. Encouraging open communication will help you and your children identify and resolve challenges instead of hiding or ignoring them. It will also reinforce trust in your relationship which will prove invaluable as children and the nature of their problems grow.
3. Organize and prepare
Sometimes stress and anxiety can be caused by something as simple as disorganization or lack of preparedness. Imagine walking into an important meeting tired, underdressed, and lacking all the required materials. Teaching children how to be prepared and organized can set them up for success in any occassion. This doesn’t mean doing everything for them but helping them think about and understand what they need to succeed.
The more involved they are in the process, the more confident and prepared they will be. Preparation could be as simple as having the right supplies, or as complicated as engaging professional help for a disability. Whatever it is, don’t wait until the day before school. Start early and provide ample time to plan, get prepared and organized so they have what they need on day one. Not everything can be prepared for, but maximizing the chances of a strong start can help set the tone and momentum for rest of the year.
4. Set goals and expectations
“Success” can be defined in different ways, but you and your children should have a mutual understanding about it what means to you all. That means setting clear goals and expectations together. This should be done as part of the planning and preparation process. After all, how do we plan a journey without a destination?
Some parents focus on distinct, quantifiable goals like “a 4.0 grade point average” or “2 gold medals.” Quantitative measures can be used to help track progress, but focusing on numbers themselves can lack meaning and could even backfire. Instead, lead with the values and habits that are likely to produce the desired results. For example, instill the merits and benefits of regular practice instead of just mandating a number of hours per day.
Be sure to involve children in the goal setting process. Gaining their input helps you understand what they care about, what they need most, and how you can best help them succed. It also shows you value their opinions, and children are more likely to stay focused, motivated, and commited when they have a part in setting the goals and expectations.
5. Implement with consistency
Even the best goals, plans, and preparation may be useless if they are not put into action. In addition, no long journey is completed in one stride. It takes many small skips, hops, and steps to create forward progress over time. From that perspective consistency and persistence are key.
Again, it helps to start by instilling why such values are important and how they help before getting into the nitty gritty details of implementation. Next, it helps to break down big goals into smaller, manageable steps that you all agree are realistic and achievable. Go from yearly, to monthly, to daily activities and goals. This will help your children understand how their small daily actions can add up to big long-term results.
Remember to cultivate their input and involve them in the process. Working with them to create visual aids like goal maps and activity calendars are fun ways to keep them engaged. This all boils down to creating a consistent daily routine. This provides children with reminders and guidance to help them focus and stay on track with goals and expectations. Not only that, but providing structure helps children develop a sense of security, predictability, and confidence to charge ahead and grow.
In summary
Helping children prepare for a new school year starts with parents being mentally prepared themselves to communicate, understand, and empathize with their children. Parents should work alongside their children to help set clear goals and expectations, to plan, prepare, and organize. Ideally, all of this should be done before the school year starts, but even late is better than never.
After so much preparation it would be a shame not to see things through. That’s why implementation is crucial. Daily steps can be planned out, but they must be taken to create progress. Regular reviews should be used as part of the implementation process to evaluate if things are going to plan or if adjustments are needed.
Children can face great expectations and pressures from parents, peers, and schools to succeed. An important way parents can help is to focus on developing the right values, habits, and skills instead of obsessing about successful outcomes. Doing this early on can help kids find both success and happiness in school. And we all know happy kids, happy life!
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HWL
Happy Wealthy Living 
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