Sep­tem­ber is here and so is the re­turn of ear­ly morn­ing traf­fic, af­ter­noon traf­fic, the morn­ing hus­tle of par­ents get­ting their chil­dren ready for school, the sched­ul­ing of pick-ups and drops to ex­tra-lessons and ex­tra-cur­ric­u­lar, and the night­ly bat­tles of home­work and re­vi­sion...and that’s just for the par­ents. The stu­dents have to face ear­ly morn­ing wake-ups, sit­ting in traf­fic, be­ing tak­en to their af­ter­noon ac­tiv­i­ties, and fit­ting in re­lax­ation time be­tween get­ting home and home­work hour(s). Added to that, they are re­turn­ing to a school en­vi­ron­ment which de­mands that they sit still, get or­gan­ised, stay on task, sep­a­rate from their par­ents and in­ter­act with their peers —all of which can be stress­ful.

Stu­dents and par­ents have to tran­si­tion from a sched­ule where the chil­dren had at least one or two months off from a high­ly struc­tured day. It’s nev­er an easy tran­si­tion from the Ju­ly/Au­gust va­ca­tion in­to the new school year, so I have pro­vid­ed a few tips to make the tran­si­tion a lot less tu­mul­tuous.

Start set­ting ear­li­er bed­times and wake up the chil­dren ear­li­er as well. This should be done grad­u­al­ly - start mov­ing the bed­times up 15 min­utes ear­li­er and set wake-up times a lit­tle ear­li­er un­til you reach the ap­pro­pri­ate bed­time. This can pre­vent the zom­bie-like chil­dren that are typ­i­cal­ly walk­ing about the first week of school.

Every­one needs to start get­ting or­gan­ised. Schools books should be cov­ered and school sup­plies pur­chased. School uni­forms are al­ready ironed and school shoes cleaned. This can pre­vent any morn­ing melt­downs on the first day of school as well as pre­vent a late night be­fore the first day of school. Al­so tran­si­tion this prac­tice to be done on Fri­day evenings or Sat­ur­day morn­ings, so that par­ents have the week­end to solve any hic­cups that may oc­cur. En­cour­age the chil­dren to pack their bags the night be­fore—and keep this habit up through­out the school year.

Rou­tine, rou­tine, rou­tine! Put a ten­ta­tive dai­ly sched­ule in place un­til all af­ter-school ac­tiv­i­ties are sched­uled and a per­ma­nent sched­ule can be set. This sched­ule should in­clude a morn­ing rou­tine and af­ter­noon to bed­time rou­tine, with planned re­lax­ation time, eat­ing time and fam­i­ly bond­ing time. Once a rou­tine is es­tab­lished and con­sis­tent, the hus­tle and bus­tle of par­ent­ing be­comes man­age­able and less over­whelm­ing, de­creas­ing the need for those stress­ful mo­ments of ar­gu­ments or in­tense con­ver­sa­tions with your chil­dren.

My last tip is not on­ly for the par­ents and the chil­dren, but for all of us that are on the roads dur­ing those peak morn­ing and af­ter­noon traf­fic hours. It’s very easy for us to al­low the stress of the roads to have us ag­i­tat­ed, ir­ri­tat­ed and frus­trat­ed. I would like to chal­lenge every­one to think of this new school year as a rest but­ton, a fresh start, a new school year res­o­lu­tion where we choose to man­age those stress­ful mo­ments with pos­i­tiv­i­ty rather than an­gry horn sound­ing, bad dri­ves and ag­gres­sive ges­tic­u­la­tions. Use the mo­ments in the car to teach your­self and the chil­dren to have a qui­et mo­ment, turn off the ra­dio and just fo­cus on deep-breath­ing, in­hal­ing and ex­hal­ing – breathe to a count of four, hold the breath for a count of four, then breathe out to a count of four. Every­one feels stress, and even though I am sure every­one has heard, “Just breathe” a mil­lion times, tak­ing deep, cen­tred breaths ac­tu­al­ly calms the mind and body, and I am sure most of us would pre­fer to start our days in a pos­i­tive frame of mind.

Hap­py new school year 2019-2020!