Back to School: First Day Challenges and the Story of Your Family

Hello, from Lone Star Nannies!

We all love stories - reading them to our kids, watching them on screens, and living them out in our daily lives. For most students, the first day of school is fast approaching, and while your child may or may not be ready for summer to end, this post is for all the parents helping their kids navigate common back to school fears. Establishing traditions is one way to help your son or daughter develop a greater sense of who they were created to be, have fun as a family, and impart values along the way. 

While we may not realize it, we make sense of the world by the stories we tell ourselves every day.  What we believe, how we think, and how we respond to emotions are all part of a narrative we call worldview. As parents, we not only address normal first day jitters, we equip our kids with a lens through which they see the world around them. This starts in preschool with little ones hesitant to say goodbye and lasts through senior year when we’re the ones crying as they make their way in the world. You’ll find countless books and blogs about parenting online, but at the end of the day, we want our kids to know that we love them and desire the best for their lives. There’s no way we’ll do this perfectly…but that’s a blog topic for another day!

Here are three things you can try with your family to help reframe school within the context of a greater purpose - living out values. With a little planning and creativity, you may not encounter as much resistance on the first day.

#1 TURN THE SCHOOL YEAR INTO A GAME 

If your kids love competition, you could make seemingly mundane trips to school into a year long rivalry, complete with a repurposed white board as a scoreboard. Behaviors that earn points could include household chores, getting to breakfast on time, or hygiene such as brushing your teeth. There may be some mornings you have to play referee, but at the end of the day, the best defense truly is a good offense. You’re the coach, and you have a game plan that will get your kids to the finish line.

• EXAMPLE END OF YEAR CELEBRATION

  • Make certificates for each child and have an awards ceremony, using the opportunity to share ways you’re proud of them and how they’ve grown this year. You could also make a trophy or other desirable award that can be passed around your family. 

• EXAMPLES OF CORE VALUES

  • Perseverance/Endurance

  • Trying new things

#2 USE YOUR IMAGINATION

This one might be especially appealing if your child is an avid reader or spends hours  entertaining guests in the playroom. You’re not just “going to school,” you’re needed for a top secret mission where you must bring back some essential math concept from the day…The world is counting on you. 

• EXAMPLE END OF YEAR CELEBRATION

  • Have a movie night with your family at the end of the school year that goes along with the theme that appealed most to your child’s imagination. If your child applied learning by bringing home clues to solve a mystery, grab some popcorn and watch an age appropriate detective movie!

• EXAMPLES OF CORE VALUES

  • Creativity

  • Curiosity 

#3 MAKE IT VISUAL

If your child set up lemonade stands with spreadsheets throughout the summer, they may be a good candidate for the goal driven approach. Tracking their progress through vision boards, goal charts, or marble jars could be highly motivating. 

• VISION BOARD

  • At the beginning of the school year, have your child print or cut out pictures related to their goals and let them use their creativity to create a poster for their bedroom wall. When they get in the car for the first day, you can remind them how proud you are of their goals and how much you love the poster they created. 

• GOAL CHART/MARBLE JAR

  • If your son or daughter prefers more quantitative results, decide together on some great goals for the school year and watch them smile the first time you place a sticker next to their name. You could break the goals into categories with measurable activities to do each week or set goals such as “Read 30 minutes every day” and put a sticker in the box for each day on a calendar. You could also drop a marble into an empty mason jar every time your student reads until it’s completely full. 

• EXAMPLE END OF YEAR CELEBRATION

  • Reward your child with an experience they can look forward to that celebrates the value of working hard and playing hard. This could be anything from cooking their favorite meal together to planning the itinerary and budget for a weekend getaway at the end of the school year. 

• EXAMPLES OF CORE VALUES

  • Discipline

  • Hard Work Pays Off

We hope the ideas above help you think of more ways you can uniquely connect with your family this school year. We’re all about connecting at Lone Star Nannies and know that even the greatest challenges of being a parent are opportunities to help your kids see life within the pages of a greater narrative - the story you’re writing with your family. 

With care,

Lone Star Nannies