When a new school year begins parents have a lot to prepare from buying new supplies and clothes, stocking the fridge for those packed lunches, and getting their kids back into a routine. The latter can prove difficult if your child did not participate in any summer activities that kept them on a schedule.

It’s a good idea to start preparing a few weeks in advance of the start of school. Here are some tips to help ease your child back into the “school groove”.

Start adjusting bed times and wake-up times
For those children who stay up late into the night and sleep late into the day during the summer, it’s often difficult to begin waking up early for school again. Start a couple of weeks before the new year and adjust their bed time by an hour (an hour earlier) and wake them up an hour earlier than they have been waking up. You could do an hour every day but it might be easier to do an hour every two or three days until their body adapts to the change.

Limit screen time
If you weren’t already limiting screen time over the summer, it’s time to begin. This is especially important before bed time. Watching videos and being active on social media keeps their minds active and will make it more difficult to fall asleep when it’s time. It will also make it easier for them to adapt to going all day without their devices once school begins.

Exercise
For children who have to walk to the bus stop or walk to and from school every day, it’s a good idea to get them up and on their feet if they have been sedentary most of the summer. Get their bodies used to moving again. Not only will it be less tiring on them once school begins but it will lessen the time it takes them to make it to that bus stop.

Re-establish a routine
This one is probably the most important. School is all about routine and some children find it difficult to adapt to routine if they haven’t had to follow one for a lengthy amount of time. Begin waking them up at the same time every day. Give them breakfast, followed by an activity. The activity can be whatever you choose so long as it’s always at the same time daily. Give them lunch at the same time. Give them a chore to complete at the same time. It will make it much easier for them to transition into “school mode”.

Even if you do all of this those few days of the new school year can still be a struggle, here are a few things you can do the night before to help the mornings go a bit more smoothly:
• Put supplies into backpacks

• Pack lunches
• Set out clothing to be worn
• Shower or bathe the night before instead of in the morning

The beginning of a new school year can be stressful on everyone involved, why not set yourself up for success?