​As you and your child pre­pare for the first day of the new school year, WE cre­at­ed a check­list to help ease the edge, re­duce the nat­ur­al anx­i­eties as­so­ci­at­ed with the tran­si­tion from va­ca­tion-mode to school-mode and en­sure you feel pre­pared!

The new school year means new friends, teach­ers, clothes, and class­rooms. It’s nor­mal for chil­dren (and their par­ents) to feel anx­ious about re­turn­ing to school. What­ev­er their age, many chil­dren are ap­pre­hen­sive about start­ing school or go­ing back to school. The good news is there’s a lot you can do to ease their minds and help them get ready for a new school year.

Here are some sim­ple ways to ease those first day nerves shared on my favourite Par­ents Blog:

1. En­cour­age in­de­pen­dence

Chil­dren who play an ac­tive role in prepar­ing for back to school – such as choos­ing and or­ga­niz­ing school sup­plies and new clothes – are more like­ly to get ex­cit­ed about go­ing back to school, which in turn eas­es their jit­ters. Is your child old enough­for chores like clear­ing the din­ner ta­ble or mak­ing lunch­es or even cook­ing in the kitchen? Dai­ly, age-ap­pro­pri­ate tasks will help your child gain in­de­pen­dence and con­fi­dence.

2. Es­tab­lish healthy habits

In­volve your chil­dren in choos­ing and prepar­ing healthy lunch­es and snacks. Help them find phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties they en­joy. Take them shop­ping for healthy snacks and lunch items they can pack them­selves. Try to stick to reg­u­lar meal­times even dur­ing the va­ca­tion time to main­tain rou­tines.

3. Re-es­tab­lish a rou­tine

Dur­ing va­ca­tion, rou­tines go out the door! It’s cru­cial­ly im­por­tant to es­tab­lish a con­sis­tent rou­tine as they pre­pare for their re­turn to school. Write out the steps in the rou­tine and re­hearse them with your child. In the evening, this could in­clude do­ing home­work, play­time, brush­ing their teeth, hav­ing a bath, and read­ing be­fore bed.

4. Ear­ly to bed, ear­ly to rise

Get­ting back in­to a school sleep sched­ule won’t hap­pen overnight! A few days be­fore school starts, get your child in­to the habit of go­ing to bed ear­li­er. Gen­tle wind­ing-down ac­tiv­i­ties such as bath time and read­ing be­fore bed can help your child re­lax.

5. Lim­it screen time

Back to school is the per­fect op­por­tu­ni­ty to re-es­tab­lish screen time lim­its. Why not have the whole fam­i­ly “un­plug” in the evenings be­fore bed­time? Choose a spot where every­body can charge their de­vices overnight. Even con­sid­er us­ing an alarm clock in­stead of a cell phone to wake up in the morn­ings!

6. Talk about first-week jit­ters

Re­as­sure your child that be­ing ner­vous is nat­ur­al – even for teach­ers. You can help your child cope with these feel­ings when you:

• Let them ex­press their fears. Per­haps you can of­fer sto­ries of your own first-day jit­ters when you were a child.

• Teach them to breathe deeply and slow­ly to calm their nerves.

• Dis­cuss the sce­nar­ios that wor­ry them. For ex­am­ple, if they’re wor­ried about who to sit with or talk to on the first day, help them plan a strat­e­gy and re­hearse it so they’ll know what to do.

7. Talk about safe­ty

Re­view out­door safe­ty rules – things like look­ing both ways be­fore cross­ing the street, tak­ing the same route every day if they are walk­ing, fa­mil­iaris­ing them­selves with cross­walk rules, and be­ing cau­tious in talk­ing to strangers.

8. Map it out

If your kids are start­ing at a new school, prac­tice walk­ing or dri­ving to the bus stop or to the school build­ing a week or two be­fore school starts. You could even play in the school play­ground be­fore school starts. This cre­ates fun mem­o­ries as­so­ci­at­ed with the school be­fore va­ca­tion ends.

9. Choose the right back­pack

Back­packs that are too heavy or worn im­prop­er­ly could re­sult in mus­cle strain, headaches, and neck pain. Try to choose a back­pack made of stur­dy, light­weight fab­ric with wide, padded straps that will sup­port your child’s shoul­ders. Watch that they don’t sling it over just one shoul­der.

10. Cel­e­brate the start of a new school year

If you cel­e­brate the first day of school, your kids will see back-to-school as a tran­si­tion they can re­al­ly en­joy. Don’t for­get to take a pic­ture on the front step in their first-day-of-school out­fits. It’s go­ing to be a great year!

WE con­grat­u­late all stu­dents and par­ents and en­cour­age you all to wel­come the new year with a pos­i­tive mind­set and hope for en­light­en­ing ex­pe­ri­ences; dis­cov­er­ing, and learn­ing new things and a bright chap­ter for this aca­d­e­m­ic year!

- Dr. Safeeya Mo­hammed

Send us those back to school pho­tos: guardian.wemagazine@gmail.com