Top 5 Back to School Tips
The start of the school term, while exciting for some children, can be daunting and overwhelming. Worries can range from being afraid of not being able to make new friends to the number of assessments they need to complete. Such stress can be difficult for a child to manage alone, especially amongst children who are not old enough to have already developed some sort of coping mechanism for their struggles.
Luckily there are ways that parents can help out. Here are our top tips to ease your child into the routine of school again.
1. Help them come up with an organised routine
Waking up at noon, messy hair, not doing work and lazing around instead of exercising or doing chores. Sound like someone you might know?
As we all know, it’s difficult to get things done when we’re on holidays and your child is most likely going through the same problem, so setting up a schedule will help ensure that they are efficient with their time. If your child does not like schedules, try a calendar which they can customise themselves with coloured pens or stickers.
2. Communicate with them about homework
School’s back and so is the dreaded word: homework. If your child finds homework easy and enjoys completing it, you are very lucky and have no problems in this regard. However, if your child would rather stare at a wall for hours than do a worksheet, there could be some ways to ease their struggle.
Talk to your child and try to pinpoint the problem. Is the house too loud at times? Is their brother being too distracting? Are they struggling with the work? Do they need help with a particular topic? Understanding what your child is thinking is the first step to helping them overcome these difficulties.
3. Make sure they are getting enough exercise
While it may be tempting for your child to use their free time to flop on to the couch with a mobile device in hand, physical activity takes priority over the newest Youtube video. Aside from all the health benefits that exercise provides, exercise provides a large boost to concentration which can help them with their studies.
If they enjoy playing team sports, they can learn many different values and skills including discipline with training, teamwork, and leadership. With all the holiday dinners in their bellies, it’s a great time to get them back into physical activity.
4. Encourage a balanced lifestyle
Exams are rolling around, especially the big Selective Test coming up in March. While it is indeed the time to bite the bullet and work hard at this point for our diligent year 6 students, we must also remember to promote a healthy, balanced environment for them.
This includes maintaining their extra-curricular art classes or that play date with their best friend. Having a balanced lifestyle not only makes your child happier but also provides them valuable lessons that studying cannot teach, building the foundations of a well-rounded child.
5. Keep an eye on their stress levels
As mentioned earlier, with key exams coming up, it can be a very stressful time of the year for a lot of children. While some children work much harder with some sort of pressure, we need to make sure that they are not over stressing themselves. Too much stress can lead to a vicious cycle of being too anxious to focus on study which is followed by even more stress because they haven’t studied enough and so on.
This is very counterintuitive for a lot of the students as they will not be able to truly achieve what they are capable of. If you notice that your child is feeling a lot of pressure from all the studying, it would be a good idea to talk to them about it and ensure that they know that these exams are not the end of the world.
The start of the school term should be an exciting time for many, and yet, it is understandably difficult for many kids to get back into the swing of things. Hopefully, these tips will help you in smoothing out the transition between your child’s holiday mode and their healthy, hardworking school period.
Published 6 February 2021