Get Ready for the First Day of School: Transitioning Back to School for ADHD Moms & Kids - "Top Tips" Encore #151
Transitions are rough for ADHD.
Back to School season brings a mountain of new details to absorb, way too many forms to keep track of, and deadlines swarming like flies.
So I created a Back To School preparedness list: let's turn the craziness into calm in August and September. When we have thought about how we can prepare for what we know is coming, it makes the doing a lot less overwhelming.
That means that we can use our finite amount of energy that's left over to tackle the unpredictable that inevitably comes with a new school year. And if the school year has already started for you, listen in; these tips can be used to make any part of the school year feel in control.
For more on school support for kids and moms with ADHD, listen to:
*Episode 26: Build a supportive Partnership with your child's teacher
*Episode 27: How to tell your Child's Teacher about their ADHD
*Episode 34: How to use Parent-Teacher Conferences to Help your ADHD Child at School
This episode originally aired in August of 2019. As I take a break for the summer and quality time with my family, I'm sharing episodes that will help you get ready for the summer, support you with some integral support skills for ADHD, and then get ready for the new school year.
I'm cooking up some good stuff behind the scenes. Plus I'll see you in the fall with brand new episodes! Talk to you then, Successful Mama!
To hang out with me over the summer, you can:
1) hop on over to our free Facebook community to meet your people and feel like you're not a weirdo -AND/OR-
2) join me on Wednesdays during our weekly meetings by signing up for my course, Daily Planning for ADHD Moms, where you'll get your day organized and actually show up for stuff mostly on time, or my program, Time Management Mastery for ADHD Moms where you'll create the best daily routine for you and your family that your ADHD brain will actually be okay with following. Get stuff done while you love your life & your brain.
Patricia Sung 00:00
Hey there successful mama, it's your friend Patricia Sung. How's your prioritizing? Are you making space for what you need? What matters to you? Are you resting? I recently asked myself these questions and the answers were terrible. No, I don't know. And no. So it was time for some reflection. How do I serve you well, and take care of me and my family at the same time, I know that I have to cut back on something in order to do more of another, which is not the solution I want to hear. But it's the realistic one. And that means taking a break from something I really love the podcast, and hang out with you each week. This is a very adulting decision on my part, because it's not what I want to do. What I want to do is make more episodes. I also want to spend time with my family during summer break, and I want to create space to serve my community better. This is a skill I've been working on with my ADHD coach is how can responsible Patricia and fun Patricia both get what they want. So when I look at this summer, and ask myself, How can I serve you better? Well, there's two places you can hang out with me either join our free Facebook group where there is a huge community of mamas who are amazing. We'll be there to answer your questions and cheer you on. And I love spending quality time with you guys in that group. Or you can join our student community because all of my students are invited to our Wednesday meetings. I've also got a lot of behind the scenes stuff going on to prepare for the fall. And I know I'll be at the zoo and swim lessons camp and all that. So that means this summer to make space for all that good stuff. I'll be sharing some oldies but goodies on the podcast straight out of the vault this summer.
Patricia Sung 01:40
Now, most of these are in the first 25 episodes I ever did. Full disclosure total perfectionist moment, I know that these first episodes are not as good as the ones I do now, because I've had way more practice. But I also know that there are some really great skills and information in this first group of podcasts. So I'm looking my perfectionism square in the face and sing to it new. I will not let you stop me from sharing important things with my mama's. One thing that I've learned the hard way in this podcast is that we learn by doing, we figure out what works by doing, not thinking about doing. And this is one way that I can be myself with you and say, I know that these are not the best episodes, but I know that they're really good information for you. So don't judge me. Okay, I chose episodes that will help you get ready for summer support you with some integral support skills for ADHD, and get ready for the new school year. So I'll see you in the fall with some new stuff. And hopefully I'll see you either in my student community or in my Facebook group. I'll link all that in the show notes so you know where to find me. Until then, talk to you soon successful mama.
Patricia Sung 02:46
Are you overwhelmed by motherhood and barely keeping your head above water? Are you confused and frustrated by how all the other moms make it look so easy. You can figure out how to manage the chaos in your mind, your home or your family. I get your mama parenting with ADHD is hard. Here is your permission slip to let go of the Pinterest worthy visions of organization and structure fit for everyone else. Let's do life like our brains do life creatively, lovingly, and with all our might. When we embrace who we are and how our brains work, we can figure out how to live our lives successfully, and in turn, lead our families. Well, at the end of the day, we just want to be good moms. but spoiler alert, you are already a great mom. ADHD does not mean you're doomed to be a hot mess mama, you can rewrite your story from shame spiral to success story. And I'll be right here beside you to cheer you on. Welcome to motherhood in ADHD.
Patricia Sung 03:52
Hey there successful mama, it's your friend Patricia. I am so excited that you are here today to chat with me. And I can't believe that. Like right now I'm recording this and it's the end of July and tying her back to school which as a former teacher, like poking my eyeballs out with sporks discussing school in July. But I just felt it was really important. And I was thinking about this earlier this week because I had pulled out my son's backpack off the hook that it lives on during the school year and we needed to use it for camp and I opened the backpack to put us to camp stuff in and lo and behold, I have never gone through his backpack on the last day of school. And they were still like his sweet thank you notes from his teachers for the end of your presence we gave them and his name tag of this adorable picture on it. His change of clothes for emergencies that no longer fit him now and I was just like, oh my goodness, I'm usually on top of this kind of thing. And I genuinely did not realize that this backpack was still full of school stuff. And it made me think about how my routines are just so ingrained in me and they make my life so wonderful. I know most people with ADHD think routine is a four letter word, but routines allow me to get done the stuff that I have to get done so that I have time to have fun and enjoy my life like I have to get laundry done no matter if I do it on a regular basis or wait until there's a mountain either way, the wonders got to get done, like people need clean underwear at some point. So your routine, the way you customarily do things is either one that you have planned for, and you have made it work for you, or your routine is to be a hot mess. And you know, I'm all about getting off the hot mess Express and bringing calm into our lives. So this is also for myself, because I have been struggling so hard, y'all with the summer transition, like every week is different.
Patricia Sung 05:42
Like one week, we're going to a camp, then we're going to VBS the next week, we have swim lessons. And it's been so fun. And I'm so thankful that my kids have these opportunities to enrich themselves over the summer. But like it's killing me, because every week is different. And I'm trying to get into a rhythm and there's never a rhythm. It's always something new. And so I started thinking about like, what do I need to do to get ready for the school year, because obviously, like the end of school, things got crazy. And our usual habit of cleaning up backpacks. As soon as we got home didn't happen, somehow the backpack ended up back on the hook. And there, it's at the last two months with all the stuff in it. So aren't, I'm actually excited to get back into the rhythm of things. And I made a list for myself. And hopefully this helps you as well, of all the things that we can do to prepare for the transition and make it as smooth as possible. Because we all know there's going to be hiccups, there going to be things that we didn't think about. But if we have a plan and preparation in place for all the things we do know are coming or have thought about that are coming, then we have time to deal with the hiccups or the surprises with grace. And the example that was just really glaring me in the face. Just this past couple of weeks, I've had this sinus infection that I've been fighting for three weeks, and there were a salad like four or five days, the beginning where I was just a mess in bed, just doing the bare minimum to get by. And like the house didn't fall apart laundry house caught up. So the fact that I didn't do any for four or five days was totally fine. Like those routines are what kept me sane, and didn't feel so stressed about relaxing and trying to rest and know that my family was still like fairly together. So here's my list of preparation that we can get done before school starts. Just to make our lives a little bit easier.
Patricia Sung 07:33
First one is make a foundational schedule. This is something that I learned from how Elrod he has the whole Miracle Morning series is that a foundational schedule runs through like what your week just generally looks like like, you know, and these are things that happen every week. So it's not like random things thrown in. But like you know, we go to school at this time pickup is at this time on Mondays, we have gymnastics at 530 Those kinds of things where it's always happens every week, you can find a form on Google have a foundational schedule and fill it in like I have one that I downloaded off of Excel that I can modify easily. And I want you to hang it up somewhere that you'll see it all the time and make sure you have a photo of it on your phone. So you have it with you. And this gives you a chance to kind of look ahead and see do I have any conflicts? Like did I schedule two things at one time, like two kids have to be in an activity at the same time. And I can't obviously be in two places at once. Make sure that you also put on there some downtime. You know what Wednesday is our chill day, we're not doing stuff this Thursday to be at home eating dinner as a family or whatever you want that to look like. But having that idea of generally how things are going to run on a week allows you to know what's generally happening. And then it's a lot easier to make decisions on things like if all of a sudden your son's like, hey, I really want to play soccer with so and so the practices are on Mondays and Thursdays at six you can look at your foundational schedule and know right away, hey, that's something that we can't do or okay, well, let's think about it, that might be an option. And this also is a time to plan out those extracurricular activities. If you know that your kids are going to be in swim lessons year round, then go ahead and figure out all the things that you can basically and put them in that foundation, they'll schedule so anything that you can think ahead on, get it locked in signed up, registration is done.
Patricia Sung 09:26
Make sure then that all of your activities are in your calendar, whether use your phone or a planner, paper wise, whatever you do, make sure you have your system set up and that everything that you already know about is already entered in there. So dates, meetings, you know, field trips, so that way as it comes up, you already have a system in place for how you're going to keep track of everything. I personally keep all of my appointments in terms of I have to be there at a certain time is all on my phone calendar. And then in terms of my to do list, I keep that all in my bullet journal on paper and I write out my schedule for the week. unique, but I realized that my phone reminds me 15 minutes before I need to be somewhere in case I forget, whereas my paper calendar is not going to remind me quick look at Facebook and get out the door. Okay, next item, make a folder or like a box or somewhere that all the school papers that need you to do something about are going to go when your kids come in the door after school and they're unloading backpacks, like, you know, when you have like 43,000 forms that you have to send back in that first week of school, like the kids know, anything that mom needs to fill out goes in this box or this folder. And I think it's really important to that I mentioned like, if you have big kids, they need to do their part first, they shouldn't just be dumping all that junk in a folder like you want to make it age appropriate. But at the same time, I feel like as moms a lot of times, we don't realize that our kid can do new things, because we always see them as our baby, whereas their teacher who only sees them as a fifth grader knows what fifth graders can do, and will have them doing things that you're like, Oh, I never really thought about that. How I would have parents be like, what the kids cleaned up their own lockers. And I'm like, Yeah, I handed them some spray bottle on paper towel. And like I had a breakup, some spray bottle face here and there. But like, they all know how to wipe down and clean stuff. And my parents were like, what, because they're still there, baby, you know, like, you don't think your baby can push that hard, because they really be but really like kids can do a lot of good stuff much younger than I think we push them for.
Patricia Sung 11:25
So anyway, getting back off my soapbox, sorry. You know, if your kid has like, for example, like if your high schooler is filling out paperwork to get a parking spot at school, they're in high school, like they should fill out all the stuff that they can fill out. And then give the paper to you not just hand you a pile of forms to fill out. Like, I'm sorry, if you can drive a car, like you can fill out a form, you know, okay, so once you have your spot where papers are going to go that the kids know, like, I'm going to be getting this out of my guy, I put it here and then when you're done with it, you can get back to them. Now keep in mind, if you have a lot of kids, you might want to make like a folder or box for each kid, if that makes life easier. So just kind of you know your boundaries. If you're if you know, you can look at it and tell which kids were Hey, go for it. If you're like, ooh, where did this come from, then you might want to have different areas for different kits. Next item, create your LaunchPad for all of the kids stuff like backpacks, sports equipment. So we're in the house where you know, their stuff is going to live from when they get home from school till when they leave for school the next day, obviously, like you can go down the depths of Pinterest and find 43 million beautiful ideas to do this. But like it also could just be like, Oh, come in hook in the hallway. Like you don't have to get crazy here. Just know that like, hey, all of a lot of this stuff isn't new in this spot. All of Joseph stuff is gonna go here and the kids get them in that habit of like your coat and your backpack and your mittens and your baseball bat like all that stuff needs to live where it goes. And that way at the end of the night, as part of your evening routine, you make sure everything's in the launchpad before they go to bed.
Patricia Sung 12:57
Another area you'll need is a homework area. If your kids are at that point where it's going to be a space that they you know, they can go do their work, they're not going to get distracted. You know whether your kid can work at the kitchen table or whether they need to be in a quiet room have handy nearby all the usual supplies like you don't need an Office Depot, but like you know, you have your pens and your pencils, erasers, rulers, you know the few basic things that they're going to need frequently on that one spot. Even if you put it on like like a shower caddy or something that it doesn't have to be like this ordeal to get ready for homework time. It's like you know where you're going, you know where the stuff is, let's get her done.
Patricia Sung 13:37
Do you wish there was a way to feel confident about your day, to know exactly where you need to be, when you need to be there and what you need to do today. I know what it's like to buy 15 Different planners and not use any of them for more than a week or two. When you're tired of disappointing your family, your boss and yourself. Imagine with me that tonight, when you look back at your day, you know that you did the things on your to do list, you showed up? Well, you feel productive and accomplished. That's why I created daily planning for ADHD moms, where I teach you how to keep a calendar and organize your to do list. When you learn these skills from another ADHD brain in super short videos, they finally make sense. So now you'll be able to keep up with the commitments you've made and feel competent and how you're organizing your day, you will walk away with an easy to stick to three step system to keep up with your calendar and a simple way to sort through the giant to do list and figure out what actually matters. Plus we have a weekly accountability group so you can ask questions when you're stuck and jump back on the wagon when you fall off, because you will fall off. That's just part of ADHD. But now you will know how to prepare for that. So if you're ready to figure out your day in a way that makes sense both for mom wife and an ADHD brain I want to help you make this happen. Join me at bit.ly/adhdplan. That's bit.ly/adhdplan, it's all lowercase letters. I cannot wait to see you feel confident and competent in how you run your family life.
Patricia Sung 15:17
Next item is the doozy. Write down a list of literally everything you are going to need for school time. I'm talking everything. This isn't just like school supplies, but doctor's appointments. Do they need a physical before they go back to school? Like do you need a vaccination paper affidavit thingy? Do you need to have any meetings? Do you need to buy a new lunchbox? Do you have to do any registrations like and I'm not just talking for school, like do you have a registration for some extracurriculars or something, make yourself a grocery list of all the food you're gonna need like for lunches and staff easy dinners for that first couple of weeks where things are not easy. And you don't want to be spending a lot of time sleeping at the stove when you're trying to figure out all these papers and the homework and all that if you need to work on any routines. Make a list of that any sports stuff that's going on, like literally every thing or activity or commitment or item, you need to check off the list to have for school, brainstorm all the things that you have an idea of what it's going to look like for you to be successful when the year starts.
Patricia Sung 16:28
Obviously, if you have little ones you may not know all the things that are coming, but you can think of a lot of stuff, you can ask some friends that have kids who have been at that school before, you can figure out a good amount of those things, even if you've never done it before. Next item, cleaning out, closets, drawers, etc. Of all the things that your kids either don't fit in anymore or are damaged now, pack up all the hand me downs for any younger siblings get out stuff that are your new quote unquote, hand me downs for this good like, get out on you like have your school appropriate clothing, if your kid wears uniforms, get all that out and make sure that their drawers in their closets are. And also think about the coat closet, things that they can utilize for the upcoming school years, get rid of all the stuff that you're not going to use. And then from there, that's when you can make your shopping list of okay, you only have three pairs of pants, I need you to be able to get through the week. So we need to get you two or three more pairs of pants to get through this week. Once you know what you have. That's when you want to go shopping, don't just go shopping and buy a bunch of stuff you don't need. I think a lot of times we buy way too much stuff for our kids like they like to wear the same things all the time. It's like the 80/20 rule for Atos principle, like your kids are gonna wear 20% of their clothes 80% of their time my four year old stupid of dinosaurs right now. And so probably six days a week he's wearing either identical shirt or a dinosaur shorts. Like am I kind of bummed that we have dinosaurs all the time. And he doesn't want to wear a polo shirts anymore. Yes. But like that's what he's going to wear. So we don't need to buy 30 T shirts for an elementary school kids like they're not going to wear all those, make sure you have enough for a week, maybe two, if that's how long you take to do laundry and then like, let it go. You don't need that much stuff for them really.
Patricia Sung 18:20
Okay, now that you have brainstormed all of these things, we're going to make it to do lists timeline and your work backwards. So hey, three days before school, we want to have the backpacks ready. So that means I need to go school supply shopping the week before so that you don't have so many things crammed at the last minute that you're stressed out. And then you'll know when do I need to really start getting these things ready. I would suggest having plenty of buffer room in there like trying to have literally everything ready three days ahead or a week ahead, just so that you have time for disasters do pop up like if your kid all sudden gets a broken leg three days before school and you're like, Hey, I was supposed to be school shopping today. Like that's about one. So give yourself plenty of room to do this in a low stress environment. Also, a great way to remove the burden from you is to start thinking about what tasks can your kids do themselves? Like we're teaching them life skills here. Our job is not to raise great kids but to raise great adults. So what are the things that you can teach them to do for themselves so that your life is easier later, I know that teaching them things takes 400 times longer, and it can be really frustrating. But look at it as an investment. You're sowing into them so that they can figure out how to do these things on their own so that eventually you're not doing them at all. And if you use this to do list timeline to prepare, then you're not rushed and then frustrated that your kids not doing something if you have the time to really show them. Here's how you put away your backpack. Here's where your stuffs gonna go. Here's where I need you to put your papers when they come in. All that stuff is ways that we're making them great humans when they go off to college or the workforce and can like actually do their laundry on their own. It's important, right, next item, start your morning and evening routines, at least a week before school starts, you already have so many new things going on the first week of school that we want to try to minimize the overload and not just for them, but for us as well.
Patricia Sung 20:27
Like if they're used to like before bed, making sure everything's ready for the morning, then on that first day school when they're like nervous, and you their tummies kind of hurting, maybe they're feeling a little stressed, or they're so excited that they're not really like paying attention to things like that's not the time to introduce a new routine of trying to like pack up your backpack and get out the door. You want to have that routine established, so that the first week of school, you can be chatting with them about like, here's what you can do if you don't see any of your friends at lunchtime, as opposed to like, put it in your bag and get in the car, which I'm sure none of us have ever done. Anyways, what kind of routines am I talking about here. So like in the morning, things like getting up immediately, like make your bed come down and eat your breakfast, go get upstairs, brush your teeth, get dressed, do any tours that you're responsible before, double check your launch pad that we talked about earlier, is ready, like does it have all the things you need, and then go about your summer fun as usual. But get them in the habit of spending that first 20 to 30 minutes that they're up in getting everything ready for the day so that you can be in that routine of getting out the door on time when school hits. bedtime routines. I like to look at my calendar for the next day we talk about what we're going to be doing that gives us a chance to prep our launch pad like what things are we going to need? Okay, well, we have blank activity, we need these three sports equipment items, choosing your hose for the next day. So you already know what you have to do.
Patricia Sung 21:55
So you know, like what's an appropriate school outfit. We also My son loves ask Alexa, what the weather is so that we we know like, oh, it's gonna rain tomorrow. Okay, well, then we're gonna choose different clothes, getting ready for bed, then having a little like relaxing time, preferably no screens for you know, whatever is appropriate for you. But you know, I've been doing some reading about the blue light really inhibits our ability to make melatonin and fall asleep. And I love reading. And I often read on my book, I get library books on my phone app all the time. In here, I'm ready like all this horrible stuff, trying to go to sleep quickly. And so I'm trying to do a better job of just getting real books. But anyway, I'm getting off on tangent. So you know, give your kids a little time to relax, read a story like you will play a board game, whatever it is a kind of like, calm down, please hear me I'm not saying like no screens ever. I'm just saying like, do it earlier so that your kids aren't looking at this blue light for you know, the 20 minutes before bed or whatever it is anyway, sorry, moving along.
Patricia Sung 22:53
Next item, moving our wakeup and bedtimes back over like one or two weeks before school because obviously we're in summer routine slash non routine right now. And I don't know about you, but my kids are going to buy like probably an hour later than they normally do in the school year. And so you know, you know your kiddo, how long are they going to take to adjust to that new time? Like, how far off are you from the time where you really need to be getting up for school, you might have to start a salad two weeks before school, because you really want to have that week before school to already be in that new times that your kids used to it as opposed to just like, I know, they always recommend they're like, oh, we'll just move it up the three days before but like, let's be honest here, like, I'm not a morning person. Like if you want me to get up two hours earlier, like adjusting my bedtime three days before is not going to make me well rested for that third day, like I need to have gotten there over time. And like already been doing it for a little bit before I feel well rested. Oh and excellent. I was reading this really cool article about goal setting plans with their kiddo I think it was from Anna attitude magazine. And just talk to them a little bit about creating that positive mindset for school that like they are going to be successful that they are going to have friends, even just one good friend is really all your kidneys.
Patricia Sung 24:09
But whatever they're like feeling anxious about it gives them a chance to kind of talk to you about, well, I'm really worried about what if I don't have any friends in my lunch period, you know how you can attack those proactively and just having this like discussion about how things are going to be successful I think is so important, not just for us, but for our kids too. And think about that goal setting ahead of time like to make time for those kinds of discussions with your kids ahead of time so that they're going into school with a positive mindset of like, I'm going to be able to this I'm going to turn my homework in on time. I know I can do this and things like that, that they can really help them push through and when they're struggling in school because you know sometimes school is really hard. And then my last tip is block out the weekend before school starts to relax. Don't do any of that stuff like have it all done before so that that last weekend you Then just enjoy, not be stressed out. If you can even get ready like like the whole week early, then just enjoy that last week like, go do all the last chance like Pool time and go to the zoo and do all that fun stuff so that you're ending the summer on like a fun, stress free note, you've got your routines in place, your kids are feeling calm and you're feeling calm and just creating that place where your home is that refuge for your kids where they feel comfortable, they feel calm, they know what's coming. They know how to be successful. Just give yourself that space that week or the weekend before to just enjoy.
Patricia Sung 25:39
So Mama, that was a really lengthy list. Like, oh, I didn't realize how long I'd be talking here. But these are all really helpful things that I want you to have a chance to ponder like, Hey, what are the things that are going to work for our family and getting ready for this new time? This new season preparing so that your school year for you and for your kids is setting off with a positive mindset where you're feeling calm, and just that you're enjoying the next season instead of this like frazzled Tizzy of new things for a month. So successful Mama, I know that you can take one or none. If you don't like me, hey, don't listen, I guess, or all of these things and find a way to make your August and September as joyful as possible in these times of crazy. If you haven't had a chance, please identify the bottom of the iTunes app and give me five stars so that we can keep on sharing the successful mama mindset with others. Have a super awesome week. All right. I'll talk to you soon. Tomorrow resources, classes and community head over to my website motherhoodinadhd.com