Back-to-School Survival Guide

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By Ann Douglas

Hey, moms and dads, it's back to school time again-that crazy time of year when you might as well just camp out in the mall parking lot rather than driving back and forth across town in some unending quest for all the back-to-school essentials. (Of course, if you've got a kid in that delightful pre-teen, I-have-to-visit-all-the-malls-in-town-before-I-purchase-a-single-item-of-clothing stage, you'll have to rethink your strategy a little to allow for multiple treks to multiple mall parking lots.) Just remember to pace yourself, folks: we've got the entire month of September ahead of us. (Forget what T.S. Eliot said: it's not April that's the cruelest month-it's September!) Here are some tips on surviving the Mother of All Challenges-back to school time!

1. Start your back-to-school shopping early. You know that old expression "The early bird gets the worm"? I never really understood what it was all about until I became a parent. Until you've frantically sifted through the picked-over rubble in the school supplies section of your local department store in a futile attempt to find a pencil case of a particular style and colour, you don't have any true appreciation for the importance of being that early bird.

2. Establish the shopping ground rules before you hit the mall. Your negotiating power goes down the drain after a couple of hours of shopping. At that point, you're willing to buy just about anything your kid wants just to make the pain stop. That's why it's important to establish your kids' clothing budget long before you leave home and to mutually agree on the number and price of outfits to be purchased beforehand.

3. Encourage your kids to hold back some of their clothing budget until after they start school. This is a trick of the trade I learned from Canadian Parents Online teen expert Diane Wolf and it's saved my skin on more than one occasion. If you let your kids buy all their back-to-school clothes before they find out what all "the cool kids" are wearing, they could end up with a closet full of brand new clothes that have been labelled "uncool" by mid-September.

4. Take advantage of the start of a new school year to rethink family routines. We may celebrate New Year's Eve on January 1st, but it's September that marks the start of a new year if you've got school-aged kids. So take advantage of that decidedly "new year's" spirit to renegotiate chores, allowances, extra-curricular schedules, clean out your kids' closets, and so on.

5. Start adjusting your kids' bedtimes before school begins. Otherwise, your kids will end up suffering from what Wolf refers to as "summer lag"-the academic equivalent of jet lag! (Hey, it's not exactly reasonable to expect a kid who's been sleeping in until 11:00 a.m. all summer to be functional at 7:00 a.m. on the first day of school!)

6. Don't overdo things on the Labour Day weekend. The last thing you want to do is have your kids heading off to school feeling totally fried, so save that 1000 km roundtrip visit to Grandma until another weekend. Besides, you'll need time to load up on lunch box essentials and other last-minute bits and pieces, something that's pretty hard to accomplish if you don't pull into the driveway until midnight the night before school starts.

7. Keep your evenings as free as possible during the first week of school. Not only do you need to leave time in your schedule to squeeze in all those unpredictable errands that have to be run that first week-like dashing out to load up on whatever school supplies the teachers forgot to tell your kids about ahead of time, or spending an hour in line so that you can sign your kids up for swimming lessons!-you also need to be available to listen to your kids as they bring you up to speed on all those exciting first-week developments.

8. Plan to cut corners when it comes to making meals. You have enough other things on your plate without having to worry about, well, what's on your plate! Order in pizza, pick up subs on your way home from work, or reheat that mystery casserole that's been languishing in the back of your freezer. The nutrition police won't book you for cutting corners in the kitchen one week of the year. Trust me, I should know!

9. Take care of your own needs. It's easy to spend the entire month of September running around at breakneck speed, picking up school supplies, signing your kids up for extra-curricular activities, and making the rounds of school open houses and picnics. Don't forget to take time for yourself during this crazy time of year. Otherwise, you could find yourself feeling supremely grumpy by the time the month draws to a close. (Once again, I'm speaking from experience here.)

10. Set some parenting goals for yourself for the upcoming year. Do you want to play a more active role at your kids' school, be a little more enthusiastic when it comes to helping them with their homework (groan!), or make a point of communicating with their teachers on a regular basis? While your kids are busy setting some academic goals for themselves, you should take a moment to set some goals for yourself as a parent. Who knows? Maybe you'll surprise yourself and walk away with straight As.

Ann Douglas is the author of The Mother of All Baby Books (Macmillan Canada), new this month. She can be contacted via her web site: www.having-a-baby.com