The new school year is upon us and the Littles (and Big Littles) head off to another year of learning. For those of us with children, the calendar year actually revolves around the school year. September feels like a new beginning and most of us are totally done with the year by next May. Summer is a freebie.

Well, summer is over. Along with the new school clothes, the spizzy new backpack and the coveted lunch box treats, there are some things that we can all do to set up our children, and indeed the whole family, for a successful year.

Here’s my ABCs…

A = Anxiety 

If your child struggles with any sort of anxiety about school, whether it’s about the academic requirements, the social scene, or anything else to do with the school setting, get your child help.

There are techniques and strategies that can be learned and will help not only now, but for the rest of their lives. It’s not a long process to acquire the skills to manage anxiety, and it’s worth the investment.

B = Bullying 

This epidemic of bad behavior has touched just about every child who ever attended school, whether as a victim, perpetrator, or bystander. If your child was a victim last year, get out in front of the issue NOW. If you don’t know how to teach assertiveness and non-violent communication skills, find someone who can.

If your child was a bully last year (and as difficult as it might be to admit this, not doing something about it is far worse), there are a number of reasons why children bully others and all of them are indicators of a child whose needs are not being met in a positive, consistent way.

Find out what they need and provide it – you’ll probably need help with this.

Lastly, if your children were bystanders; witnesses to bullying without intervening, teach them how to be “Upstanders” instead. Bullying is a systemic social problem that requires a systemic response to eradicate. Help your children be part of the solution instead of part of the problem.

C = Competence & Confidence

You get two for the price of one on this letter. We all want our children to be competent and confident, but if we do nothing to help them develop this perspective, the outcome of growing up might not be as wonderful as you’re hoping for. Competence and confidence are developed in the crucible of trying and failing, trying again and failing better, trying again and succeeding.

When we rescue our children from the effort of learning (anything) we instill a degree of learned helplessness that is the opposite of competence and confidence.

Don’t pack their school bags (and don’t let the nanny do it, either!). Don’t drive their homework to school if they forgot to put in their school bag. Let your children experience the natural consequences of their choices and actions, good and bad.

Help them celebrate when they persist at something until they’re successful. It is much better for our children to learn cause & effect when they are making choices about homework than to have to learn this principle when making decisions about finances or adulting.

Don’t do anything for your children that they are capable of doing themselves even if the way they do a thing is not up to your standards. And on that note, don’t let the nanny do it either.

s = SLEEP (ABCs, right?) 

There just isn’t any way to overemphasize how important sleep is for a growing, learning child. We know from research that when a child misses even one hour of sleep per night from Sunday to Wednesday, on Thursday morning your Little may have lost up to 20 IQ points.

Lack of sleep makes anyone stupid. Really. Sleep deprivation is a torture technique. If we want our children to have the best possible opportunity to be good at this learning business, we need to set them up to be successful.

Negotiate with the family for evening outings to be limited to the weekends, Thursday night, or at most, one evening a week. Get your children to bed so that they get a minimum of eight hours of sleep per school night.

The vast majority of us choose to pay for our children’s education because we want it to be good, so it seems paradoxical to pay for education and then send them off to school every day in a haze of fatigue and mental fog. Just sayin’.

A little strategic planning could set your Littles up for a great school year. Why not take the time and do that? You won’t be sorry.

Susannah-Joy is a psychotherapist and complex trauma specialist based in Canada. Find her on Twitter @aboutthattrauma, Instagram @SuJo1963 and Facebook @william.associates. Featured image from Unsplash.