Dad's Back-to-School Tips

Getting Your Child Ready For School
Entering a new classroom/school, to children, is equivalent to an adult entering Madison Square Garden for the first time. It can be very overwhelming to your child. Dictionary For Dads suggests you recognize your child's feelings but keep a positive and optimistic attitude. Continue to relay this positive attitude to your child for weeks, or even months before their first day at school or when attending a new school. Remind them of the positive aspects, such as meeting new teachers, friends and enjoying activities and learning. Many parents tend to experience a lot of anxiety over their child attending a new school. Some parents exhibit this anxiety and transfer that fear to the child, which is a recipe for an unsuccsessful transition for your child.  This is because the parent's anxiety only makes the child feel afraid and un-safe. The parent is the one being the child trusts and they look to you for assurance and confidence at such a young age.Therefore, if you are afraid and unsure then they will be as well.

School anxiety is usually related to fears of the unknown. The best way to help your child with these fears, is to take them to the school a few times before school even starts. If there is a public field adjacent to the school, spend a half hour playing there with your child. This will make the environment familiar and safe for your child. If the school is accessible, spend some time with your child in the school prior to the day your child starts in class. We recommend you find the cafeteria, the bathrooms, and become familiar with the exits and the entrance doors if this is a new school for your child.  This will enable you and your child to become familiar with the school together and ease both of your anxiety.

Dad's Back To School Tips

Preparation Is Essential To Success
Children worry about having all of the supplies they need to get through the day. Some worry about having cool clothes and backpacks and some worry about the right lunch box. Now these worries often to not show up until the day before school in a crisis. Do not let that happen get everything done now.  Enlist your child in the planning for the first day of school-this gives a sense of control and independence to your child.  Have them make a list with two columns. On one side will be a list of what they need on the other will be a list of what they want. I suggest you get all of what they need and some of what they want. This is a good exercise for children who sometimes can not differentiate on what they need/want. 

Develop An Alliance With Your Child's Teacher
Let your child know you and the teacher are there to assist and support them in their academics and sports activities.  Remind them that you had your own difficulties with certain subjects and relied on your parents and teachers to help you. Do not be controlling or a perfectionist father this will contribute to your child's anxiety and they will worry about not doing good enough in school.

Stress the importance of excellent efforts instead of grades, and the value of learning as opposed to "performing". If the fear of failure exists from past performance, provide appropriate support systems: tutoring, extra study time or special placements.

Lunch In The Cafeteria
Each school has different lunch programs. We recommend sending your child to school with a nutritious lunch from home. However, if you are unable to do that make sure to get your child enrolled in the lunch program at school.  Children come up with cafeteria worries that you never thought of....

How will I pay for my lunch? - Where will I sit?

What if I don't finish...or don't like the food?  Again, to avoid this, pack your child's lunch with their favorite lunch food and continue to send lunch from home as long as you need to.

The Journey To School
The condition of most of the school buses in this country are sad. These buses lack seat belts and are often very loud and disrupting. School buses are often a  breeding ground for school age violence or bullying.
The noise, confusion and aggression  make riding the school bus a very common fear for some students and should be carefully considered.

Dictionary For Dad's recommends you become familiar with the school bus driver and the transportation company that is contracted by the school to transport your child. Provide all of these individuals your telephone number and for the first week or so, walk with your child out to the bus. If riding the school bus becomes a problem for your child, we suggest you find alternate means of transportation. Many children do not like school because of the bus ride they endure twice a day. Do not let bus ride or a bully interfere with your child's academic experience.

What Goes On After School
This depends on each individual household and the activities in place after school. If there is not a parent home after school, we suggest, you have one primary caretaker in place as well as two back up caretakers, in case your primary drops off.  Prior to the day school starts, Dictionary For Dad's suggests that you have the caretaker and your child do "mock school days" to ensure that everyone knows the schedule and where they are supposed to be. Also, have back up plans in place,  if someone is running late etc... All caretakers should be accessible at all times by telephone for the parents.