It is either an honor or a chore to be responsible for dropping your kids off at school. The choice is truly yours. Strive to do things to capitalize on this time with your kids. This article applies to both moms and dads who take their kids to school. How many of you have friends with kids older than yours? What’s the single most popular piece of advice you get from them? With me it’s; “Take advantage of each grow up so quick”! Other times it is “Spend as much time as you can because tomorrow may never come”.
With that said I try to enjoy the very short trip to school with my daughter Cheyenne. I keep the radio off and talk to her about her school day. She enjoys her school but I know the days can be long so I try to plant reminder seeds of the fun things to come. For example “Hey Cheyenne, don’t forget, we’re going camping this weekend”. I talk about needing weekend plans as adults in my book Building Foundations By Setting Goals to boost our moods and ease the grind of the work week. This concept works well for kids too. Remind them to focus on the fun times ahead when they get frustrated or tired of being in school. Tell them it will help them plow ahead with their school work moving them closer to the fun times.
Remind your kids how proud you are of them and how independent they are becoming. I cannot emphasize this enough. When appropriate, have conversations about what to do to continue to be a great student. You can talk about things like; Don’t forget to raise your hand to speak and the basic things that will keep them in good standing with the teacher. Be careful not to turn this piece into a preaching segment or your kids will get turned off.
Finally, do what you can to inspire your kids to let them know they can (and want to) talk to you about their school experience. When they share good and not so good things about their day be sure to thank them for sharing that with you and remind them that you truly care about the details of their school day experience. The more we know as parents the better we can be at fixing issues before they become problems and turning good things into great things.
I wish you the very best school year ‘s going to be a great year!
