Tips for Going Back to School
It's still summer, the sun is out in all its glory, and I love everything about it. The way it pours through the windows in the morning, how it warms your skin throughout the day, and the gorgeous, sunset filled late nights. The summer sun amazes me. It gives me so many moments to cherish. As the summer’s drawing to a close, we are trying to make the most of our summer days with the kids sleeping in, casual dinners of corn and BBQ, and open schedules – each day looking different from the next.
But with school around the corner, I find the final summer moments harder to enjoy. Something inside me changes and I shift into a new gear. Regardless of the reality that there are a few precious moments left of summer to cherish with my kids, I enter a season that I can’t really characterize any other way than.. nesting. Similarly to when I was expecting a baby, suddenly, the most ridiculous things take priority like cleaning the walls and baseboards. Ok, maybe that’s not too crazy, but did I mention using toothpicks and Q-tips to clean places that would never again be seen or clean again during my child's life? That same drive settles in over me, making me create lists and spreadsheets of budgets, temporary calendars as I try to sort out the new activity schedules and make hard decisions as to what to and what not to enrol my children in.
The ultimate goal for me, and our family, is to enter fall energized and organized; ready to make the most of a season that is chalked full of growth and opportunities.
So how do you create a school year schedule that will keep you and your kids thriving?
Each season is different and unique, and fall is one of my favourites. Just like January and summer, fall is the beginning of a new season marked by new jobs, activities, schools and friends. With those changes, other changes may also be needed to keep mom, a sane taxi driver at the end of the day.
I’ve learned from living with a husband who travels and can have unpredictable responsibilities, that I need to schedule the kids lives in such a way that, if needed, I can run it alone and not run out of gas doing it. That means looking at each of our kids and their activities of choice, looking at my commitments, and then going through a process of weighing our time, money and values against them, so that in this season, we set our family up to not just survive but fully thrive.
Time
Time, is one of the most valuable and sought-after commodities we have. In our house, we look at time the same way we look at goals; we prioritize physical, social, spiritual and family. What does this look like? Well, we do our best to factor in time for our kids to keep their bodies physically active, time to grow friendships and relationships, to spend time with God, and time to give back. Then finally, we ask ourselves how much time we have as a family to do the things together that we really value. For us that means three family dinners a week, so we can connect and eat in a healthy way. That also means choosing one family activity that we like to do together (currently that’s skiing/snowboarding).
The problem in this next season is, when you factor in the time the kids are in school, the time needed for snacks and dinner and homework depending on age, it doesn’t leave much time left. Admittedly, we have learned from doing it wrong and overscheduling our children in the past. So, contrary to our current culture, we decided less is more when it comes to activities.
Money
Oh, how I (and probably you as well), wish this were not a consideration, but I think regardless of financial situation, this is always a consideration because as they say, “time is money”. So, lets talk about money. Fall is a great time to update or create a budget for your family and it makes it much easier to see what is available for activities once it’s done. For us, after we’ve finalized the budget, we list out all the potential activities, and check them against both our goals, our time and then our budget. If the list is exceeding in any of these areas, we talk to our kids about compromise and we, whenever possible, involve them in these choices.
We love to give to our kids all the opportunities we can, and I imagine you do as well, but we know from our own lives that stretching ourselves financially for a child’s activities can lead to resentment towards the activity or the child for choosing that activity. I believe that it is a privilege to be able to give our children any activities outside of school, but not something that is worth any financial stress or would take from our giving budget, which we value more.
Values
Your family’s values are so important when setting up your schedule for a new season. Our values, for example, are deeply rooted in how we choose to spend time together. We love family time; we love to hang out and play games together, go on adventures together, swim and ski together, read together, etc. Family time, time for hospitality, giving, adventuring together, these things that we value as a family need to be protected.
Recently, we made the decision to say no to an activity for one of our kids that would have made family dinner time impossible to have. At the same time, we said yes to a class they’d been wanting for some time. It’s a class that will really help to grow the gifts and talents we can already see. We also said no to this activity for financial reasons. Remember I said we like to ski? Our value for family time on the mountain, and to have money to do, so was more important to all of us.
In the end, every member of our family has to make some compromises, but we end up with a schedule that everyone is excited about, that won’t put us over the edge in time or money and aligns with our values. I hope that you too can create a schedule with your family that will truly help you thrive this fall.