Calm Parenting Podcast - 10 Back-to-School Tips for Kids Ages 3-17

Episode Date: August 15, 2022

10 Back-to-School Tips for Kids Ages 3-17 Worried about anxiety, social skills, motivating teens, behavior issues, transitioning after online learning, homework battles, and proper expectations? Of course. Kirk covers each of these topics in rapid fire format for kids of all ages. Want personal mentoring with Kirk via Phone? Click here to learn about mentoring packages. Take advantage of our Back-To-School Sale. Set your kids up for success this year: https://celebratecalm.com/products/  Want to book a LIVE EVENT in 2022/2023?! We are now booking IN PERSON and Zoom events for schools, PTAs, churches, synagogues, corporations, and agencies! Simply email Casey@CelebrateCalm with LIVE in the subject line and he'll share a one-page proposal within hours. It's EASY!  Questions? Need help deciding on the best tools for your family? Email [e-mail] and Casey will help you personally!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Calm Parenting Podcast listeners get an exclusive 20% off an IXL membership when you sign up today at ixl.com slash kirk. Visit ixl.com slash kirk to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price. So it's back to school time coming up soon and many of you are dreading it. And I get that because we dreaded back to school time for years, right? And why? Because of there's so much, there's anxiety. Many of your kids just don't want to go to school. There's the issue of older kids who just aren't motivated. There's behavior issues. What about social skills? What about now it's your kids may be behind after being in virtual learning for the last year. So how's that going

to work? We went through all of these things, especially with Casey, until we learned a few tools. And I want to begin sharing that with you. Now I posted on Facebook and said, hey, back to school time. What are you most anxious about? What are you nervous about? What are the issues? And I got quickly overwhelmed answering people's questions. So I said, hey, I'm going to answer some of those in a podcast coming up.

And now that I got all those questions, it'll probably be like, bye, podcast. But I'll try to keep this a little bit concise, but hit on different issues. I'm going to try to hit as many things as I can for kids all the way from ages down to age three. I have questions on up to age 17. So we're going to do that on today's episode of the Calm Parenting Podcast. So welcome. This is Kirk Martin, founder of Celebrate Calm. You can find us at CelebrateCalm.com. If you need help, reach out to our son, who was the source of a lot of this dread and anxiety with school because he went to public school, private school, Montessori school, every school we could try, but he'd get kicked out of some of them.

He struggled in so many of them. We homeschooled. We did just about everything. So we have a lot of experience in this area. I have trained hundreds of thousands of teachers in different schools. And so let's dig into this. So if you need help, reach out to Casey. He will understand your anxiety and your dread and he'll help you out.

So tell us about it. C-A-S-E-Y, Casey at CelebrateCalm.com. Tell us about your family, age of the child. What are you struggling with? And we'll reply back personally because this is a personal thing for us. It's a family mission and give you some ideas and strategies and some tips. Hopefully, we'll relieve some of your anxiety. If you need any of our resources, Casey will put together a specific bundle for you within your budget or you can just take advantage of the back to school sale. So,

let's go through this. I'm going to try to go through as quickly as I can but also be thorough. The one thing I'd ask you to start thinking about as we get into the school year is, what are your goals for your child? What exactly do you want? Because you can go down the path that some parents will be like, well, I want my child to get all A's. I want honor roll. I want to take honors classes, or I want all A's and B's. What we came to was we wanted to set our goals and align our objectives with long-term thinking. And so what we came up with is we want a curious child who loves to learn, right? That was the basis. And as he began to get confidence, we were like, we want a confident child who's confident enough, stable enough to push through when things get hard because that will build even more confidence.

Some of your kids are not there yet because it takes a while to build that confidence, especially those that have had some really difficult times with school. And so I'd ask you to define that because that will change how you look at school and how you approach it this year. So let me start rolling on some questions. This is a three-year-old. So the mom on Facebook was like, I'm trying to allow my child to go at her own pace in preschool rather than the standard pace. Hearing she doesn't know this and that or knows it but doesn't want to participate because she's shy, right? Causes this mom anxiety. She's only three. So letting her be her age and know that it's age appropriate is hard to remember when there's all this pressure from other teachers and parents and it's all about memorizing this and

that. So I would just give you my very quick advice on this. Please don't listen to other people. Please don't compare yourself to other type A parents or parents who are like bragging about, oh, my child's already reading at this age and doing... Don't listen to that. Don't allow other people's opinions on how they're doing their home. Determine how you do yours, right? At age three, four, and five, and really at ages six and seven, kids are really just supposed to be curious and explore and learn by playing. I'd actually resist having the school push your child at all. She is three. And if she was five, I'd say she is five or she is seven. Let her play and explore.

Because if we're honest, that's where real learning comes from at any age. I guarantee you as a 40-some year old or however old you are, you learn the most when you're curious about something and you're looking into it and you're reading about it or you're trying to make something, create something, fix something. It's not just from sitting down and reading a book, which I love to do. I'm reading three books at the same time right now. Not because I'm awesome, but because I need that stimulation and I bounce back and forth, usually between two, but right now I'm finishing up one. And they're all on different topics and that keeps my brain engaged. That's a really good insight for some of you with different kids with different brains. But I

learn best when I'm curious and I'm just playing around with it. Not when someone says, you have to learn this and I'm going to quiz you on it. So especially, look, I'm an older guy now. I've lived longer. We've worked with a million families. And I hope what I'm trying to do is give you some wisdom so you can relax a little bit and know that she's a three-year-old. And what I've been kind of sarcastically telling people is she has the rest of her life to become an overwhelmed, stressed out, overachieving adult who's not really happy anyway, right? Like why are we forcing all of this on

kids at such a young age? Well, you really need to start thinking about your future. No, you don't. Not when you're a little kid. The fact is you don't want to think about your future. You want to be in the moment when you're a kid. You want to be impulsive when you're a little kid so you learn from it then. Stop forcing adulthood on little kids. It's harmful. And I asked the mom, I said, allow me to be a jerk about the shy thing. I was voted shyest boy in my high school class. I hated participating in class and I personally

would resist making your three-year-old daughter do that. 100%. Right? Just let her be a normal three-year-old. She doesn't want to participate in class. Who cares? You don't. Look, when you grow up in the real world, you don't have to go around the room and read to each other. Now, some jobs you have to participate, but some of your kids who don't want to participate, guess what they're going to do? They're going to have jobs that don't require them to collaborate with everybody else. That's why I own my own business. If you're in sales, sometimes you're just out on your own in a car and calling on people and doing your thing. You don't change the child in order to fix someone else's arbitrary standards, right? We could spend an hour on that alone, but we're not. So let her be a three-year-old and five-year-old and seven-year-old.

Relax. Parents of younger kids, please relax and encourage your child to play and explore and follow their curiosity instead of them trying to make them into little adults already. Well, next question. I'm worried about my five-year-old entering kindergarten. He learns best via play-based learning. Good. He hates circle time.

Good. He's just overall hands-on kid. Isn't it sad, by the way, that that is now seen as like, uh-oh, we're going to have to really do something about that. No, that's the way they're supposed to be. And the mom says in this, oh, and let's just say he is assertive. I know what that means, kind of bossy, but I like assertive. And a leader, never a follower. I'm hoping for an open-minded teacher willing to think outside the box to help a child learn the way they are receptive to learning. And so my response to you, awesome mom, is get ready for the phone calls. You, if you are a parent of a strong-willed child, you are going to get calls from the school early on. Well,

your son or your daughter, your son will not follow directions. I've asked him to sit still in circle time and he will not sit still. And I think we're having, I don't know if he has some hearing problems. No, he doesn't. He probably just doesn't want to do it, nor should he, right? Well, I asked your daughter to do things and she just gets up and walks around and walks out the door of my classroom. Now, can you allow kids to do whatever they want? No. Within your boundaries, you have to have some boundaries here, but here's what I mean by this. This child, if your son were to come into my classroom, I would observe him and know this is a hands-on kid and he needs to be given missions. And this is actually for most of our kids, whether they're five or 15. I want to engage their brain where they are

because otherwise you're going to get all these calls like, well, he can't follow directions and he doesn't listen to me, doesn't do all these things. And so when I go and talk to the teacher before school begins, I'm going to say, look, I've got this amazing young man who's really curious about things and he loves tinkering with things in his hands. And he is a leader. He's not a follower. So use him in class. So when this kid's in my class, I'm giving him jobs to do. I'm giving him challenges. Circle time. We do a lot of teacher training. And if you want us to train your teachers, reach out to Casey and tell them, and we'll try to hook up with your school so we can come and train the school teachers. And I always make this joke in teacher training because teachers have

really hard jobs. Imagine most of us with like one or two strong willed children. Imagine having like five or eight or 10 in your class and 20 kids total. It's not that easy, right? And they have all kinds of other demands on them. So I have a lot of mercy and compassion on teachers because a lot of them give their lives to this and they really do struggle with it. And the mom had said, I hope I have a teacher who's open-minded and it's not just open-minded, it's teachers having tools, right? Because they've not been told how to handle a child who doesn't sit perfectly still and do what you want them to do. And they need to be trained. And so I'll do some more. I've

got some old podcasts on that. I'll do some new ones for teachers to give them tools to know this child's going to be fine. He's just not going to sit in circle time. So my joke is always like, I hate circle time. Because after you're five, when do you ever have to sit in a circle? Like nobody at your office is going to say, hey, Sarah, three o'clock in the conference room, circle time. Nobody's doing that in the real world. It's an arbitrary standard that we come up with. And then we judge our kids against an arbitrary standard and determine that something is wrong with them because they

learn better by play-based learning and being hands-on versus sitting in a circle and listening to someone talk to them about things they're not interested in, right? And we want kids who are, that follow directions. Well, in real life, I want the assertive kid that's a leader. It just means it's going to make me uncomfortable at times. So in that class, I want to give this kid lots of tools and I'm going to give him challenges. He's a bright kid. I guarantee you, he's a bright kid. I'm going to make things harder for him and I'm going to ask him for my help. Oh, I could really use your help. And I'm going to ask him to be a leader in my classroom and give him lots of positive affirmation when he's doing things well. Well, what about circle time?

Well, maybe he doesn't sit perfectly still in circle time and you allow him in circle time to actually sit underneath his desk instead of sitting in the circle. Or maybe he sits in a chair. Or maybe during circle time, you give him another job to do. Well, but all the kids have to do it. No, they don't all have to do it. Now, you don't want a kid or five kids running around the classroom, but there's nothing in here about him running around the classroom.

I might just give him a job to do doing something so that I don't arbitrarily create a situation where he's failing again. I hope that makes sense. Okay, here's a question. I'm concerned about unstructured time and fewer COVID restrictions. My seven-year-old son did well in school last year because students had their own space and weren't close enough to touch, hit, annoy each other, right? Returning to sit at a table, playing with each other closer on the playground has me worried about his behavior issues. And I said, I'm not being flippant.

Did he have real behavior issues or was he just being a normal little kid who's physical, right? Now here's a tool for a teacher. My first thought is that during recess, I want to have this teacher give your son specific missions or challenges and jobs to keep his brain focused and to create successes. If I'm a teacher and I'm looking out at that playground and I consistently see one child kind of like being a little bit physical or pushing other kids down or he's butting in front, right? Or he's cheating or he's grabbing the ball and he wants to go first all the time. And I notice he's not really doing awesome at that. I'm going to pull him aside and say, oh man, I could really use your help. Listen, next week we're doing a new unit

on reptiles and I've noticed that you're really good at drawing because that's all you seem to do. Leave that part out. But they do. A lot of these kids just draw. So I want to use your gift. You're good at this. So during recess, if I brought out some poster board outside, could you draw some different reptiles? And here's a good one for social skills. Hey, I've noticed that Johnny over here, he really likes reptiles too. Could you guys work on this together? And then next week, I'll hang up your poster board so everybody can see what amazing artists you guys are. So watch, by flipping it around and viewing the child differently, instead of going, watch, here's two different results of that. I've got to write a note home because your child can't

play well with other kids on the playground. He pushes them down, he cheats, he butts in front of them, and we're having behavior issues, and now I'm going to have to take recess away. Right now, why would I take recess away? It's the very thing that he needs most. But now by just changing things a little bit, I neutralized him with all the other kids. I gave him a specific job to do, which our kids like specific jobs. I like feeling helpful and needed. They like the one-on-one attention that the teacher gives. And I got him aligned up with another kid, which is a great way to build social skills, is to work on a project together. I discovered another kid who shares a common interest with him in reptiles because they both talk about dinosaurs all the

time, which means now I can tell the parent, hey, Jimmy and your son, man, they really connect. Maybe you should set up play dates with them, right? And now, instead of that child being on the playground, being the kid that nobody else likes because he pushes people down or he butts in front or he cheats and doesn't play well together, now next week the rest of the class gets to see, man, that kid can draw. That's really cool, right? And now I just created and built successes and built confidence, whereas before it would have been a little lecture on how you need to play nicer with all the other kids on the playground and all those things. We just need to give kids tools and teachers tools with all of that. And I

do encourage you, if you get the Calm Parenting Package or Get Everything Package, whatever you get our resources, feel free to share those with teachers. We have the back to school sale. There's a thing called ADHD University. That is a fantastic tool, even if the kids don't have a diagnosis. It is fantastic for teachers to be able to listen to that and know, here's how this child's brain is, how their brain is working, and here's how to help them. So feel free to share that with the teachers. Social skills, I just mentioned. Give two kids a specific mission at recess to work on together, right? And then set up those short play dates when you find another child. Now, they're short play dates, not too long because your child might be a little bit bossy.

And during the play date, you may even model for them how to have two-way conversations instead of dominating conversation. So when that other kid comes over the house, she'll say, oh, you know what? We're gonna make some brownies for these shut-ins or we're gonna make some snacks for homeless people. Could you two boys, could you two girls, could you guys help me out with that? And now I have them playing together, working together, helping me,

and I kind of model how that works. Here's a question. We did virtual schooling last year and my son didn't do well. We're both worried about catching up and fitting in academically as this past year has set him back. I just want him to be positive and do his best, but we both know it's going to be an adjustment going back. Yes, it's going to be an adjustment. Please recognize most kids are going to be in the same boat. I want to work with the teachers as

best as I can to create some early wins. Let's give your son, and I'm just going to do some general things here, some tools to do his schoolwork in different ways. Whether that is with older kids, allowing them to chew gum while they do writing projects or writing while they're writing essays, to allowing younger kids to sit underneath their desk while they're doing their work, or maybe a child instead of sitting at circle time, he gets to lay down at circle time. When we're doing homework and schoolwork, I would experiment with listening to music, even intense music while they do work, letting them stand at the kitchen counter and rock back and forth, looking over their schoolwork while they're eating a snack and maybe even while they're eating,

while they're listening to music. That is very stimulating for the brain. I want to do homework outside in interesting places, in the attic, in a tree, on the swing. I want to review vocabulary words and math facts and even help older kids while we're playing catch, while we're hitting a soccer ball back and forth, while they're jumping on a trampoline. Use the movement, use the brain stimulation to help them with homework time. So I want to start doing that to create some wins. I would ask the teacher, hey, can we slow down a bit at first so we let the kids kind of catch up? Does it mean that they are?

I don't know. But it's worth being assertive and ask for that. I would also encourage you, and this was a parent of an older child. This is for all kids. Create some non-school traditions that you can bond over. You know school is going to be stressful. Coming home and doing homework is going to be stressful. Coming home and doing homework is going to be stressful. What I don't want is for the entire school year, this next calendar year, to be

consumed with school and nothing but school. School's important, but it's not the most important thing. Being curious and learning is even more important. And even more important than that is actually enjoying your kids and your family life. If the school year consumes you, then my encouragement for you is you're the grown up and you're the adult and you're the parent and you do not allow the school, the school system, the teachers and everybody else to dictate your family life. I know, but Kirk, the standards and they have to do this and they have to test. I know they do, but you're the parent and you get to decide. And that's why at the very beginning of this podcast, we talked about what are your

priorities? Are they just to meet all the school's arbitrary standards, or are you willing to say, no, sometimes we're not going to do homework? And I'll send a note to the teacher and say, I'd love that you love my son, and you're asking him to do homework because you want him to learn. And I want him to learn as well. We have the same goal to get him to learn. Last night, he didn't do his homework, but here's what we did do, right? He built a robot. He built with his Legos. We played this game. We looked up this on the internet because we have a grandparent that's from Sicily.

And so we looked up Italy and we learned all about this. And so we were learning last night and we were reading about things. We just weren't doing the specific assignment you asked us to do. And I'm asking you, Mr. or Mrs. Teacher, to give us some flexibility that as long as we are learning, that's what our mutual goal is. Is that hard to do at times? Yes. But I want you to build time into your schedule so that you're not just consumed with arbitrary standards and your child can actually enjoy learning to a degree. Some of it's just not enjoyable. You just have to do that work. But it's up to us as adults to be grown-ups and not make excuses and not create, for some of you,

like, oh, I don't want to create little snowflakes, whatever you want to call it. We as kids, at least in my generation, now I'm sounding old, aren't I? We enjoyed life some. We weren't consumed by school. We did our schoolwork, but we also played outside every day for hours at a time. And we weren't rushed like this. And I know you will say, I know, but society, you're the grown-up. You get to choose how many extracurricular activities, if any at all, your child does. Does he have to do travel sports or could you just play club soccer so you don't have to travel and spend $8,000 a year on a travel sport that stresses everybody? You get to make the choice, mom and dad, and it takes a little bit of courage, but you have that choice and you can push back on society.

Otherwise, just turn your child over to them and let them raise them, right? That's what we're here for. So you prioritize what is important. And here's another thing that you're not going to want to hear. This mom, like many in that Facebook post, were like, well, I just want my child to do his best. I hate that phrase. It is an unreasonable expectation that you must, you know what, I'm going to be bossy. You better let go of that expectation. Well, I just want you to do your best. Why? Did you do your best today in everything that you did? Do you do your best all the time? No. Why? Because it's impossible to do your best at everything. Reframe those expectations of

yourself as the parent, right? Of like, well, I've got to run around like all the other parents and have my child signed up for 15 different things and do all these things and make sure that he does his best. Why? That's not a reasonable expectation, right? And there's nothing that says that that's going to create success for your child in life.

Not at all. Probably be better if you do fewer things, but do them well. But just so you know, maybe I'll do this again. Nobody does their best at everything. The key is to do your best at the right things, at the most important things. And sometimes you just do the minimal work necessary on the things that don't matter, or you don't do them at all. And you hire someone else as an adult to do those things, right? Does that make sense? You do. That's

prioritized. I've got to move on. Anxiety over going back to school. Anxiety is caused by unknowns. So try to eliminate the unknowns as much as possible. I would go take your child to school, into that school, outside of the school, walk around if they're young, before school even begins. Ask the principal, the administration, can we walk through the school so we can see how it smells, how it tastes, how it feels? Because your kids soak those things up and familiarity, let me say it this way, being familiar with it helps eliminate some of the unknowns. I would find a teacher, an assistant principal, some adult, a guidance counselor, anyone at that school who needs your

child's help or can use their particular gifts, talents, and passions. Is there a cool teacher? Is there a guidance counselor? Is there assistant principal who will connect with your child and say, oh man, you are really good at X. You are really good with electronics. Could you come into school every day? Will you help me get my whiteboard set up? Can you help me with X? If it's a little child helping move the books from one side of the classroom to the other side of the classroom, just do it every day. Your kids won't care. They just like feeling helpful, not at your house, not for you, but for other people. And then again, I'm going to skip that one. I already did that one on social skills. But let's get your child with that anxiety.

See if there's someone that they can connect with. I would maybe see if there is one friend, someone that shares a common interest in their classroom. So that at least every day if I'm anxious and nervous about all of my stuff, at least if I know little Johnny or older Susie's going to be there, okay, that brings me a little bit of relief. Two more older kids. So I'm concerned about communicating well with my strong-willed 14-year-old daughter who thinks differently than I do. Good insight, mom. That's good to know. She's very driven and overall a wonderful kid, but we definitely butt heads more during the school year when we're both feeling the pressure of getting everything done. I'll try to do an entire

podcast on this, but my gut feeling is your daughter is generally conscientious. So why don't you turn over more responsibility to her? She's 14. Let her learn on her own by making mistakes now rather than when she's 16 or 17. And let her enjoy her independence. And you can show her that you trust her to just figure it out. So I'd back off a bit.

Our phrase is, when we step back as parents, it gives kids to step up and be responsible for themselves. So I step back and say, honey, I believe you're capable of handling this. And I admire your independence. So I'm going to step back and back off a little bit. Now, if you get overwhelmed or if you need my help, you know I'm always here. Just come get me. But see, I've just given her confidence and said

I believe you're capable of handling this and you're also saying even if you do mess up at first it's okay because you'll learn from that and if you do need me come get me but that's a lot better than hovering over her and you can be you know as kids get older I like to give wisdom and perspective to know hey honey I know that you're conscientious and you want to do all these things. I just want you to know that this decision right now at age 14, or this test that you're taking at age 14, it's not going to determine whether your life is happy or not. It's just not. So yes, I want you to study for it. And I do admire you because you're on top of things. But I want you to know, you don't have to worry so much, and I don't want you losing sleep,

and I don't want you being anxious about it. You're a good kid, you're a smart kid, and you're gonna figure it out. So does that make sense? So give some perspective, right? Because we're all feeling the pressure of like, oh, we have to get our child into the right school. No, you don't, you don't.

And you need to be the grownup who gives perspective and says, look, how many of us didn't figure life out until we were maybe after college? Maybe it was in college? Some of you, maybe last year, right? Some of you still haven't figured life out. Are you still in the process of it? It's a process.

It's not like you have a test to take when you're age 15 and the rest of your life is going to be determined by that. What a horrible thing we do to our kids to rob them of their childhood because we're too afraid to give them some perspective and wisdom to say that class, it doesn't really matter that much. It just doesn't. But if you want to do well in it, it would be awesome for me because it would help my anxiety. So I would also ask her questions when kids get older. You said, mom, she thinks differently than

I do. So good to use that and say, how would you handle this? I know the way I normally did it, but I really want to learn how you think because I wish I was more like you. So rather than lecturing and directing and controlling, let's be more curious. Now here's the last one. My son's 17. He's going into his senior year, but he's falling behind because he's failed several of his online classes last year. He went back in person in the third trimester last year and he passed all of his classes. So we know he does better in person but i'm worried he'll refuse to go because he doesn't really have a vision for college doesn't see the importance of a high school diploma because he thinks he's going to be a successful gamer and so that's very

very common and so he took one class over summer in online and he failed it so this is hard, but here's what I'd encourage you to do. Two things. One is perspective. Sometimes kids like this have to touch the hot stove and learn for themselves. So I'd definitely let him know he can pursue that path if he wants, but he's going to have to finance it by himself. Right? So I'd sit down in a casual matter of fact way and say, hey, look, if that's your vision, let's start doing some planning. So let's see what a small apartment's going to cost, how much is a car, how much is gas, how much are utilities, insurance, food.

Let's sit down and make a budget so that you know, as you're pursuing this vision for yourself, how much money you're going to need. Because once you do that, it becomes more real. And you're not giving him a lecture of like, well, that's not the right way to roll with it a little bit. And let him come to it on his own of like, well, maybe I should graduate. And maybe I could go to a community college while I'm working a job, which would be

an awesome thing probably for this young man. But here's what I would do proactively. Let's try to find one person at school he can connect with and one mission or job he can do there in person. You know, we asked a little bit about one of the other kids and he was like, well, he's kind of into tennis. Okay, so maybe, is there a tennis team? Is there an opportunity for him to teach other kids tennis? Maybe this kid is, this kid is in particular, is into technology. So could he help a teacher or someone in administration with technology issues at school? Could he start a gaming club? Could he teach tech stuff to younger

students? And the words I want you to write down and keep in your heart are mission and mentor. If you want to motivate older kids, you have to find what motivates them and what they care about. They're not going to care about what you care about or care about school necessarily until they have a vision for their lives. And the way you do that is mission and mentor. Find a mission, a specific job using their particular gifts, talents, and passions accountable to another adult, a mentor of some kind who can encourage them and hold them accountable. It is a really cool process. We teach you that in our programs and we're glad to take you through that. But I don't even know how long this is. 32 minutes, kind of long, but I hope it was worth it for you. And I'll do some more on back to school time. I'm starting to do phone consultations on

it because people are freaking out. So we can come up with a very specific game plan of what do we tell the teacher? How do we prepare our child for this coming school year? How do we set up our home? How do we align ourselves so that we have a successful school year? We've got the back to school sale. If you need help with that, reach out to Casey, see it online. Thank you for doing what you do. Let's make this school year a good one. Listen to this podcast, share it with others, and then let's just start sending some good things, positive things in place. Anyway, love you all. Talk to you soon. Bye-bye.