In September, you went into the year with high expectations. Now it’s January and things have happened. Maybe you are feeling beat down and overwhelmed.
But January is exactly when you should be hitting that refresh button!
There is one surefire to reset your school year.
This solution is going to take a lot of honesty on your part. And some help from your child’s teacher or school.
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Let’s Look Back at the Fall
First, You’ll need to be super duper honest with yourself about what happened in the fall. You can use your smart phone’s calendar or look back via social media.
Think about:
- family changes: marriages, new babies, divorces, deaths
- military life: deployments or long TDY, PCS
- health: illness or injury to your child(ren) or a close friend or family member
- friendships: bullies, teasing, losing formerly close friends
- education: testing for gifted or special education, challenging classes, boredom in class
- afterschool: scheduling overload, lack of exercise, screen time, commitments and priorities
How have these factors played into your child’s school life?
None of these things by themselves are “bad” per se. But a combination of different stressors can add up to a less than awesome fall at school.
It’s like math, except that each combo of possible stressors creates different reactions in every child.
For one kid: moving + new baby + two different sports teams = totally fine. But for another kid, that same combo could spell disaster!
What really happened at school this fall?
Now, take a deep breath and let it go.
You cannot change what happened, but you can change how you act and react going forward.
It’s time to put all of it behind you, or at least move on as much as possible. Even if some of the stressors are still going on, your goal is to lessen their impact as much as possible.
Which sounds great, but how can you make a change?
Being honest about what happened is the first step to fixing the problem.
You can’t move forward productively without honestly looking back at the situation(s). Once you have identified the issues behind your problems, then you can work to find a solution.
The best way to move forward is to get the teacher on your side. Use Talk to the Teacher to find the best ways to have a better second half of the school year together.
You’ll want to loop the teacher in, no matter what happened in the fall. You need to start building or rebuilding that team. Call a meeting with the teacher, ASAP.
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Inside Talk to the Teacher, you’ll find done-for-you meeting scripts so that you can explain yourself completely and clearly in exactly the right words.
At your meeting, you’ll want to be honest with the teacher about what happened and what you think might be behind the issues.
Then, ask for help fixing it. This part might be hard if you don’t have the best relationship.
And this is where an education coach or advocate can help you. But bringing someone neutral into the conversation, it can make it easier to find solutions to school problems.
How are you going to reset your school year starting right now?
~Meg
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