Most parents find that getting their kids back on track with the school schedule is a difficult job. It is challenging to get the little ones back into a routine after the holidays. During the summer holidays, the kids stay up late watching TV, and are basically free to do what they want when they want to. Here is a checklist of very simple changes you can make to ensure a smooth start to the new school year.
The key to having the school year start without a hitch is to give yourself enough time to make the changes, and also to give your children enough time to adjust to new bedtimes and wake-up times.
Start early
Give yourself at least two weeks to make the necessary changes. As you should know, it takes a lot of time for adults to adjust to a new schedule, and it takes children even longer to get used to the new rules and times.
Get up early
For the last two weeks before school starts, arrange a wake-up time and stick to it, every day. It helps to make it earlier by 15 minutes every couple of days to make the change gradual and not such a shock to their systems.
Get to bed on time
Just like with the wake-up times, start getting your kids to bed earlier. Make the change easier by letting them have a treat, but let them know that they need to do certain things in order to get the treats. For example, let them read a book in bed for 10 minutes for two days, but remind them that storytime will be ending on the third day. That said, if your child finds it quite hard to sleep at night, it may be a good idea to get in touch with a sleep doctor from Gwinnett Sleep (you could find more info on https://gwinnettsleep.com/) or elsewhere to help you find a solution.
Get their diets sorted out
Summer schedules do not only affect sleep times, they also tend to affect meal times as well. The meals that your kids eat can affect whether they sleep well or not. You need to make quality meals and begin to adjust the time that you serve these meals to the same time that they will be served at school. This should include supper as well as lunches and any other snacks that will be had at school.
Schedule activities
You need to keep your children as active as possible during the day while you adjust their sleeping and meal times. This will make it much easier to get them to adjust to their new schedule. Remember to lower their activity levels so that they are not hyper active by suppertime.
Bonus tip of the day
Depending on where you live, the sun could still be up late when the school starts. Try to give your children an inexpensive sleep blindfold to help them get to sleep early. The sun could keep your kids awake and therefore cause them to feel horrible and tired when they wake up in the mornings.
