Stop the back to school backlash. Start your new school year routine now

School starts on August 24th!  After all the fun, wild and generally lazy days of summer, it can be hard to get your littles back into a school routine.

When I had school age kids, we started a week or so before school.  Basically it was getting a fixed routine back in place with bed times and wake times.  Plus, in my house we did a lot of things the night before, like make lunches, taking baths, organizing backpacks and picking out school clothes.  It really cut the getting ready for school time down having all of these things done the night before. And a lot of the "I don't have anything to wear" or "My hair is just not working" drama because there was plenty of time to get that done or the right outfit was chosen the night before.

Another way to make mornings much less stressful, is to make sure home work and Wednesday envelopes and things like that are done at a set time after school.  It's great to really sit down with the littles, talk about their Wednesday envelope and activities and such going on at school.  Plus, it gives you an insight to how they're handling things in school.  A lot of times, if we don't ask the right question at the right time, we have no way of knowing things aren't going well until it's at critical mass. And my favorite, getting it all done together the night before means there's no mad dash to sign this or that or get this last paper done before breakfast and such.