Welcome to the Back to School Blitz!

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercam. I'm a mother of four, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode one oh seven, which is first airing August twenty, twenty nineteen. Today we're going to be talking all things back to school, our tips for having a smooth start to the school year, and our listeners tips as well. Thank you to everyone who's sent those in through Instagram, through our blogs. We're going to read a lot of them and hopefully everyone will pick up something awesome in the course of listening. So when this air is Sarah Summer is actually over right, you guys go back to school mid August. Yeah, it's so interesting. This is like the Northern and Southern divide. I know you're going to talk about your calendar. But our schools run from the middle of August this year. Our county begins, believe on the fifteenth fourteenth, fifteenth, fourteenth, and our last day of school is June the second, so we barely have any school in June at all, which is interesting. And you guys are like still in the thick of summer, right, Yeah, yeah, we still are, and we still have another summer vacation coming up. But we start after Labor Day. It's always the Tuesday after Labor Day in our district, and then we go till about mid June, so shifting your calendar by about two two and a half weeks. So we apologize if you are an Arizona listener or even from where I am, because I guess these tips will be getting to you a little bit late if that's the case, but hopefully we will catch you still when you're still interested in hearing all about how to make that transition smoother. And it'll be great timing for our Northeast listeners because I know that's much more common to start, as I did as a child, kind of very end of August or even after Labor Day. Yeah, so you guys have Well, you started your new school for the kids in January after the move. Yeah, we've had lots of transitions. But Annabelle and Cameron will be going to the same school this fall, like the one that we moved to in January, So Cameron'll be in kindergarten and annabel will be in second so they they're reunited after a couple of years. Spent a part with him in preschool. This particular school does not have a pre K so that's why he was not able to be with her last year. And then, as we've discussed previously, yes, I'm sending my toddler to school for better or for worse, So we'll see how that goes. And she's going to a very traditional Montessori program that we're going to see how that goes. Yeah, and you have high hopes or you think she's going to have some separation issues or I'm curious. I have pretty high hopes. I think it's a really lovely school and she may be upset initially, but she's also she kind of acts like a big kid sometimes and she'll be interested in all the activities and we'll just you know, I don't know, it could really go either way, I'm sure I'll update everyone. Well, we'll get the update on how Genevieve's doing exactly. What about you, guys? Wow? What do you say? What are you? What are your school hours though, because it's a great question. So the school hours are very early for my big kids, or at least early as I see it, So they have to be there at eight, and that doesn't sound so bad, but as I've mentioned before, there is it's a very overcrowded school, and there's a very long carpool line, so that really requires leaving the house at seven thirty either whether we're planning on maybe seven thirty five, but that would be the latest, either whether you're driving into the carpool line or if we're walking from the nearby playground. Either way, that process takes about twenty five minutes, so it's not efficient, and we're too close to the school to qualify for a bus. Otherwise, I would love the idea of just saying goodbye a thing on your driveway, on the corner or something exactly. So, so seven thirty five will have to leave the house and then Genevieve's and they go till two, and Genevieve's school is. I mean, I think it begins at eight ten, but they did say, you know, toddlers are on their own schedule, so whenever she gets dropped off, she gets dropped off, and she's done by lunchtime, so she'll nap at home before the big kids are done. Now I kind of foresee an issue because if the big kids need to be picked up at two and she's napping because she, you know, fell asleep on the way home, which she will. I think what we may be doing is actually sending the big kids to an after school program for maybe three days per week, and there's a program where there are some like fun enrichment activities, so it would be a way of them doing sports. Now, our old elementary school had that built into the school, and I'm not sure I realized what a gift that was. I mean, you did pay for it, but it was just so convenient they could stay and do basketball or or agami or book making or theater or whatever. Our current school is a great school, but they really don't have their own sort of activities built in like that. So I think they're going to take a bus to another place and do some fun stuff a few days a week and then get picked up a little bit later so Genevieve can have a decent nap. Yeah, I know the nap thing is is always an issue with the early school pickups, and I know that. You know, we did a carpool occasionally with a family that had a toddler because they were you know, every single time that person would have to wake up the toddler to go get it was just like, yeah, not not fun. Yeah. We have no big changes from last year, which is is kind of nice of a holding steady year for schools. Last year we had the transition of starting middle school, our youngest Alex starting preschool. But this year everyone's still at the same school as they went to before. Jasper will be starting seventh grade, Sam and Ruth will be fourth and second, and then Alex is still in the same preschool, so it's you know, pretty much exactly the same, which I'm happy. It's actually great because the transitions are they're harder for the kids. Annabelle went through a lot of I don't know, emotional stuff when she started kindergarten. I think going from a school where it was very much like do whatever you want to all of a sudden having all these requirements foisted upon her was tough and style. Yeah, your kids are going to be just kind of like doing what they did, so hopefully it'll be a nice smooth start for you. Yeah. Well and you know, knowing that the hours are the same, I mean that I presume, Yeah, how do you handle all those staggered hours? I mean, we will get to your spreadsheet a little bit. Well, nobody is napping at the moment, so there's that, you know, I am. We did our carpool to the middle school with some neighbors because the bus was just going to be so early and we really live I mean we live less than ten minutes away from it, so the bus service was just you know, it was going to require a big early morning thing to make it happen, and so we elected to do the carpool there. However, we're not doing pick up takes the bus home. There's some there's some grumbling occasionally about this, but like, you know, you're getting a ride there so you get to sleep longer, So it's gotta be some compromise. Hair, but you know, we do that. Get the big kids, I mean the middle kids on the bus. The bus was coming about eight thirty ish Alex preschool starts at nine, but it's really only like three minute drive away, so it's it's not that big a deal. And yeah, so I mean then we have I mean, we have our our nanny there. She starts work at eight, so she's there to cover the dropping off. So either you know, I do it, she does it, my husband does it. He's there. So you know, we sort of sorted out day by day on who's doing what the end of the day. I mean usually just someone's someone's here when the bus buses drop off. I mean that's it could be me and moost of your activities aren't straight after school, like they come home at the end of the school day. Yeah, well some are, I mean, so they get picked up, you know, like once a week for stuff. Jasper had after school activities at school like a day a week or something, and I think he may do more of that this year, in which case somebody will need to go get him. But you know, it's all relatively close. And yeah, I mean there's they're sorting it out week by week and looking at it and seeing, you know, who's got what, But you know, it is what it is. I don't know, it's just logistics. It's logistics which reminds me that I need to make some sort of spreadsheet, not just for activities, but actually I was telling the kids this morning that I, you know, we'd be doing some alternating because I don't want to always be dropping Genevieve and I don't want to be never dropping the big kids. So I'm gonna have to figure out with Josh and or Nanny, like, maybe we set certain days of the week because you know, Fridays, maybe is my data. You know, we just have to decide what they are because I think a little bit of predictability will be helpful for them rather than every morning being like, okay, who's taking to me? I mean we've been doing this with camp drop offs. I mean, yeah, there's there's some negotiation involved in it every single time, and I've just been sort of an alternating like Okay, I do this this end of town run one day and then do the other the other day, and and whatever. There's going to be complaining regardless, So I guess you can't kind of build your life for the idea of no complaints. But from your scheduling perspective, it's nice to know if, like, you know, Friday, I shouldn't schedule meetings before yes, yeah, thirty or whatever, and it just gets rid of a little bit of the negotiation, like, no, you know, this is the day of this, and we don't have to rehash it every time because it gets boring having the game fight over and over again. So yeah, let's go into our back to school tips. Yeah, So I organized this as I often like to for our tips episode, as a few of my favorite tips that I kind of came up with before we crowdsource, and then a few of Laura's favorite tips, and then I organized our listener tips into different categories. So I think there's some really good ones here and some things I didn't think about. So I think this is going to be a fun journey through back to school. So my tips that my favorite tips that I came up with were one. Number one was one that some listeners mentioned as well. Take the school calendar and put it into your planning system as early as possible, even if it's a year in advance, because many public school districts in particular will release their next year's calendar very in a timely fashion, and it's usually available online and yet somehow you still end up surprised that there's an early release day on like March seventh or whatever it is. It's better if you just all in one fall swoops stick get into your calendar, stick it into your shared calendar, if your partner and you work that way. One of our readers mentioned Google Calendar that they use to put all that stuff in, and actually another listener mentioned that their school district has like a button where you can sync all of the school events to your electronic calendar. Ours has not gotten that high tech yet. It's just a PDF that you can download. But that's pretty cool too. Okay, so that's my first tip. Yeah, I've been thinking about how because you know, there's some stuff that's not applicable to you, right, so you know you've got like all the school board meetings person said that they said they'd still rather have all of it and ignore some of it than to put it in manually. Yeah, that's not my style. I would be annoyed seeing like fifth grade social event and it's like, okay, I don't care, but some people would just rather do one click and I get that too. Yeah, yeah, all right, and school supplies number two by the school supply box. Now, of course not everybody has the option of getting everything in all one fell swoop, but it does seem like this is sweeping the nation, and many times it's a PTO fundraising type of situation. So you know, it's interesting. I'm on a kindergarten list serve and some of the moms are like, well, it's this cheaper if you go to Target for this, and and I'm like, how much doing this? It's one click and if the PTO is running it, I assume some of that benefits the PTA, so I PTO PTA whatever, and I'm considering it a donation. So yes, I just love the life. It's not worth getting the lowest price on the notebook, yes, exactly, because we're not talking. I think our entire box for each kid was like around one hundred dollars. It wasn't some crazy investment, and then we had to buy a couple of items outside of the box. But actually on our district website it was clearly specified. So I can get my baby wipes and print your paper now and be completely set. So that's awesome. My third tip has to do with well, this one's a tip for myself because I need to work on it. I think our kids have really gotten in the habit of sleeping later, which sounds amazing, except it's only two out of three of the children, so not helpful at all. But for the school year, it's going to be terrible if I'm going to be dragging the big kids out of bed, so we need to streamline that out of door routine. Our nanny has this great practice of keeping a set of clothes and toothbrushing supplies and the downstairs bathroom so you can just get out of the house very quickly. And I do want to do some practicing, which comes up in a later tip. And then finally, my fourth tip is that you know, I'd like to do some things with the school. I definitely don't want to be a room parent, because that's I don't know, that seems like too much of a commitment, but I do plan on sending emails to whatever the room parents are and the teacher is saying that I'd like to be involved, so let me know if you have specific ass or specific needs for donations, like if they you know, want to get some books for the class or whatever. That way, I can make sure to have some involvement and kind of let my voice be seen that I'd want to do things without without having it be all or nothing, because remember, you you don't have to do everything, and doing something counts and your kids will notice, yeah, oh those are great. I think my biggest tip is not to stress about it. I feel like the pull back to school season gets blown up into this bigger thing, partly because it's you know, it's like a news hook so that you can do stories about it and you can do podcasts about it, like you know you were in the school, like you went to school the last year, like you know, it's going to be school again, and there's no real reason to make it a source of anxiety. I think the biggest challenge with a school year is that it's getting into a new routine, Like certain things are different now. Again, if you're going to the exact same schools you wear the previous year, that it's not really that different at all, but maybe there's different activities that are starting up or things like that. And whenever you have a new schedule, like you have to pay attention to it and that consumes mental energy, like, oh, you know, it's not just on autopilot. Of who goes where when you have to think about it, and I guess that creates some mental stress, but it's helpful to remember that it won't always be like that, Like within two weeks it will be like, oh, yeah, this is what we do, and so it won't be nearly as as stressful for our scheduling purposes. I create the activity spreadsheet. As Sarah mentioned, this is just one of my blank one hundred and sixty eight hour logs that I use for tracking time as well, and I fill it out with you know, people's different activities, and a couple of the kids have stuff that meets a couple times a week, but you don't have to go to all of it. So, for instance, the swim team may have practices four days a week, but you only really need to go to two. So then we can sort of choose well which to work within the broader family schedule. And so I create this spreadsheet to choose what will be our default days rather than having every week we choose this, although the good news is because there are more options. If it's a complicated week for some reason, we can choose different ones. As I create the spreadsheet, it just helps to show like is this going to be a bad night, or you know, we try to keep one night open. We've often tried to do like Wednesday with no activities, just because then it's the middle of the week and it's a day that you know, you can kind of not deal with stuff. Or if something's canceled and needs to get rescheduled, like there's a space for it to go, so, you know, helps me see open space, helps the kids see that, you know, even if they feel like there's a lot going on. Like the beauty of these hundred and sixty eight hour spreadsheets is you see there really isn't Like I mean, there's a ton of space, you know, which is which is good to see? Maybe you need to post spreadsheat sheet printed somewhere, printed somewhere, Well, you can go to my website and download them, you know, Laura vandercam dot com. No, I mean like for your kids to see, Like if they start whining about being overscheduled, you put it, you know, blow it up. I'm get it on the Bridge Camp spreadsheet with them, you know, so they see what's coming up and they're they're good with that. So yeah, let's see we big about prioritizing family harmony. In the schedule, I mentioned doing the carpool in order to not have to get up at the crack of dawn and get people places, just because I mean, there are occasionally days when you know it would be difficult to make that happen, so you know it's good to have options. I guess that is what And always my favorite the backpacks, shoes and coats in one spot. You want to have a launching pad where everything goes. You're not hunting for it every morning. We're big about Homework is either being done or it's in the backpack. There is absolutely nowhere else it can be because if it's left somewhere, that's when and it doesn't get in. And but this year I am going to actually create a homework spot. Do you have a homework spot? We currently use the kitchen table for the most part, although we maybe should use the dining room table. I don't know. We have both. The kids also have setups in their rooms, but Animal is probably at the point where she could work more independently and should work more independently. Cameron's only in kindergarten. I hope to God that this school has less homework than the old they went to No, And I've heard good things that maybe it's not going to be quite the deluge that we experienced previously. But if he does have some them, I think he's going to need a little more hands on attention. So I think the kitchen table would be right. Oh, when I was going to I want to hear about your homework spot, but I was also going to mention that I know you've talked about your mudroom, and for those of us not fortunate to have of mudroom, we've made a great mudrooms type thing out of our closet in this house, which is great because it's like a decent sized closet. We put a cube organizer in there. You guys know what's my favorite thing. We put hooks for back and so it doesn't have to if you don't have a mudroom, you can you can improvise. You can make one. Yeah, you know, a place for shoes. I don't know if you need a shoe racker, like a cubby for them or a hook for the backpack. We use the cubes. Yeah, so all that stuff can can go there. There. We have a bin for each of the children, which is a default place where if they're ever like, where's my it's in there, awesome, and so yeah, yeah, no, where's your where's your homework spot? I'm thinking it's going to be the dining room table. And the reason is because I mean the kitchen counter or the kitchen table are the sort of automatic places where that goes. But the computer, the home computer and the television are both visible from that spot, whereas from the dining room they are not distracting. It's just distracting. It's hard to keep everyone off until everyone's homework is done, you know what I'm saying. So that's I think that may be a more difficult rule to enforce than guessing that your older ones are starting to have some homework that is on the computer. Yeah, that's true too. Actually, you know, a fair amount of it gets done there, and that's how I like Josper submits almost all assignments. There's a lot less that comes home physically on paper, so he has his own whatever Google account that they upload documents much. But yeah, so that will be there. And then I think if I set up the dining room table to have supplies there like paper and pencils, well, experiment it could totally not work, but we'll see. Oh, so we'll report back. Cool. Your next tip is about going to everything or not. So you were talking about how I talked about how it doesn't have to be all or nothing. What about you? Okay, we're going to take a quick break and give you guys a word from our sponsors this week. So the first sponsor we want to tell you about is one of our favorite clothing companies, m M Lafleur. Great fit for our listeners because they take the work out of getting dressed for work. You have much better things to do with your time than go shopping. Then try stuff on in a crouded apartment store. This makes it very easy. We know Laura has been wearing MM Lafleur for quite some time. 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And to get fifty dollars off your first job post, just go to LinkedIn dot com slash best of Again, that's LinkedIn dot com slash best of to get fifty dollars off your first job post. Terms and conditions. All right, So where we left off, we were talking about Laura's tips, and the next tip had to do with going to things, but not necessarily everything. Yeah, I mean this is true that you don't have to go to everything. I think people get very stressed out of like, oh, there's like three different back to school events. Well guess what if you don't go to one of them, It's not going to be the end of the world. There are plenty of people who don't go to them. You should know this. You know, for many people, they just they can't make it work or something comes up. Other kids have to do things. Two kids have two different schools that they have to be at the same time. Like, there are a million reasons parents don't go. So no one's like judging you. The parent is not sitting, They're like, oh, that kid's parent isn't there. Clearly I should not pay any attention to that kid all year. I mean, this is not how teachers think. So if that's how you're worried, like like, just don't take that. Take that off your list of things to worry about. You mentioned Terry like you don't have to be a room parent, and of course you don't. I would say that I was one this past year, and it was a lot less worse then I sort of thought it might be. In our school, they have it kind of down to a science of what you're supposed to do. They tend to have two people for each class because you know, then then you can share the load of it. And the requirement was pretty much that you plan the holiday parties. So you do have to in our case, you did have to have during the day availability for those parties. But like, you know when they're going to be, like it's gonna be Halloween, it's going to be around Christmas or something, it's going to be you know, Valentine's Day. So even if you did have a job where you were generally in an office, you could potentially, you know, decide to take half of the day off on those days and do it. So it was great. You know, I've got a chance to be in my son's classroom a little bit more often, get to know as teacher. So I'm really glad I did that. And I don't think I'm going to take it on this year for anyone, but I've sort of thought, well, you know, it's it's something I could do, like once per kid, maybe you could. Yeah, I was gonna say if you pick a grade level and say, like, you know what, I'll be the third grade room pairents it's the third grade. It's always grade Yeah. Yeah, Well I miss because I didn't really understand the first time that it wasn't going to be as big a deal. I mean, they had this, you know, I have bless our school, but like at one point, you know, they were trying to tell people like, yeah, you need to be available during the work day, but the way they put it is like, I mean, it almost sounded like if you work, don't bother applying to do this. And I was like, well, geez, you know that doesn't sound good. But it turns out not to be that way at all. So I'm glad I got over that little hurdle of worrying about it as a side note, and and you know, maybe this is one of these things that is sweeping the nation along with the buying the school supply box. But we have a policy in our state that you actually have to have security clearances in order to volunteer at the schools we do. Yeah, okay, So I have mixed feelings about this, Like I actually had to go get finger printed because I hadn't lived in Pennsylvania for ten years, which strikes me as like what this is going to do is it makes it that much harder for parents to volunteer, or you're going to scare off people who I don't know, have like a shoplifting conviction from age nineteen, who there's no reason that volunteer in the school, but they're gonna be like, oh god, I gotta have a fingerprinted or something, you know, Like, I don't know, I'm not a big fan. It didn't bother me anyway. So if your district, your school, your state has those policy, you should probably just take a little bit of time before the school's ear starts to go do it. That way, you can volunteer if you'd like to as opposed to being like, oh well, I wish I could, but then I also have to do this other step first, and there won't be time before the volunteer. The good news is, at least in our district, you only have to do it once, so like once you've entered the county system and you've been cleared, I think they like automatically, or maybe it lasts for several years, but like I already got a note that said I don't have to do it this year because I'm already. Grandmother did in exactly, So yeah, if that's something you need to do, probably just take some summertime to do it. Back to school shopping, I think, you know, the past few years, I've been approaching this from the perspective that new stuff was kind of fun. You know, I don't actually do that much shopping in my life through you know, various like now that Alex is in school, we have some of the hours of our nanny does a lot of their errands and shopping, so I'm not in stores that often. So I decided to view it as like, well, I can you know, go hang out with the kids and target. They each get their own lists, like they're responsible for finding the stuff. I'm kind of hanging out with the cart, you know, monitoring stuff as it comes in. And I possibly this year I might even like give them a certain amount of money and see if they can figure out the whole budgeting thing of it, which which could be a good money experience for them as well. So you know, you could approach it in ways like that, or even if you have older kids, you know they got a phone or something, you could just go grocery shopping next door to the target or something and they can go figure it out themselves. You know, approaching it from that spirit might might help. And finally I said, you know, we can go back to school ourselves. One way to make the back to school season more fun is to think about what you would like to study, like what new skill you'd like to add. It doesn't have to be a formal class, so it totally can be there's nothing wrong with taking classes as a working parent, like you can totally do that if you want to. But it can also just be you know, a skill you would like to learn in the course of the year, like what would make you feel like you have moved forward a grade in your life in the course of the next year and see if you can build that into your schedule, and that'll make it feel like you're getting some cool stuff too. Are you going to take a class? Have you thought about this piano? Piano? I mean now that I have the piano. So blog readers know that my parents downsized as part of their move to New Jersey and got rid of a lot of stuff, and one of the things they got rid of was their piano, which I now have. So I mean, my kids are learning to play the piano, and I think I'm going to definitely do more practicing too, at least I say that. Now we'll see you'll harness that back to school energy. Yeah, it is a nice time to sort of tackle, you know, maybe train for you know, there's people have that kind of like new start energy, Like why not capitalize on some of that for yourself? I like that exactly. All right, We've got some listener tips and a lot of really nice ones, So let's start with some gear related tips. This one comes from Sofia. She says, we buy the boxer school yes, check, but then she also notes that they reuse a lot of gear from year to year, including backpacks, which are now pretty well made if you get the right brands, and I have found the same thing. So I've already informed Annabelle that she'll be using her current backpack again and we'll run it through the washing machine to get it as sparkly as we can. And you know, maybe in a year or two she'll need a new one, but there's no real need if it's not falling apart to run to get a new one. Shout outs for which one of these catalog company is now I'm going to forget was the LB. Some people mentioned Lan's End, and another person on my blog mentioned Elbean, And we've done the Pottery Barn ones, which the lunch bags from there have not held up well, but their backpacks seem to be doing pretty well. So so yeah, pick a reliable brand and it will last. I'm not sure Cameron is currently rocking this giant black backpack that I ordered on Amazon for camp. I don't know he picked it out. It was very ch and I'm not sure it will last a year, but it's fine right now, so you know, we're just going with it this year. Yeah, yeah, the next. Oh and somebody mentions not specifically buying back to school clothes, just buying clothes as their kids grow out of stuff and need it. This person said they find that buying a bunch of outfits for back to school increases clutter for us. You know, back to school is certainly not a cool, crisp time of years. It's not like we need a new season of clothes. I do think some of their clothes are kind of disgusting and I feel sort of embarrassed, like holes in the pants and like stains on the shirt. So I may have to indulge in some for them, But I get what they're saying. You don't need to buy them a new wardrobe just because, just because. Yeah. Our next tip reader, Jillian Sorry, said that it's a good time to start fresh with home policies. So meet with kids. Meet with each of your kids and talk about, you know, your home policies, like what rules are going to be during the year, what they are excited about, because that way, you know, you're having a conversation about what extracurricular activities they care about, you know, if there's going to be any big family changes or schedule changes. But just keeping them involved, like it's you know, we often get involved in our own logistics, but especially as kids get older, they need to be informed of them as well. So meeting one on one with each of your kids to talk through their hopes and goals and aspirations for the school year and your hopes and goals and aspirations is great too. There were some other sort of publicy changes mentioned from some readers. One person said they switched to a no screens approach. This was Melissa from Mondays to Thursdays and puts nothing on Fridays. But that's sort of a policy change from the summer, and she makes sure that they all know about that and that it's just the new rule and they've been accepting of it and had success with it. Yeah. I react that people mentioned and I was going to say chores as well, that if you are shifting over chores, this is a good time to discuss it as well. Because every new everything's a new routine. So if you'd like your kids to start doing something or shift it from one kid to another, depending on what's going on, this is a good time to bring that up. Erica mentions also having a meet I love these meetings. I don't know that I've had that many kid meetings and now I'm sort of motivated to they set up new routines and have a meeting before before school starts to discuss expectations and how things will be different from a slightly relaxed summer. Yeah. So another tip we have is being ready for the huge volume of papers coming in through the year. So one of the things that I think, you know, drives people crazy at the start of the years is there are all these forms coming home, some of which you have to deal with, some of what you don't, some of just you know, for your information or like the policy, the privacy policy on some online program they're going to be using, so you know, have some space for it. Jen says. Each kid has a large plastic filebox with folders for pre K through twelfth grade. Anything super special gets put in the appropriate folder. The rest is thrown away. We've also set up a command center in a back hallway of the house that includes an erasable calendar and a corkboard for notices. Well, we also have similar boxes. I believe I got that idea from the Happier podcast and it's worked really well and I can now go back and look at things from like preschool for Annabelle and I'm gonna have to make genevieva box. Yeah, it's kind of fun. Oh sorry, it was the homework boxes related to that, right, that's the yes. Melissa also mentioned that each kid of hers has a homework box ready with what they need, so nobody is looking for items or waiting for her to get started. And in the homework boxes pencils, crayons, scissors, and glue, which is so true. I can't tell you how many times I felt like finding the blue crayon was a barrier to getting my child to do their homework, and like, how annoy just have them all in one place. In fact, this makes me want to also stockpile a million of those little boxes of just eight crayons to have on hand so I can restock when Genevieve invariablue like eats the crayons and yeah, exactly keep them away from the toddler. We had a couple of people mentioned the idea of making the first day special in some way regardless. You know, if you want to be part of the beginning of the school year, this might be a good day to arrange to come into work late, or take a half day or something like that. Maybe even take the day off if you think it's going to be a big transition for some of your kids and they're really going to need to process stuff afterwards. Again, it doesn't have to be a big deal, so you know, some kids is fine. I feel like this is just a normal day and that may help them with some anxiety. But if it's going to create anxiety for you with the schedule, maybe maybe that's a day to take off or do some other fun things. The pictures on the front steps, we don't do the like chalkboard with the grade or anything like that. We just we just take pictures. But yeah too, no chalkboard. And I'm not taking the first day off, but I am gonna like go in a little later so I can do the whole morning with the kids and do drop off and I think I get to go in with my kindergartener, so that'll be yeah cool, and possibly do something fun after school that day. People will mentioned the ice cream tradition or love game or a special dinner. And if not the first day, like maybe the first weekend, there is the first Friday night Friday or that there's you know, a trip to the beach, if it's still warm wherever you are on that first weekend, but just something to be fun and celebrate that we've had a great first week. Well, that was kind of so. One reader, Jessica, was talking about all of her tips had to do with planning, and that was kind of interesting. She talked about kind of making the first week very light, so not a lot of extra stuff, but then also purposely planning in something fun for the first weekend after the school starts, like an amusement park trip or a family barbecue, something to kind of look back to the fun summer days. And then she mentioned having a family vacation. On the book, she knows that by October everyone's gonna need a break, and they like when they begin this slog of school or it can feel like a slog to some kids anyway, to know that there's something fun to look ahead to. Yeah. Yeah, so it's not just all the way to Christmas break or the holiday break. I guess there's something in the middle that can be awesome if that's doing. Another tip on communicating with teachers, so one of our listeners writes that if you have a kid with special needs, no matter how mild, always touch base with the classroom teacher before school starts. It gives the teacher a better sense of how to deal with your child than any individual education plan can. If things have been rather crazy for the teacher and they haven't had a chance to read the IAP yet, this also will give a nudge for that to happen. She says that as a result of reaching out advance, my special needs kiddo has been, for instance, seated next to a friend for the first day, which helped with making sure that the first day went a lot more smoothly than it could have given this situation. Yeah, that's so nice. It's like a little thing, but it could mean so much and the only way to get it is to reach out. We had another blog reader that stated that she always goes to meet the teacher night with a gift card and note for each teacher. She writes, it's generally for coffee and I leave some acknowledgment on how hard they work. I want to start this relationship off on the right foot since they will be interacting with my child seven hours a day for the next one hundred and eighty days. I would just leave a note to be careful about what the school policies are because some districts may not allow this kind of thing. I think it's a little controversial, but if it works for her, so yeah, you know, I think I think it probably stems from more like the high school stuff, like people are worried about like they're you know, trying to get recommendation letters and stuff, and then you give a really nice gift card or something and shage like it's just they don't want to go down that route. So we have we have a new gifts policy. But no gifts for holidays too. M hm oh yeah, wow, yeah, no class gifts, no nothing, no nothing, no nothing. You can you're if you're going to do something, you can donate a book to the library, or you can give to the scholarship fund in the person's name. That's wow, that's a lot. But that is a that is a different culture from from how it is. That's very interesting. But okay, so lunch, let's do lunch. Yes, lunch is big, as we know. I think Laura is a big proponent of buying, and as are some of our the people who wrote We tend to pack, although again our nanny tends to pack. So it's a little easier on me to make that decision. I will say, if you're going to do the packing route, I agree with Gillian. The Bento boxes are just so easy and they hold up so well to just like throw different things in a compartment, and it's just so much easier than dealing with a bunch of disposable containers and stuff doesn't get squished and it doesn't mix together. She uses Planet Box. We use lunch bots, and we've got the same containers that I bought years ago that are still completely fine, and we throw them in the dishwasher. Instead of using a fancy insulated lunch box, we just use the kind of neoprene ones that are like ten bucks on Amazon and can be thrown in the washing machine and to just put ice packs in there. So you know, I don't know if we would pass a food inspection, but no one's gotten sick yet, so that's good. Yeah. We've been working with camp lunches for the past week and or two weeks, and it's just it's a reminder of why do the school lunch. There's been all kinds of you know, there was a leak of azer pack, there was you know, squish stuff people complaining about what because of course they can't bring peanut butter, you know, with various allergies that are present in different programs. And so then you're trying to figure out what to pack. And there's been a lot of sun butter. Sun butter, Well, they don't really like that. There's a little bit of cream cheese. But then people could play and the cream cheese tastes bad when it's been in there all day. Yeah, and they like their hot lunches, which is good. Yeah, so lunch you got to strategize your plan. And I cannot tell you how how much I laugh when I see those like posts with like the cutout lunches, flowers and stuff. I mean, I'm sure there are people that love that. I cannot imagine now, I know, but I mean I think, you know, if you're doing it to entertain your one hundred thousand Instagram followers, I mean, that's your business. Like that's it's a different thing. It's not you're just doing it because but I think then a lot of moms think that's like not their new job now, because I know, anyway, we give you permission to just make it utilitarian whichever direction usual I'll definitely a lot of leftovers. If they can't get fed, it's good exactly. Yes, that's that's my thought about practice school in general. All right, well we should go to our question. Yeah, thank you everybody for sending those in, and you know, feel free to browse around on our blogs that we've We didn't get to use all of them, but lots of helpful stuff there. So shall I read this or do you want to read it? I can read it you had you had a good first answer, and then I'll chip in. Okay, this is a long term best of both worlds listener. Writing in, she says, I'm married with two elementary school kids, one that has a chronic health issue and the other one that needs therapy a few times a week at least for the next year or two. I started a new job a month ago. Prior to this job, I was always non exempt, paid hourly, had no flexibility, had to use PTO for all my kids doctor's appointments, sick days, snow days, et cetera. There have been several years where we couldn't even take a big because I had no time off left. My husband does almost all the appointments and snow days for that reason, but it gets stressful due to his work responsibilities, commute, et cetera. I'm really enjoying my new job, duties and everything it entails. My position is exempt, so I will have more wiggle room to say work from home if one of my kids has an appointment. But my challenge is that, after years of having zero flexibility, I don't know how to ask my boss to do any of these things. I'm not sure if it's a case of imposter syndrome or insecurity, but I almost feel as if I don't deserve it or I'm being too presumptuous. I also wonder if my coworkers will frown on that as well. Even though they have the benefit, they don't seem to have the need, desire for flex alternative schedules. Do have any advice? Yeah, well, I mean this is it's so challenging when you've built your career with one set of assumptions and then now there's different ones, but you feel like you still have the same limitations. I think one of the things that might help her is to just sort of track her work hours for a while, even though she's exempt and she's not getting paid hourly anymore. It might help to assure herself and to have a record that she's definitely putting in, you know, sort of whatever the expectation is thirty five to forty hours or so, and that might give her a little bit more confidence to ask for these things. I also said, I wouldn't be sure that her colleagues aren't using the flexibility. A lot of people just probably don't talk about it. This isn't the kind of thing that people walk in and you know, somebody who's only been working there a month, and everyone announces to guess what, you know, I worked at home yesterday morning because the plumber was coming. Like, this isn't the sort of thing people necessarily announce, but you can ask, especially as you get to know people, so as you're you know, having lunch with someone in the company cafeteria or and I mean be like, yeah, you know, how is it like I've got this thing coming up where I think I gotta have to meet a plumber. You know, you don't don't even put it kid oriented, just to so keep it in you know, the realm of things that might happen to anyone, or like, you know, I want to do my dentist appointment, they've got these really limited hours, Like how have you had to deal with that? And then you can find out like is this something that people do? I'd also, you know, if she has a good relationship with her boss, this is certainly something she can ask in her first performance review. I mean, get the person to sort of be talking about what an awesome job she's doing, and then you can ask about one, you know, a one off accommodation that would be helpful. Maybe there's a particular specialist one of her children needs to see in a couple of weeks, and she could broach the topic like somebody who's just been singing your praises is probably not going to be like, no, nobody does that here. And then once she does it once and sees that it's fine, like the earth doesn't stop, she doesn't get fired, Like I mean, it's probably she'll see that she can do it, and then it's just you know, it's about working in the way that works for you. I Mean, they went through the trouble of hiring you, they probably want to keep you, so you know, don't abuse it, but you're not going to abuse it, like just it's it's probably okay. But then again, I've I've not really had a tradition jobs, so I'm maybe not the best person to comment on this. So and I'm not an HR expert, but I can tell you what I've learned from my experience as an exempt employee myself. I want to remind you that part of the beauty of exempt is you are exempt. No one is going to ask you to scan your badge in and out, and your job is probably a little bit more now about getting things done that are expected and less about FaceTime. I think you need to remember this and probably start experimenting a little, maybe little by little, to figure out what goes over well. And I think that when you get a little bit more in tune with the work culture, it'll become more natural. I wouldn't assume that your coworkers, just like Laura said, aren't doing these things. It's just that, like when you go to the dentist and then walk in later, you know, how can you tell if someone did that versus went to an early meeting. A lot of people have off site meetings and other things, so you know, when their butt is not in their chair, you probably assume that they're doing work. But maybe they're not. I think one strategy that I I've definitely employed before because I tend to be on the self conscious side about this as well, Like you know that, for example, this podcast is not being done on work time. That's why I am specifically a point nine fte, although my job is different because a lot of it I need to be very physically present to do. But I guess what I'm saying is what I used to do when I, let's say, had an obe appointment that I was gonna run out during lunch but it might go over is I would sort of make a show of either coming in early that day or or staying late, or like you know, casually walk by my bosses on the way out. If I stayed late, oh yeah, I had to finish because my boss is always there by the way. But I had to finish this late because because I ran to the OBI like kind of just making sure that they knew that I was making up the time, even though probably if I think about that, I was ridiculous because nobody cares if my patients were being seen and my goals were being met and my charts were being done and everyone was satisfied, Nobody cares that I moved one patient to a different day and did my notes later, you know what I mean. So I I think that I guess. So number one, maybe try to just be less self conscious about it. But number two, you know you can. You can kind of emphasize that you are doing everything. If it makes you feel better, Yeah, tend to send an email at nine pm to yes, yes exactly. Or I think I even said you could. You could be if it makes you more comfortable, you could say at a meeting, like Laura said, there's a few days when I have to leave a little early, but I'll be working from home in the evening to catch up on anything I missed. I'd be shocked if someone had an objection to that, because you're not saying I'm going to do less work. You're just you're just shifting things around a little bit on the rare occasion that you need it. So hopefully she becomes more confident on this, and I'm really hoping that she gets a vacation because that sounds like it's been a tough situation for a few years too. So here's too new jobs and more flexibility. So this brings us to our love of the week segment, so mine is in fact starting school after Labor Day. I actually like this setup because I'm really like the idea of having August still not be school, you know, I don't know something about it feels like summer just keeps going. And last year, in fact, we the older three kids and Michael and I were in Colorado on September first. I remember taking the kids to a diner on September first for breakfast. I'm like, wow, that's September and we're still on summer vacation. Like this is kind of kind of cool. So I like that sense of stretching it out, you know, even if we do go to mid June. No, I'm jealous. I mean, I the Northeast does summer a lot better than South Florida does. But because we have summer all the time for you guys, well no, it's just like summer's our worst weather. So it's not like we you know, I look forward to summer for the more relaxed schedule, but I don't really look forward to summer for being summer. So I guess for us, it just doesn't matter as much when it starts or ends. It's not it's not a season that we relish, I think the way I remember doing so when I was a kid living up north and we had winter. Yeah, but yeah, I think your situation sounds great. If I lived up there, I would particularly want to stretch it out as long as possible. I think down here, I care less. Yeah, my love of the week is field Notes. I may have had that boem before, but you know what, that's okay because it is a tangential school supply. Field Notes are these little sort of I don't know, maybe three by five size small notebooks, are very durable, and they come in all these cool specialty editions, and the most recent specialty edition was National Park themed ones and they're so pretty. I'll put a picture of them maybe in the Instagram, because like they're just these little nature scenes and I tend to share them with the kids now, Like Annabel likes to write stories in them, so I'll give it to her the maybe document I don't know the end of her summer or something like that. But you can subscribe and get these special editions for like one hundred dollars a year for four shipments, and it's just like an immense amount of pleasure and I just felt like this summer slash Fall edition was one of their best yet. So field Notes is my school themed love of the week. Well, I will have to check that out. Well. This has been our back to School edition, Episode one oh seven. We'll be back next week with more on making work in life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.