Wellbeing

Preparing for a positive return to school

A key to the successful transition back to on-site learning is to re-establish routines that may have become lost over the past few months. You may notice that when your children come back to school, they will be more tired and possibly emotional. This is completely normal and needs to be allowed for. Some suggestions that could help with the transition could include:

Prioritise sleep and routine

We have all got a bit too used to later nights and sleeping in (or is it just me!). It might take the children (and adults) a bit of getting used to, to get out of the house in the morning and arrive to school on time. Start talking to your children about the evening routine and the shift back to regular bed times and organisation in the morning. Have them become part of preparing the lunch box, lay their uniform out the night before and even use a visual checklist. 

Children love predictability and thrive on a set routine that they are familiar with. 

They are going to be tired after their first few days back at school, so be prepared for some mini meltdowns induced by exhaustion and plan for some quiet afternoon activities.  

Practice gratitude

Sometimes we only hear about the negative part of a child's day at school because to them, a minor two minute incident may have upset their otherwise happy day. A good habit to get into to allow for a positive mindset is to ask them to tell you 3 good things that happened in their day. If this is followed up or preceded by a negative, you have the opportunity to return the focus to the positive things. 

Focus on Feelings

At school, we use the Zones of Regulation to assist us to identify what emotion we are feeling and how we can shift from one emotion to another. This allows us to develop good self-regulation skills. It might be useful to display this poster on your fridge or in your child's bedroom and use it as a reference at home. 

Ideally, we all like to be in the Green Zone - feeling Happy, calm, focused and ready to go. But it is ok to be in another zone sometimes, but we don't want to stay there for too long.

If they are having a difficult start to the day or come home feeling unhappy, ask them to describe their feeling and use the chart to help them name it. Then, brainstorm some things they could do or things to look forward to that might help them shift back into the Green Zone.