Make Your Child’s Day

“Back to school” is coming, and it isn’t optional. Happily, you can help your youngster develop a routine that works.

The poolside afternoons, the late nights and the morning sleep-ins kids love the freedom of summer vacation, and they’re loath to give it up. But it doesn’t last forever, and the resumption of school means a return to a more structured way of living. How your child adapts to a new daily routine in September helps set the pattern for the whole school year. That’s why MONMOUTH checked in recently with Gagandeep Singh, M.D., a board-certified child psychiatrist who practices in Freehold.

Assuring a successful new school year “is about setting up good habits,” says Dr. Singh. “A good routine and schedule ensures that kids ease back into the flow of things, particularly in regard to academics. They’re less likely to start falling behind, and therefore less likely to start feeling pressure and stress building up.”

The doctor offers six tips:

• Start slow. Just as you wouldn’t expect someone to go from sitting behind a desk all day to suddenly running a marathon, it’s unreasonable to expect a child to go from late bedtimes and lax wake-up times to popping out of bed ready to head out the door at 7 a.m. Says Dr. Singh: “Some kids will try to ‘crash-course’ it and go to bed earlier a few days before school starts, but realistically that’s not very helpful for most. If someone is adjusting a bedtime by three or four hours, you need at least a week or two to do it properly.” His recommendation: “Every few days, move bedtime back 30 minutes. That more gradual change does a lot. Alternatively, you could try moving bedtime back by an hour once a week, allowing that week for the body to adjust.”

Experts also suggest going through “practice mornings” a few times before school starts, particularly for young children or those entering a new school. Have kids wake up, get dressed, eat breakfast and leave the house at school time a few days before classes begin. Familiarity reduces anxiety, and making the first day feel familiar sets everyone up for success.

• Keep it simple. When it comes to kids’ schedules, simpler is often more effective. A schedule containing twenty precisely timed steps is much more likely to become overwhelming and fail than one with only five or six. Rather than planning every second of your child’s time, experts suggest focusing on a few “anchor points”-the morning “launch” period (wake-up times, breakfast and time spent on hygiene such as showering), the postschool decompression period (opt for a healthy snack some kind of nonscreen-based playtime or activity before starting homework) and the evening wind-down. (Once again, avoiding screens is key; reading, audiobooks or listening to calm music are all good options.) Our expert stresses the importance of keeping those wake-up times consistent. “Teens are going to hate me for this, but do so even on weekends. It’s not practical to wake up very early on weekdays and then sleep until 11 a.m.or noon on Saturday and Sunday,” he says.

If kids are struggling with keeping to a schedule, the doctor suggests getting them involved with creating one. “Ideally, the schedule should make them feel they’re working successfully to achieve their goals. It should give them a sense of self-worth, accomplishment and efficacy,” says the doctor. All of these come more easily if the child feels as if he or she is being empowered to control priorities, rather than being fully directed by an adult. Helping design breakfast menus, organize outfits for the week or choose which piece of homework or after-school chore comes first goes far.

Adds Dr. Singh: “Encourage older children and teens to write things down. Seeing the way time is spent visually helps. Phone and laptop notes can be particularly good tools for this. Also, make sure you build in breaks; those are vital to a schedule’s ‘road map’ feeling manageable.”

• Get those Zs. Sleep is vital for everyone, but it’s particularly important for children and teens. Dr. Singh singles out a healthy, consistent sleep schedule as one of the most important good habits for children and teens to build. “Sleep is actually a very complicated process,” he says. “There are different stages of sleep, all of which allow for types of different rest and recharging of the brain. There is also data linking circadian rhythm [your body’s 24-hour clock, which controls when you feel awake or tired] to mood and anxiety.”When a child or teen is sleep-deprived, you can tell-the amygdala, the part of the brain that regulates emotion, becomes overreactive and causes everything from anxiety and irritability to difficulty concentrating. To keep sleep consistent, the doctor recommends “disconnecting from screens at least a half-hour before bed.” Blue light, given off by phone and computer screens, can suppresse melatonin production and sends the brain a confusing message that it’s still daytime, which can keep people awake. “Practice good sleep hygiene strategies—keep your bedroom cool and use a white noise machine to keep things quiet. If you’re tossing and turning, don’t lie in bed; that will keep you awake. Get up, sit somewhere else and do something calming, like reading a book,” says Dr. Singh.

• Keep everyone moving. Building time into your family’s day for movement and exercise is also vital. Exercise floods your system with endorphins and serotonin, our natural mood stabilizers, and burns off excess cortisol, the body’s primary stress hormone. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) agrees, and recommends that children ages 3 to 5 be active “throughout the day” and ages 6 to 17 be physically active for at least 60 minutes every day. The CDC suggests incorporating physical activity into your family’s daily routine via group walks or games. Dr. Singh echoes the sentiment. “It’s important to build being physically active and getting outside into daily routines,” he says. “In addition to those endorphins, it gives you a sense of accomplishment at the end of the day and can help with sleep.”

Adds the doctor: “Kids joke now about how you feel bad if you don’t ‘touch grass,’ but there’s really some truth to that. You can’t sit inside with the curtains drawn and LED lights overhead and expect to feel healthy. We’re diurnal creatures and our bodies need sunlight.” Getting kids outside and in natural environments also increases opportunities for exercise without pushing them to join competitive sports if they don’t want to.

• Know signs of stress. If your child is struggling, he or she probably won’t just announce it. So it’s important for parents to keep an eye out for signs of anxiety or stress. “Watch for disturbances in sleep, changes in energy levels and loss of appetite,” says Dr. Singh, “particularly if combined with a slip in grades, increased irritability and any kind of self-isolating behavior.”

If you suspect your child is feeling overwhelmed about something, he advises, “The best thing to do is to offer an open door. Make it clear that you’re asking from a place of love and not a place of judgment. Saying ‘I know you want your space and independence, and we want to give you that, but iť’s our job is to keep you safe and protected. We want your mental health in a good place because we love you’ goes a long way.”

Offering simple anxiety management tools such as “box breathing” (inhale for four seconds, hold for four seconds, exhale for four seconds) or the five-senses grounding technique (naming five things you can see, four you can touch, three you can hear, two you can smell and one you can taste) is also often effective.

• Give everyone grace. No matter how hard you work to keep yourself, your child and your family on a schedule, it’s inevitable that your efforts will sometimes fall short. And that’s OK. The experts say the goal is not a flawless routine, but a predictable rhythm to come back to.

Concludes Dr. Singh: “The value of a schedule is the way it maintains stability. It keeps kids grounded in a world of academic and social pressures.”