The August Effect: Back to School, Forward to Work, and Everything After

TLDR: Catch the replay of the webinar on this topic: The August Effect: Tips for Transitioning Your Year

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It’s here. August. Thirty-one days of heat, haze and change.

You may be navigating change at work – either already asked to move your center of operations back to a desk at the company and/or it might be coming soon. And you might be changing child care routines or readying for a new school year that will be, again, unlike any other.

So this year, we're taking the routines and changes we've gone through in the past-year-and-a-half for kids and parents, and once again, we're throwing everything up in the air and watching where it lands, which in some ways can be really freeing.

I invite all of us to take a few minutes and adapt our way of thinking about the traditional back-to-school time and really embrace the fact that it's all up for reconfiguration.

I’m not a parenting expert in any respect. But I do spend a lot of time examining the overlap of work and family.

My entire goal is to help working parents foresee the things that will cost them time, and offer suggestions I’ve heard or read or tried (with full disclosure about lessons learned!). If you have others, please feel free to add them in the comments section.

CHOOSE WORDS WITH CARE

You may have noticed we are trying really hard not to say “Back to Work,” for two reasons: one, we’ve been working this whole time and two, nobody wants to go back to what we had pre-pandemic.

For young kids (really any child between preschool and second grade), we have to be careful not to refer things as "normal" or "not normal" because they don't have that frame of reference yet for what a standard school experience looks like.

One of my favorite parenting gurus taught us that it always, always helps younger children if we reassure them that some things will be the same -- so they have the opportunity to understand that some things are going to go the way they've already gone. These don't have to be macro things. In fact, it's better if these are micro things:

Some things will be the same: You'll have a teacher. The teacher will be with you all day. You'll still read stories. You'll still eat lunch at school. You’ll still ride the bus.

And some things will be different: You have a new backpack. Your shoes are different. And you’ll only use your iPad at school.

PRACTICE EARLY AND OFTEN

When I was going into middle school, I asked my mom if I could get into the (humongous) building early and walk my schedule and practice that most terrifying of obstacles, the combination lock! She agreed. Now, this was the 80s, so I don’t know if they had a formal orientation night and we missed it, or if it wasn’t even offered. What I DO remember is entering the school one hot August evening with my mom and my sister, and setting off the alarms.

My mom was unfazed. “Go ahead,” she told me. The alarm stopped pretty quickly (and no police officers arrived), and I walked around the enormous hallways and up the stairs to my locker. I stood there, twisting the dial and trying my combination over and over.

My sister said, “What is she doing?!” and my mom answered, “She’s learning.”

With our older kiddos, mapping out the day can be really, really important, so we are taking every opportunity this August to get in on all the orientation sessions our school is offering. We're going to be calling into some, we're going to be going to some in-person.

If you have a child with some neurodiverse learning styles or attention disorders, this is something you’ll want to handle according to what you know works best for them.

You probably know the things that make it easier for your child to grasp information. Maybe they need to speak it back to you. Maybe it is better if they get their hands on and make something tangible. Maybe it's a piece of fun art or something that indicates what this is all about for them, the building blocks of this schedule, and not just a text-based or audio-based download of what's coming.

KEEP COVID IN MIND

The first question on my kids' minds: "Are we going to have to wear masks to school?!"

This is a tough one.

It’s important to help kids understand less about the actual rule or policy and more about how they handle it.

They may not have the same rules as a friend who they interact with who goes to a different school. They may not even have the same rules as kids in the household who are in a different grade or go to a different building, so it's helpful at the outset to just say, "Each school sets the rules. Each of you has to follow the rules for the building you're in as set by your teachers and principal and not pay attention to whether they're the same as everybody else's rules.”

Do your best to keep up with what the school district is communicating to you. You may feel like there's an awful lot and it may be changing fast, so try to keep up, try to be honest and open with the kids about what the rules are, and then don't beat yourself up if something slips through the cracks because that's occasionally what happens as we're in a rapid-fire, go-with-the-latest-guidance situation.

DON’T FORGET DAY 2

I highly, highly, highly encourage every parent to take PTO the first day of school, completely take the day off. I know that's not possible for everybody. I know there are people in hourly roles and frontline jobs who can't just do that.

However, if it's at all accessible to you, my advice, and this has been my advice for years, regardless of the pandemic, is that parents deserve a day to get transitioned as well. You will have just finished a Herculean effort to get those children ready to set off that day, whether it's on the bus or in a car or walking to school, and you need a day yourself. Take it.

If you can't do it on the first day of school, for whatever reason, I would encourage you that weekend immediately before or immediately after to get some intensive self-care booked for yourself so that you have a chance to recuperate.

It's incredibly important that you don't hit the second day of school zapped.

The first day of school is so fun. It's the second day of school when it sinks in that we have to keep doing this for five days a week for the rest of the school year, so it's important that you save some reserves for what's going to come after that first day.

BRING SCHOOL TO WORK

Now for setting expectations at work: if you received information from your employer about coming to an office setting and it did not include any consideration for back-to-school timing, that’s a miss on your employer’s part.

Decide in advance what you need—do you need flexibility before the kids start back, or after? Do you need to do a couple half-days or work-at-home days until things settle?

Lead with what you CAN do, vs. what you can’t, and help your managers see the best ways to support you in the 1-2 weeks before and after the first day.

Don't forget we have a virtual option – we can still ask to join meetings from the phone or Zoom. The tendency or assumption might be moving toward in-person work, but we can still use our virtual tools as much as we ever did before, it just might take a little bit more planning.

MAKE A PLAN AND MAKE IT VISIBLE

I still remember the day during the pandemic when I let the whiteboard into my dining room … sigh. We had just moved, and I was enjoying settling in and decorating. But I found that my kids were constantly worrying or feeling caught off guard by changes. So, I gave in, and hung a cheap whiteboard in my dining room (in a prime spot that would be PERFECT for a painting or a piece of kids’ art, I might add).

That ugly whiteboard changed the game for us. (And I’m told they sell pretty ones, too.)

The advantage of the whiteboard (or calendar wall, or command center, or whatever you use) is that it gets everything the family is doing visible for all members of the family.

This seems redundant, in the age of multiple calendars that synch to our phones, but remember the kids often can’t see those, and remember little ones are used to being oriented to a calendar at school (with every holiday they can imagine!)

For busy families, updating these boards daily or weekly lets you foresee any trouble spots and have a conversation if needed with your parenting partner or with your manager to say, "Tuesday is going to require flexibility.”

RALLY THE TROOPS

Do not assume you have to do everything yourself. This goes for your life at work and your life at home.

When it comes to your life at work, if there are key meetings during these first couple of transition weeks where you need to have somebody cover for you and bring you notes from a meeting, do not be afraid to step up and ask for that from a team member, from a manager, from a peer, as long as you're communicating to everybody, "I won't be there because I'll be doing school activities, but I've already arranged to get notes and a debrief from someone."

That's also really key for kids. If you have to miss something for the kids in the first couple of weeks, what CAN you attend? "I'm not necessarily going to be able to come to every practice the first week school, but I will be there for the Friday practice.”

Do not hesitate to build your village early this year.

Find other parents managing the same tasks, routes and times you’re managing. I guarantee you're going to go sit in a car line behind three other parents who are also missing work and/or a meeting and/or a call. This is not an efficient use of time and resources for anybody.

Until we live in an ideal world where there is an “after-school” bus that brings kids home after extracurriculars (all of which end at the same time every day), we need to take turns. That way we can tell our managers that we will consistently need flexibility on Tuesdays at 3pm, versus every day at 3pm. 

JUST SAY “NO”

Several Augusts ago, a friend asked for a coffee meeting just to catch up. It had been ages since we’d talked and I was in the career phases where every coffee is a great opportunity (does that phase ever end? I don’t think it does.) But when she suggested a few August dates, my stomach dropped as I looked at the calendar and finally I said, “You know, I think in August all I can do is meet the daily demands of work, my daughter’s August birthday, a 2-week gap in childcare and the beginning of school. I can’t add coffee meetings.”

It has served me well ever since so my August mantra is: just say “no” to anything extra.

BREATHE

You're doing a great job. Remember to give yourself a pat on the back and find a way to take a little break sometime around the beginning of the school, whether it's a full day off or whether it's an extra cup of coffee with 5 deep breaths after you get the kids launched into this new year. You do deserve it.