Confidently Beautiful with Ciera

Replay: Back-to-School with Confidence

• Ciera • Episode 74

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Back to school season is here and it's time to prepare both parents and children with the confidence needed to navigate this transition successfully. This replay of Episode 2 offers timeless advice for parents at any stage of their school journey.

• Prepare for the busy season by establishing daily routines before school begins
• Create designated spots for backpacks and school papers to stay organized
• Start a keepsakes system for storing and documenting school projects 
• Help kindergartners practice eating lunch in 15 minutes and opening food packages
• Trust your child and their teachers, speaking positively about the school experience
• Allow children to "productively struggle" instead of rescuing them from every challenge
• Remember that a child's self-worth isn't tied to their academic performance
• Use the "sandwich method" when correcting mistakes: praise, correction, affirmation

Connect with me on Instagram at confidentlybeautifulpodcast and share this episode with someone in your life who could use a little reminder of just how amazing they already are.


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Ciera:

you're listening to confidently beautiful with Ciera a podcast to help you stay confidently beautiful, because we all have confidence inside us. We just need to bring it out and I'm here to show you how body image, dreams, parenting, style, personality and more here we cover it all. Get ready to stay confidently beautiful for today's episode. I hope it's okay with you that we are going to go back into the archives of old episodes. I am pulling episode number two and doing a replay. This episode was all about going back to school with confidence, and I think that all of the information in this episode is just as relevant today as it was back then. Thinking back to when I first recorded this episode, I was just having a brand new kindergartner, and now, as that kindergartner is about to go into third grade, I can say that all of this stuff is still just as valuable for where I am now in my school journey with my kids as it was back then. So I hope you can find this episode helpful for you, no matter what stage in school you are in with your kids, and let's all go back to school with some confidence. Hello, and welcome to episode number two back to school with confidence. I can't even believe that I'm saying back to school. Don't we just feel like we just started summer? Because I do. But here we are, back to school. It is when this airs. It will be the night before school starts for a lot of kids in the southern Utah area, where I am, which is just crazy to me. Lucky for me, I still have a couple more weeks because I only have a kindergartner in preschool, but even that is just crazy that it's actually here and it's coming. That it's just crazy that it's actually here and it's coming. So, with that said, let's just jump right into what I wanted to talk to you about today, which is going back to school with confidence whether it's the mom being confident or the child going back and I got to talk to some really fun people to get some advice on this and I have some hopefully really helpful takeaways. In the very least, it really helped me as I am going to have my very, very first elementary age child in school. I am entering that new stage in life, which is just crazy to me.

Ciera:

Okay, so my number one tip is to prepare for the busy. I am a list person, a chart person, all of the things. That is me to the core, preparing for the busy. I am taking this last couple of weeks of summer to just for the kids what I want to do before school and then what I want to get done while they're at school and then what I want to do after school. So I think just establishing your daily routines will really help as you jump into the busy part of things, to know what to expect and what to do, because sometimes, if you're like me, you might just get frozen and not be confident in what you should be doing because you just are overwhelmed with everything. So having those daily routines, I think, will be really helpful.

Ciera:

Another thing that I am working on is having a designated place for backpacks and school papers. I mean, I remember every day when my daughter was in preschool she would come home with at least one paper, usually more, and those can stack up and they can get shoved in the backpack and forgotten. So I think that having a place to put the papers is huge. I remember hearing on another podcast Minivan mamas shout out to them. If you know who they are, check them out. I remember I think it was Alexa on minivan mamas and she was talking about like a place that she has for all the school papers and everyone just comes in the house, they unload their backpack and they put all of their school papers in this one spot, and that is just genius, because then you can just have one place to sit there and sort through the trash and see all the handouts and announcements that you actually need to pay attention to. That your kids are probably going to forget to tell you. So I think have a place for that and to have a specific backpack place is probably extremely helpful. I'm saying all this having only had a preschooler, but I would imagine it would be very helpful.

Ciera:

Another thing that I have done is having like a keepsakes folder or box that I put everything in throughout the year. This was an awesome suggestion by my daughter's very first preschool teacher. I was overwhelmed with all of the adorable projects that she was bringing home and I didn't want to throw them away because they were so cute. But then I had so many. They just were growing and growing. So what I did over her two years of preschool is I had a box and every cute project that she would have, I would write on the back of it the month and the year and I would put it in the box. She's done with preschool now, so I've taken pictures of everything and I've put them in my photos and now the only thing I need to do is compile them into a book and then she's going to have this book and I've thrown away all the crafts because I have the pictures of them all and I don't need to keep whatever it is that she made in preschool, because I have a picture of it and I can still remember it. And that was some really good advice. So get your box or your folder ready to just file them as they come in so you don't have a giant mess at the end of the school year to have to sort through. So that's preparing for the busy kind of getting your routines and your procedures in place.

Ciera:

The next advice that I have is little things to prepare your kindergartner. So I have a brand new kindergartner, my very first kindergartner, and I have been really trying to think how can I prepare her to have all day school? She's had two and a half hours of preschool three days a week, but she hasn't been at school all day long. That's a long time for a little girl to be away from her mom, or maybe I'm just feeling that way because I just want to keep her with me, but I have been thinking how can I prepare her and I saw the most genius thing that I need to share with you all Busy Toddler.

Ciera:

On Instagram, she shared the best advice that I had not even thought of. She said to have your little kindergartner practice eating in 15 minutes, to set a timer and have them practice eating their lunch before that timer goes off. I thought that was so smart, because that has been one of my fears is my child going to eat during the day? Is she going to know that she needs to actually like eat quickly and then she's going to have things that she needs to do? So I thought that that was so smart to have them practice eating in 15 minutes. And then the other piece of advice that she offered was to practice opening packages. So give her whatever I plan to pack in her lunch or whatever the school is probably going to be providing, and have her practice opening herself. I thought that was the best advice ever for a new kindergartner. Some other things that I got I asked on my Instagram.

Ciera:

I asked all of my teacher friends and homeschool mom friends for their best advice for sending kids back to school with confidence, whether it's advice for the mom or advice for the child. So I just wanted to share some of the things that I got from these people because I thought it was really good. From a teacher, this was advice for a mom to send your child to school and for you to be confident with that. This one was so simple but when she said it I was like, yes, I need to let go of some of my control and just be confident in my child. All she said was just to trust them, trust your child, trust your teacher, be confident that everything is going to be OK, that your child is going to be awesome, and trust that the teachers are going to take really good care of them. And so I thought that was the best advice for a new mom going into this new experience of school, and maybe even for you seasoned moms who maybe have had some kids go, but you always struggle with a little bit of confidence of letting your kids leave the house for the whole day. So I thought that was the best advice ever from a teacher. She also said talk highly of the teachers and their school. So once you find out who their teacher is, just immediately start talking highly about that teacher and about the school experience in general. They will copy what you feel and what you do and what you say. So if you're talking highly of the teacher and of school, they're going to be excited about it.

Ciera:

Some other advice that I got from actually she's a learning coach. She's been a teacher but now she is in a new position as a learning coach at an elementary school and I loved what she said, so I'm just going to read it word for word. She said one thing that I've noticed in my new role is that confidence comes when kids are allowed to productively struggle. Too quickly we try to jump in and save a child to prevent them from frustration, which doesn't enable confidence. We need to scaffold and help and pull it away so they can experience their own struggle leading to success. Having conversations with a child about doing hard things and making mistakes is so important. It's also important to demonstrate that as adults we're imperfect. Show them our own productive struggle, apologize and be vulnerable, which I get is so much easier said than done. I seriously loved that advice so much. It was so good to remind me to just let go of some of my controllingness and to just let the child experience failure, experience frustration, and that will help them to grow their confidence. I thought that was so good.

Ciera:

I got advice from two homeschool moms. One of them she talked about Simply On Purpose. I love her, she is so good. She's on Instagram Simply On Purpose.

Ciera:

Her name is Ralphie and she teaches about sandwiching your correction. So this homeschool mom that I talked to, she was referencing this that Ralphie talks about. So a sandwich is when you point out what they did well, you give them a correction and then you praise them for something about them. So, for example, maybe they misspelled a word. Maybe you say you did so good writing your letter so clearly. This letter is actually at the end of the word instead of in the middle. You are so good at writing, or something like that. I don't know, maybe that was a terrible example, but that's what I thought of as our kids are going through school that they will struggle and they will have challenges as they're learning, but just as everyone does, and that was a really, really good piece of advice to build their confidence.

Ciera:

Another piece of advice that a homeschool mom said as they're learning is to bring your child back home to themselves so that their self-worth isn't solely tied to achievements and capabilities, acceptance and approval or praise from others. So just remind your kids that they should be confident just because they're valuable as human beings and they have self-worth, and that that self-worth will not change depending on how well they do academically or socially or with school. It was really interesting to hear all of the things and I was so, so glad that a lot of my friends were willing to openly share their confidence suggestions with school as we get back into this back to school season. Okay, so there you have it. There's my back to school with confidence tips. Prepare for the busy, do little things to help your kindergartner prepare and be confident that they will have the best success, that they can Talk highly. Trust your kids and help them academically to know that their shortcomings are not tied to their self-worth and that they can be confident with who they are, no matter how well they're doing academically, and I hope that you have a very good back to school season.

Ciera:

Can't even believe it. How many times have I said that? A lot, but I just can't. I just can't believe that it's here. Thanks for listening. Connect with me on Instagram @confidentlybeautifulpodcast and share this episode with someone in your life who could use a little reminder of just how amazing they already are. Stay confidently beautiful.