Death By Adulting
A podcast focused on helping you make decisions today that you won't regret tomorrow. Hosted by Dr. Steve and Megan Scheibner. The Scheibners share wisdom and advice regarding marriage, parenting, dating, communication and even sex.
Death By Adulting
Staying Cool Under Pressure: A Guide for Back-to-School Success
Are you ready to conquer the chaos of back-to-school season? Join us on this episode of Death by Adulting as we share hilarious anecdotes and essential tips to ease the transition for both parents and kids. We'll explore how to tackle the anxiety that often accompanies this time of year, emphasizing the magic of preparation and maintaining a positive attitude. Whether your children are excited or dreading the return to school, we've got advice on keeping your cool and avoiding the pitfall of projecting your anxieties onto them. From public and private schools to homeschooling, our strategies for staying organized and supportive will help you reduce stress and create a smoother, more enjoyable experience.
But that's not all! We also dive into the modern parenting dilemma of over-scheduling and the lingering effects of helicopter parenting. Reflecting on how the pandemic allowed kids to rediscover the joys of unstructured play, we stress the importance of letting children face challenges and build resilience. Plus, we'll share creative ideas to celebrate the back-to-school season, making it a memorable time for the whole family. So, grab your favorite back-to-school memory and listen in as we remind you that in the world of adulting, what doesn't kill us just makes us tired—but also a little wiser.
On this episode of Death by Adulting back to school time Tips and tools to make your child's return to school stress-free and fun. Walking the tightrope of back-to-school anxiety Is it possible to have too much of a good thing? Nah, how the heck not to hover? Just say no to your inner helicopter parent, plus much, much more. Roll the intro.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Death by Adulting. I'm Megan Shibner, with my co-host, Dr Steve Shibner, and it's back to school. I've got my back to school haircut and my school vest and I'm ready.
Speaker 1:Do you have your transparent backpack so we can see all of your stuff?
Speaker 2:Oh, no, no, I would, I would forget it anyway. So it's time to talk about back to school, and you know what, like it or not, back to school means change, and change is hard not just for our kids, change is hard for us too. And so, um, we want to talk about some of the pitfalls of back to school and then some really practical tips to help make it a little less stressful for you. So you know, uh, kids, kids face back to school differently, and they always have. For example, I was the child who counted down how many days until I could go back to school, and you were the child who counted down how many days I had still on summer vacation?
Speaker 2:yeah, two very different kids and they're totally different mentalities did you ever get that checked out?
Speaker 1:did you ever go see a doctor about that? Because?
Speaker 2:I always felt sorry for people like you.
Speaker 1:No, no, honey, what's normal? Not to want to go back to school?
Speaker 2:I just really love school, the yellow school bus was like torture.
Speaker 1:I mean that's, it's not yeah no, when you're a little boy. All you want to do is run and play.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, that made probably. What helped is I never had to take the yellow school bus, so that made life better for me. And in case you're wondering, this episode is not just for public school kids or or private school kids, it's for you homeschoolers too, because there you need to have a delineation of not school school if you want to move forward how you school.
Speaker 1:What are the tips and tools for helping make it stress-free and fun?
Speaker 2:right, it's right, and so one of the first things we want to talk about is back to school does cause anxiety. Sometimes it's for the parents, sometimes it's for the children. So how do we, how do we help our kids with that anxiety and how do we keep from making it worse?
Speaker 1:Okay, good question.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what do you think about that?
Speaker 1:Well, I think you got to get ahead of it a little bit. You can't let it catch you up and all of a sudden it's two days before you're going back to school and you haven't done any prep for that. The other part is and I would say this is it's so easy to make the back to school jokes, you know. You know how many times have we gone to church and it was the Sunday before school started again in the past you got up and said hey, it's back to school week this week. Amen, everybody, can I get an amen on it?
Speaker 1:You know, and that mentality of I'm going to get rid of my kids, like somehow there's some sort of a disease or I don't like having them around, I've never liked that mentality. I love having the kids around. Yeah, back to school is a thing, but let's not communicate to our kids we can't wait for them to get out of the house because they're somehow annoying to us or get on our nerves. They might, but we don't want to communicate that to them either. Yeah, all right, so let's not make a joke about it. Those are my thoughts on back to school, but you're much more the practical side of how do you get them out the door and back to school in a way that is anxiety free.
Speaker 2:Well, there are kids that are going to be more anxious, and so I think we do have to address that with them, and you touched on it the more prepared we are, the less anxiety there is. So if they know where their backpack is hanging, they know where their shoes are, they know that they've got lunch in their bag, they know where show and tell is, I was a really anxious kid and so excited about school and the first day of kindergarten forgot that the show and tell we were supposed to bring was in my raincoat pocket, and that was the start of a bleeding ulcer by first grade, like and I became so anxious, and so as parents, we do need to deal with that, but we also had a bleeding ulcer as a child.
Speaker 2:I did anxiety man and you. I should have told you that before you marry me. But the other side of that is we can make it a whole lot worse if we do. Are you nervous about going back to school? Are you afraid? I'm sure your teacher will like you. You know, every child has that fear that their teacher isn't going to like them, and if we feed that then we're the problem. And so so, parents, I would say, be careful. If your child isn't showing signs of being anxiety, be happy about it. Don't don't try and dig it up, you know. Aren't you nervous? Aren't you worried about how it's going to go? It is true, didn't you worry about whether your teachers would like you?
Speaker 1:Uh no.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 2:So my, my, my kindergarten teacher didn't like me. That was part of the anxiety I you will remember this story. At one point I went out the window of the school and went home because I was so anxious. But imagine being a homeschooler and being worried about it. So what if my teacher doesn't like me? But I do want to talk to homeschoolers a minute Because if there's this huge difference between summer mommy and school time mommy, get rid of the split personality. The kids need the same mom all the time. Right, and and part of the dread that I know that homeschool kids have is mom who was so laid back and had her coffee and said, I don't know, just stay outside and play All of a sudden becomes, you know, 10 o'clock, we do this 10, 15, we do this 11 o'clock. So be careful, don't make them more anxious, because that is a thing alright, how about? Is it possible to have too much of a good thing?
Speaker 2:no you're such a bad kid? Well, I'm answering your question there, but there is there, it is possible. And back to school feeds that monster in us because there are so many activities.
Speaker 1:See, that's the difference between you and me. You think it's possible to have too much of a good thing. I think it's not possible to have too much of a good thing okay, well, I'm gonna remind you I would like to get sick over eating dessert sometime, just to see if it's really a thing well, that's a different good thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I want to remind you of the worst parenting decision year we ever made. Are you ready? So our youngest three, as you'll recall bailey, stephen and Tate were athletes, and one year we decided to let our athletes do two sports each in a season because it was such good opportunities for them and it just it destroyed our family dynamic because all we were doing was running around in the car and forgetting baseball belts and forgetting cleats, and running back home and no family dinners, because one child was home at six, one was home at eight, one had a nine o'clock game under the lights Right. So is it possible to have too much of a good thing?
Speaker 1:Well, I'm going to say publicly that I'll I'll forgive you for for making that decision for our family and I. I guess I should have stepped in as the head of the family and said something, uh, but I just thought I wanted to make you happy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, no, I would say that was a wee decision. But the same could be true of band, the same could be true of play practice. You can do too much, and so, as a parent, your job is to discern between good and excellent. Well, most parents.
Speaker 1:they just get involved in way too much. It's, it seems, cause you're, you're trying to build a resume, you want to keep up with all the other parents and everybody else is doing, you know they're doing violin lessons, soccer practice, taekwondo, you know, and they're, and they're running around in the van constantly. During the pandemic I, we lived in a neighborhood you know, house driveway, house driveway in the suburbs, right Little cul-de-sac. I never saw any kids.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I had no idea there were so many kids in our neighborhood until the pandemic hit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and all of a sudden there's kids, because they weren't going to school and they're doing kids stuff. They're riding scooters, playing games, you know, kick ball out in the street and then, as soon as the pandemic was over, they they're all gone again. Why? Cause they're back in the van running around doing way too much and I think that's not healthy for them. Yeah, just because it wasn't healthy for us.
Speaker 2:Just because something's good Doesn't mean it's best Correct and you get to make that decision. I think I've said this before, but I don't regret the times I said no to things. I do regret saying yes without thinking it through Um cause, cause you can't quit, you don't want to teach your kids to quit Right and you don't want to take away things you've let them have.
Speaker 1:So in the same way for us, it brings our stress level, our anxiety level down. It also does the same thing for the kids. Right Because they're over-scheduled and over-doing and it raises their fun quotient, because it's more fun the activities that they do go to instead of just trying to fit in too many activities, and none of them are fun and they're all stressed out.
Speaker 2:Exactly so there can be too much of a good thing.
Speaker 1:So just just think before you jump in.
Speaker 2:All right, and that goes for you too, moms, that absolutely goes for you too, not just for your kids. And then finally, um, you talked about basically parking the helicopter, so tell me what you mean.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, we've dealt with a lot of different parents over the years and that's kind of our sweet spot of our ministry and our outreach is parenting and our nine practices of the proactive parent series is available on characterhealthcom and it's a wonderful comprehensive series in that we talk about different types of parenting styles parent, the parent that's trying to get this kid such a well-rounded resume and portfolio so that they'll get into the right college, get the right job and and and all of those sorts of things. That's one mentality. There was the snowplow parent that that basically snow plowed a path for their child and and orchestrated every moment of every day for that child. They would, they would come up with play dates and what time the play date was and who it was with, and then that child goes off to college and they don't know how to function on the weekend as long as they've got school right and they know that to be at this class at 8am they can get there, but once it comes to making their own schedule, they're lost.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that parent takes away any discomfort.
Speaker 1:The helicopter parent now is the one that hovered over the child all the time, never wanted to let the child fail, and so they would interject themselves at every moment that it even looked like the child was going to fail. And so if the child got a bad or a lower grade in school, that parent would be right up in the in the face of the teacher or the principal saying, hey, you can't do this to my kid. My kid's got to get into the school. You got to adjust their grade. This is a parent who wrote the papers for their child so that the child would get better grades. That's a helicopter parent. They're constantly hovering and swooping in to make sure that the child doesn't fail. You're doing your child a huge disservice by doing that Huge why? Because the greatest lessons in life come from failure, not success. We fail more than we succeed. So once that child gets out in the real world and they're faced with failure, they melt down. They don't know how to handle that at all. Why? Because they've. They've not built the resilience and the bounce back in this if that's a word to recovering from a failure, because they were never allowed to fail. So, mom and dad, stop hovering, stop swooping in. If the child gets a bad grade or they get a lower grade, say to them hey, you need to work harder next time. What can I do to help you work harder? Maybe we can take some things off your plate too much activity so you have more time for your schoolwork.
Speaker 1:The one little side note one of the greatest lessons I ever got was in ninth grade. I went to public school. I was in ninth grade, I was a C, c plus student. I really I loved life. I really did. And there were girls, and girls were the best invention that God ever made. I mean, I was just distracted all the time. I didn't really want to study very much, so I would always look for the short line at the motor vehicle department, if you know what I mean when it came to studying. And so there was an English test. I didn't do very well at English what ninth grade boy does and I decided this is bad. I decided on my first test that I was going to cheat, and so I wrote down the crib notes on my hand for what I thought were going to be the questions.
Speaker 1:You weren't a very good cheater, right. But I wrote them on my right hand, right, this is important right hand. And so the test comes and I'm looking at it and I'm checking the notes and I'm going back and I filled out. I filled it out right away and I got all the answers right and I'm like this is awesome, right, I got filled it out right away and I got all the answers right and I'm like this is awesome right Now. Little Stevie Scheibner was never the first person to hand in his test. In fact, I was always either the last or the second last person to hand in an exam. So I'm the first person done with this exam.
Speaker 1:I walk up to the teacher, I put it on her desk with my right hand open. She her radar was already up like that. She looks at my hand, she grabs my hand, she looks at, she sees all the notes on my hand. She reaches into her desk, she pulls out a big red marker and she writes f and then she circles it right and then she holds it up for the rest of the class like this steven just got an f and then she rips it up and she throws it in the trash.
Speaker 1:And I had to turn around and do the walk of shame back to my desk. And that was the most important life lesson I ever got about cheating, because I realized number one, I was stupid, but number two, I was embarrassed in public. Because of that, she allowed me to fail in an epic fashion, but that that changed my character. Dna right there on the spot. I thought I don't ever want to have this happen again. Mom and dad, if you swoop in and don't allow that moment to take place because you interjected yourself somehow or you went after that teacher and said you can't give my kid an F, you've really done your child a disservice. And so I would say and I don't know how we got off on all of that but that's what the? That's the disservice that a helicopter parent does for a child.
Speaker 2:But the reason we say park the helicopter is you're going to do it. If you don't plan not to right, because all the other parents are going to do it and you're going to feel like, well, everybody else is going in and defending their child, I need to also. Don't do it. Teach into it at home. Now there are times to go talk to a teacher to find out if you know what's going on. It seems like you don't like my child, whatever. But remember there are two sides to every story and if you go in guns blaring and saying nobody does that to my child, you're doing your children a disservice. And so be careful. And those of you who homeschool, our hovering looks a little different. We're not going to go complain to the teacher because we are the teacher, but when we hover over our kids and we correct their papers before they even finish them, we don't let them make mistakes. We overlook mistakes because we don't want them to feel bad. We're doing the same disservice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when our kids are doing an exam and we come over their shoulder and go are you sure you know, don't?
Speaker 2:do that, don't do that.
Speaker 1:Don't hover, let them. Let them fail and then teach into the failure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so there's three pitfalls, but now we want to give you some fun things to do to actually make back to school fun. So so everybody gets a list of things they have to get and some of it, quite frankly, is really hard to find. But go get the things on the list, take your kids with them. You let them pick them out, and then I would encourage you to do a back to school celebration dinner and so make a special dinner, especially make a special dessert, and then at that dinner ask your kids to share their three favorite memories from the summer and you share yours too and kind of enjoy a moment of remembering how much fun you had together in the carefree days of summer. And then go around the table again and ask them to share the three things that they're most looking forward to this year. And mom and dads, you do it too. And maybe the things you share are growth things. Well, I'm looking forward to our family growing in this area, or I'm looking forward to our family achieving this or getting better at this, and then spend some time praying for each other. Make it a send-off dinner. That will help get rid of some of the anxiety and make it more anticipatory, like I'm really looking forward to this.
Speaker 2:And then one of the things that makes back to school the hardest is the change in routines. So where, summer, maybe we slept in a little later, maybe we stayed up a little later, maybe we were a little laid back with some of the rules, school's going to make us have to tighten those things up, and that can be a really abrupt change. So I would encourage you, the week before you go back to school, to begin to incorporate some of those changes. Well, we're going to go to bed at our bedtime. Oh, we're going to start getting up. I know we don't have to get up this morning, but we're going to do that.
Speaker 2:Let's practice where we put everything, where our backpacks go, where do I want papers that need to be signed to go? Who's going to pack the lunch? Maybe you have a child that's packing lunches this year. Work through it so that the first morning you're not starting the back to school yelling, which is really easy to happen. You know, um, you don't want to be that parent that gets to school with a child that you know left the house with two shoes and showed up with only one Right. And so the more you practice those things, the less stress there is, the less anxiety and the more fun back to school can be Sure.
Speaker 1:Sure, Absolutely. Now, if you've made it this far and you like what you're seeing so far which I think you do and we've earned it do us a favor and subscribe. Um, and we've earned it. Do us a favor and subscribe. You don't want to miss any of this content, and we'd love to have you on board, uh, as subscribers and click that like button as well. Share it with your friends on social media, If you think about it. Um, that would be helpful to us. Okay, so back to the parents now, uh, and going around the table talking about the three things that they're excited about. All right, Mom and dad, don't do this. All right, If you have three kids, don't go. I'm excited about you going back to school.
Speaker 2:You going back to school and you going back to school.
Speaker 1:Those are my three things. Come on.
Speaker 2:Don't do it, you know, just don't do it, just don't go there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can have that private conversation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Don sick they're going to be like mom hates that I'm home, and especially if you're a homeschooler.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know it's even worse.
Speaker 2:It's even worse. All right Back to school. It can be anxiety producing, but you're the key. You can help your kids get through it and it should be fun. There are so many opportunities with back to school and um, just make the make the best of it.
Speaker 1:You always made going back to school fun, back to school fun and you just brought me along, right, but I had fun kind of kicking it off and making it a special event. Yeah, and if you homeschool, it's more difficult to do that because you're not sending them out to go. They're not in a new classroom this year, they don't have a new teacher, they don't you know all that stuff. It's the same old, same old for them in some ways, and so the delineation between today and we're schooling tomorrow, uh, could be kind of not very exciting.
Speaker 1:It's muddied, muddy, uh, but you always made it a real event and they look forward to it. And they got some new stuff too along the way. So you know, don't be pikers, be. You know, celebrate that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, especially if you homeschool year round. Our kids do need those natural breaks in their year Um and um, and it's fun. I miss the back to school days. To be honest, I don't miss all the teaching days, but I do miss back to school. So well, that's been our special back to school edition of death by adulting, and remember, when it comes to adulting, what doesn't kill you just makes you tired.