July 16, 2025 • 34 mins
Is your back-to-school plan just a fresh stack of notebooks and high hopes? Let’s talk about what really makes or breaks a smooth transition for your neurodivergent child. In this episode, I’m sharing the top three things I wish I had known when my son was in school — the things that could’ve saved us from years of chaos, meltdowns, and overwhelm.
We’re ditching the myth that buying the right planner will fix everything. Instead, I’ll walk you through how to prep your systems (not just your supplies), how to create emotional safety in the daily routine, and how to build a true partnership with your child’s teacher — before the chaos starts.
This isn’t just back-to-school advice. It’s a whole new way of showing up for your complex kid with calm, clarity, and confidence.
Listen in to start creating less stress and more success — starting now.
ou can find additional resources at parentingadhdandautism.com and Regulated Kids.com — because it’s not just about the struggles, it’s about progress, one step at a time. Show notes and more resources at parentingadhdandautism.com/320
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/beautifully-complex--6137613/support.
We’re ditching the myth that buying the right planner will fix everything. Instead, I’ll walk you through how to prep your systems (not just your supplies), how to create emotional safety in the daily routine, and how to build a true partnership with your child’s teacher — before the chaos starts.
This isn’t just back-to-school advice. It’s a whole new way of showing up for your complex kid with calm, clarity, and confidence.
Listen in to start creating less stress and more success — starting now.
ou can find additional resources at parentingadhdandautism.com and Regulated Kids.com — because it’s not just about the struggles, it’s about progress, one step at a time. Show notes and more resources at parentingadhdandautism.com/320
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/beautifully-complex--6137613/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
When we are in that reactive space, we tend to
only focus on putting out fires. That's all we can
do because we have so many fires. But when we're
proactive and we're prepping ahead of time, we're setting ourselves
and our kids and our families up for success. There
are less fires to put out. Welcome to Beautifully Complex,
(00:25):
where we unpack what it really means to parent neurodivergent
kids with dignity and clarity. I'm Penny Williams, and I
know firsthand how tough and transformative this journey can be.
Let's dive in and discover how to raise regulated, resilient,
beautifully complex kids together. Oh and if you want more support,
(00:45):
join our free community at hub dot beautifully complex dot life. Hello,
Hello friends, Welcome back to beautifully Complex. I am excited
to have you here. And today I'm going to talk
about back to school. And I know that it is
(01:05):
mid July, and traditionally, especially here in the United States,
we don't go back to school until August, some even
the first week of September, and so mid July might
feel really early to you to be thinking about back
to school already, but a lot more students are in
(01:27):
the year round schedule of school, and they have these
bigger breaks periodically throughout the year, and so they're sort
of starting their new school year in mid or late July,
and so we are going to dive into prepping for
back to school here in July, so that those who
(01:49):
are heading back will have these tools and strategies and
for those who have some more time, you just have
more prep time. We're starting that process early enough that
that proactivity and that prep is going to be successful.
(02:09):
It's going to be effective every year now in July,
I do a back to school prep week where we
get online together and we complete these preparation activities and
create tools and documents and strategies that are going to
help us both with the transition back to school and
(02:31):
with having a more successful school year. We're doing it
all in real time together, so we're not just watching
a workshop and then you have to go and implement
and get it done. We are doing it together in
real time. We are getting it done and checking boxes.
And last year was the first year that I did it,
and people really enjoyed it, said it made a world
(02:54):
of difference for them. So I am hosting that again
this year in life July. But in this podcast episode,
I want to give you some of the strategies that
we're going to work on in back to school prep week.
I want you, whether you join us for prep week
or not, to have some of these strategies that I
(03:14):
sort of learned the hard way that I found really
really helpful, really useful. Always, of course, being proactive is
more useful than being reactive and trying to put out fires.
When we are in that reactive space, we tend to
only focus on putting out fires. That's all we can
(03:36):
do because we have so many fires. But when we're
proactive and we're prepping ahead of time, we're setting ourselves
and our kids and our families up for success. There
are less fires to put out. They're not none, I'm
not gonna lie to you. There's always challenge. It ebbs
and flows, but you will be set up for more
(03:59):
seclus and less challenge, and so will your kid. So
let's talk a little bit first about how I came
to some of these strategies. You know, if you've been
a listener here for a while, you know that I
have a neurodivergent kid who is now at the time
of recording this twenty two, so we have finished that
(04:22):
K through twelve public education, and it was very very difficult,
very very difficult. He struggles with not only ADHD and
autism spectrum, but also dysgraphia, also pretty extreme executive function deficits.
Emotional regulation was often a problem because he did not
(04:44):
feel seen, heard, understood, or any sense of belonging at school,
and so there is a lot of emotion behind that
and a lot of difficulty managing those feelings. So we
got the diagnosis of ADHD toward the beginning of his
first grade year. His teacher in first grade, if you've
(05:05):
read my book Boy Without Instructions, you know she was
an angel. I call her Miss Marvelous in the book.
She was just so open to all different learning styles
and recognized that challenging behavior was a signal of a need.
And so she really worked with us to try different
(05:26):
strategies to be more creative and flexible in expectations for
him in the classroom and in the way that he
learned and in the ways that he showed how he
learned and what he was learning. And so that was
great and I felt like I had some tools in
my toolbox. I had some knowledge of what might be
useful in the classroom, and so I decided to meet
(05:47):
the second grade teacher ahead of the start of the
school year, and she was so open to it. She
was so open to accommodating him and doing whatever he needed,
which was wonderful. Like I was so really leaved when
we had this meeting a couple of weeks before school started,
and she had a student teacher in the classroom that
year two, and the student teacher was also there, and
(06:09):
they came up with all sorts of creative ways to
help him to be successful in their classroom. And then
school started and we walked in the first day and
all the desks were in groups of like four or five,
and then there were two desks over to the side
that were taped off in the side that were for
(06:30):
my kid. And you know, she was trying to give
him a lot of space, right because we talked about
how his stuff was everywhere, and his first grade teacher
had taped a rectangle to give him sort of this
boundary for his stuff around his desk and a boundary
for you know, if you're supposed to be at your
desk doing seat work. If he was inside that tape,
(06:50):
sitting on the floor, laying on the floor, whatever. If
he was inside the tape and doing work, he was
meeting the expectation. And so this teacher like took it
so much further, but actually to a point where my
kid felt really isolated. He felt even more like he
didn't belong right. And so she was really leaning into
with all of her heart, trying to accommodate him and
(07:14):
help him. But it was sort of so overzealous that
it didn't keep an eye on making sure that he
still had a sense of belonging. And fortunately she was
very open to these conversations. And one morning I went
in and I said, you know, he's just really feeling
(07:35):
like he's isolated and like he doesn't fit and he
doesn't belong and I was wondering if I could help
you and we could just move these desks really quick
and find another spot for him. And she was like absolutely,
I'm so sorry. You know, she felt so bad. I'm like, please,
don't feel bad. We're all trying to figure this out, right,
We're all trying to figure out how to navigate this.
(07:56):
And so going into his third grade year, I was like,
I'm not going to say a word, I'm just going
to see what happens, and boy howdie That was not
an appropriate solution either, And so over time I had
to find that balance of how much to prep teachers
without going too far, because they needed to experience him,
(08:19):
they needed to get to know him, they needed to
get to form a connection and relationship and see how
that was going to play out, not over months, but
over a week or two with a little bit of
information that we give them at the beginning, and we
work through in depth all of that and back to
school prep week. But I'm going to give you just
(08:41):
a few quick action strategies here in this episode, so
you can get started on that whether you want to
do prep week or not. So let's talk a little
bit before we get into those quick wins. Why back
to school feels so hard for complex kids. It's not
that they struggle in school and that they don't want
(09:03):
to be there because it's too hard. There's a whole
lot more going on there, and that transition is also
really hard. It's not just about getting up earlier or
finding the right backpack, the perfect binder or planner. What's
really going on underneath the surface is nervous system dysregulation.
(09:27):
Big transitions like going from free time in the summer
to school routines and this more rigid schedule are full
of unpredictability. They're starting a new school year. They don't
know what to expect. It's new teachers, it's new people,
it's new students. It's new concepts that they're learning, it's
(09:49):
new expectations. There's so much unpredictability there. And for kids
with sensitive or neurodivergent nervous systems, that unpredictability can feel
like danger. They do not feel safe when things feel unpredictable.
Their brain's going to high alert. What's expected of me?
Who's my teacher? Well? I remember where my classroom is?
(10:12):
What if I mess up? What if I make a mistake,
What if kids make fun of me? What if somebody
is picking on me? On and on and on and on. Right,
that's not just worry, it's really survival mode, folks. Their
emotional brain and survival brain are taking over and they
are running the show. And then what does that mean
(10:34):
for their thinking brain. It's checked out, it's dimmed. It's
much much much less accessible, if accessible at all. Then
we're going to layer on executive function, demands of a
school day, time management, task initiation, emotional control, organization, working memory,
social emotional layers to that also. And that's a lot
(10:58):
for any kid, but for are kids it can be
completely overwhelming and cause shutdown. So when you see a meltdown,
when you see that shutdown, if you see refusal to
even go to school, I want you to please remember
that that is not bad behavior, because in my book,
(11:19):
there's no such thing as bad behavior. It's dysregulation. But
it's a nervous system that is sending a signal that
it needs help. It's a signal that that child student
needs help. It is not defiance. It's a mismatch between
expectations and capacity, even biological capacity. Kids have to be
(11:46):
available to learn. When they are disregulated and their thinking
brain is less available, if at all available, guess what
they might be in the classroom. They might even be
still in quiet. They're not learning anything. They're not learning anything.
So the nervous system is very, very important here in
(12:07):
our kids' school experience and in that transition back to school.
But back to school doesn't have to mean back to chaos.
Only if we understand what's really going on, If we don't.
If we're not looking deeper, it is totally going to
be just back to chaos for you. That's exactly what
we're going to unpack in more detail in Back to
(12:30):
School Prep Week. But right now, I want to offer
you a few quick tips so that you have some
tools in your toolbox for back to school if you
want to get deeper and get more. Of course, as
I have said, you are welcome to join us for
Back to School Prep Week, and I'm going to let
you know how at the end of the episode. So
let's jump in. Quick tip number one, prepare the system,
(12:56):
not just supplies, folks. Back to school isn't just getting
supply list and going to Walmart or Target and buying
the supplies and being ready to send things in on
the first day. Right there's so much more preparation, especially
especially for neurodivergent kids. So we're preparing the system. What
(13:18):
does that look like, focusing on routines, making things more routine,
making and creating rituals. We're building habits through doing that,
so we have less demand on executive functioning skills. We're
using visual schedules. I cannot emphasize enough how much of
(13:39):
a difference a visual schedule can make, even for older kids,
even for teens. It can be an icon instead of
a picture. Right, we can shift it to feel less
juvenile if that's needed. But having checklists, having less having
visual sort of icons that I can just glance and go,
(14:02):
oh yeah, hygiene, it makes a difference, especially when we're
talking about executive functioning deficits. We also need to set
up the home environment less clutter less stuff, less chaos,
Dimmer lights if that's a thing for your kid, Softer
sounds and tones if that is a need for your kid.
(14:27):
We had an after school decompression ritual that really saved
our evenings because if we came home and we did
homework right away, it was not giving my kid a
chance to recharge, to have his nervous system get regulated again,
(14:49):
to have a break from the demands and the stress,
and it was a complete and utter failure. There would
be a meltdown if not multiples every day. And then
I transitioned into okay, you can have some free time,
we'll get a snack, well, you know, decompress, but no
screens because I didn't think we could transition from the
(15:10):
screens to homework and over time, I realized my kid
was telling me he needed to escape into electronics for
a short period, maybe thirty minutes, so that his system
could get back online. That was what worked for him.
It may not work for your kid. Your kid may
(15:33):
love screens, they may never ever transition to homework after
you introduced a screen. But we were very clear about
the expectation and the routine and that it was a
short time period and you were expected to transition and
take care of other things, and then you could go
back to that later if everything else was done. And
that really really helped, And I had to get over
(15:54):
my own belief and assumption and mental block about screens
for homework to find that thing that really actually was
very helpful, despite the fact that I believe that it
absolutely couldn't be. So think about talk about with your kid,
what does a break look like, what does recharging after
(16:16):
school so that you have the ability to do homework
look like? And if your kid doesn't have homework, if
they're in a school that doesn't believe homework, then hallelujah, amen,
I am doing a happy dance for you and with you,
because how I wish that was our reality, but it
was not, and this is true for everybody, whether your
kid has homework or not. Focus on relationship first. I
(16:38):
had two rules when my kids were in school. Their
mental health came first, and our relationship came first. If
homework didn't get done, fine, I don't care because my
kid's mental health, emotional health, and my relationship with them
mattered more than anything else. I encourage you to take
(16:59):
that same perspective and belief it really does make a
huge difference. Preview your routines now or soon before school starts.
Set them up together with your kid. Set up those
visuals early. Don't do it two days before school starts,
because then you're starting to build the pressure. You're adding
(17:21):
pressure that they're already getting because in two days school starts.
Do it early, do it together. Take your time, get
their input, but make sure that you give them a
preview of the tools, of the routines, of the expectations,
so that you're setting them and yourself and your whole
(17:41):
family up for success. Quick tick number two is to
collaborate with your school. With your teachers, try try, try
(18:02):
not to take on an adversarial relationship. And we had
a recent podcast episode on this with Scottie Weintraub about
creating collaborative relationships with the school and how that makes
a difference in your advocacy. I encourage you to listen
to that episode as well. But we want to initiate
(18:23):
communication with teachers ahead of time, and we had a
couple of different things that we always did for that.
We always went to the open house night where you
got your schedule when he was older, or when you
previewed the classroom and met your teacher, and if there
was a schedule, we walked the schedule. We did lots
(18:45):
of things that really helped. We outline all of those
in back to school prep week. But you know, setting
up the tone of the relationship with the teachers is
super helpful. Share a one page summary of your kid's
(19:05):
IEP or five oh four plan one page front only,
not front and back, a very simple kind of quick
reference so that teachers understand what are their goals and
what are their accommodations from day one. Because teachers typically
have many kids in their classroom with an IEP or
a five oh four, the IEP documents are ginormous, and
(19:29):
it seems like the stuff that you really need is
buried in there. When I started making this quick reference
guide for teachers, it changed so much. They knew from
the get go what accommodations they needed to be providing.
We didn't have to wait until things fell apart me
remind them that there was an IEP them try to
(19:50):
go find it and read it. And all this time
that elapses in all of this rate was time of
lost learning for my kid, stressful for everyone. So not
only are we preparing our kids, but we're also prepping
their teachers. And again we're setting up a collaborative relationship,
(20:12):
a collaborative tone, and we are leaning into proactive partnership
rather than reactive panic. And what often happens when we're
reactive is it's emotional and it can get nice and
kind of ugly, and we don't want that. Nobody is
going to make anything better with that sort of adversarial relationship.
(20:36):
Quicktip number three our last one front load for emotional safety.
As we talked about earlier in the episode, your kid
needs to feel safe at school to be available to learn.
And that safety isn't just physical safety, it is emotional safety,
(20:57):
cognitive safety, social safety. All of those things matter a
great deal at school. We're not just going to school
and getting academics. There's so much more at play and
we need to have all of that on our radar
to set our kids up for success. And this is
really one of the most powerful and often overlooked strategies
(21:20):
for supporting kids in school. So what does front loading
emotional safety even mean. It means that we're looking ahead
proactively and we're going to ask ourselves three questions. One,
where is my child most likely to feel disregulated during
the school day? What are those sort of pitfall areas,
(21:41):
those sort of sticky, sticky times, sticky points right, what
routines or moments tend to set them off? What do
you already know might be challenging for your kid. I
don't like to make assumptions that something is definitely going
to be challenging, but think about what might be and
(22:05):
really look at it proactively. And then that third question
you're asking yourself is where is my kid most vulnerable
to overwhelm, to shut down, to blow ups, to meltdowns
to refusal with school. These are the areas that you
want to be looking at very proactively. Talk with your
(22:29):
kid about some of it, Ask them what they need,
Ask them what they feel like might set them off
during the school day. What they feel like might lead
to dysregulation. What they feel like might lead to overwhelms,
shut down, meltdown, blow ups, not wanting to go, not
even being able to go. Then we take that information
(22:53):
and we create scaffolds around those moments to support our
kid's nervous system. An example, really quickly, I used to
dread mornings with my kid. Oh my gosh, it was
just so much chaos. Nothing would happen. I would nag,
nothing would happen. I would repeat myself, nothing would happen,
(23:14):
and I would end up yelling. Like every single morning,
I would end up yelling because it was the only
way I could break that spiral of chaos and get
the attention necessary to get the shoes on, to start
walking to the car, whatever it was, to brush your teeth,
to put some stinking clothes on. It was just horrible.
(23:38):
It started the day so awful for everyone, and we
all dreaded it and it affected everybody in the household.
I would walk on eggshells trying to avoid the meltdown,
and yet we would still have explosions because the eggshells
didn't work right. Things don't get done when we're walking
on eggshells and trying not to trigger something. And of
(24:02):
course I tried to stay calm. Of course I tried
to stay calm, right, we all want to be calm.
Of course we're trying to do that. But it would
evolve nonetheless every single day because we didn't have assistance
in police, and I didn't understand what was causing all
of this. To be able to be more proactive, to
be able to lean on some tools and strategies so
(24:24):
that we didn't have chaos, we didn't have to yell
to get out the door on time, with our teeth,
brush and clothes on our bodies, and of course it
makes everything worse. Our reactivity only escalates our kids reactivity.
You cannot help a disregulated kid regulate if you are
(24:46):
disregulated yourself. You cannot co regulate if you are disregulating
to yourself. If you have high intensity, you are co escalating,
you are not co regulating. So eventually I realized that
something had to change. I was definitely missing something, and
I had to create more of a sense of safety
(25:10):
and predictability. That unpredictability was huge for my kid. It
was really very derailing for him, and things just couldn't
get done that way. You know, we would definitely go
into shutdown and nothing would get done. So when we
were creating, when we were focusing on safety and predictability,
(25:35):
we weren't focused on we have to get these things done,
we have to get out the door. At this time,
that was still important. I'm not saying that it's not important,
but we were focusing on connection. We were focusing on
what does the nervous system need to feel safe enough
to follow these steps and get these things done and
get out the door without everybody yelling and melting down.
(25:58):
And I created this visual morning routine card that was
like a game. It was a miracle. I'm sure I've
talked about it here before. And I provide the templates
for it in back to school prep week and teach
you how to create them and how to use them
successfully because it's not just a checklist. There's much more
(26:20):
to it than that. And we also had sort of
this launch pad routine. We started with making choices and
prepping the night before. What do you want to pack
in your lunch tomorrow or are you buying lunch at school?
What do you want for breakfast tomorrow. We're laying out
your clothes for tomorrow. We're making sure the shoes are
buy the door and ready. And my kid was making
(26:43):
these choices where those choices were important to him. He
didn't care what he wore to school, so I just
set something out appropriate for school in the weather. He
did care a lot what he ate for breakfast. He
did care what was in his lunch box. So those
are the things that he helped with. Right, I had
to get his buy in. I went and prepped all
these things tonight before, and the next day he was like,
I don't like any of those choices. Then we were
(27:06):
in a worse spot in the morning instead of a
better spot in the morning. Then we added that visual
checklist that I was just talking about, and that checklist
was for good enough. It was not my ideal of
everything that got done in the morning, and that we
all left skipping and chanting and singing out the door
for school. Right, let's be real, real life. It was
(27:30):
good enough. What are the basics that need to get done.
We need hygiene, we need clothes on, we need shoes on,
we need food. Everything else can sort of wait. There's
no perfectionism in the mornings. You will never ever have
one peaceful morning if you are searching for perfection, because
(27:51):
it doesn't even exist. I also learned to keep the
lights low or off in the morning. We didn't do
bright lights, we didn't do loud noises. Sometimes there would
be music, but it would be soft. What could my
kid's nervous system handle in the morning. Thinking about that
(28:11):
makes all the difference. We were then building a rhythm,
not a schedule, not a checklist, right. We weren't checking boxes.
We were creating a predictable flow, and that changed everything.
Flow is a beautiful thing. People create some flow, create
(28:34):
some routine and rituals so that there is a rhythm,
and that rhythm makes all the difference to the nervous system.
As a side note, my kid was always up before me,
so I didn't have to wake him up in the mornings,
and I know that that's a struggle for a lot
of you. And if he did struggle, if I did
(28:55):
have to wake him up in the mornings, and I
knew then what I know now, I would have started
with sort of a buffer zone. I would have sat
quietly with him and been present while he woke up
for a few minutes, not asking for anything, not making
any commands, just hey bunny, it's time to start getting up,
(29:18):
and then zip it. That can shift that tone right
away in the mornings. One client of had even started
doing morning stretches with music with their kids, so they
were having a transition ritual. They were doing regulation and
they were co regulating, and again it really shifts that
(29:38):
tone and how you begin the school day. We're talking
about emotional readiness here. We're not talking about perfection. We're
talking about emotional readiness because when kids feel safe and
seen before any demands are placed on them, then they
can access their thinking brain. They're more flexible, they're more cooperative,
(30:00):
and they are way less likely to explode over the
small things like a spilled cup of milk or a
seam in their sock. But also seamless socks, folks, they
can change your life in the morning too. I promise
tagless clothes and seamless socks are a thing. So if
mornings are rough in your house, I want you to
(30:20):
do two things. Pause and ask yourself what does my
child's nervous system need in those moments at that time
of day. And then you are going to build a
simple scaffold, routines, rituals, visuals, gentleness, low demand that are
(30:40):
going to help your kid regulate, not just managing time
and tasks. So, if you'd like to do back to
school prep week with us, we dive deeper into those things.
We dive deeper into a whole bunch of other things.
You would leave back to school Prep week with your
Advocacy binder completed, done, ready for advocating effectively, ready for
(31:06):
being really productive in that right, Like your binder is
going to be there, You're going to know how to
reference things, and you are going to be on it
with Advocacy. We are going to do those routine cards
using my templates. We are going to personalize them and
create them together in real time. We are going to
do some things around nervous system. You are going to
(31:28):
first and foremost complete your child's profile and you're going
to take a quiz that tells you where their nervous
system is most of the time, so that you can
create these systems, tools, strategies, preps. All the things that
we're doing that are individualized for your kid, that are
going to work for your kid. Again, not perfect parenting,
(31:52):
proactive parenting, so if you want to join us for
back to school Prep Week, you can go to Parenting
adhan Autism dot com slash prep pr EP. You will
get all the details, all the sessions, the schedule, everything
there to know if it's a good fit or not
(32:13):
for you. If it is, we would love to have you.
There was so much collaboration when we did this last summer.
There was a lot of crowdsourcing. Parents are sharing their
ideas and what's worked for them, and we even go
into things like making your life simpler, how can you
make dinner time easier? How can you reduce the demands
(32:36):
on yourself as a parent to have less chaos and
less stress during the school year. I really hope to
see you there. It is not just getting things done,
we have fun, We support each other. You will leave
feeling so much less alone and so much more prepared
(32:57):
for the school year ahead. And also find the show
notes for this episode at Parentingadhdunautsism dot com slash three
two zero for episode three hundred and twenty and I
will definitely have the link there to register and get
more information about Back to School Prep Week as well.
If you are listening to this after prep week happened.
(33:19):
After the end of July twenty twenty five, you can
purchase all of the replays and you can use it
in the exact same way to walk you through prep
for this school year coming up, or for any school
year in the future. So I just I know a
lot of people find us later after the timeframe in
(33:40):
which the episode's published, so there's something there for you
as well. And I do wish you as smooth a
transition as is possible in our complex families, and I
will see you on the next episode. Take really good care.
(34:00):
I see you. You're doing hard and meaningful work and
you don't have to do it alone. If you found
this episode helpful, share it with someone who needs it
and leave a quick review so others can find this
support too. When you're ready for next steps, the Regulated
Kids Project is here with the tools, coaching, and community
(34:20):
to help you raise a more regulated, resilient child. Get
more info at regulated kids dot com.
When we are in that reactive space, we tend to
only focus on putting out fires. That's all we can
do because we have so many fires. But when we're
proactive and we're prepping ahead of time, we're setting ourselves
and our kids and our families up for success. There
are less fires to put out. Welcome to Beautifully Complex,
(00:25):
where we unpack what it really means to parent neurodivergent
kids with dignity and clarity. I'm Penny Williams, and I
know firsthand how tough and transformative this journey can be.
Let's dive in and discover how to raise regulated, resilient,
beautifully complex kids together. Oh and if you want more support,
(00:45):
join our free community at hub dot beautifully complex dot life. Hello,
Hello friends, Welcome back to beautifully Complex. I am excited
to have you here. And today I'm going to talk
about back to school. And I know that it is
(01:05):
mid July, and traditionally, especially here in the United States,
we don't go back to school until August, some even
the first week of September, and so mid July might
feel really early to you to be thinking about back
to school already, but a lot more students are in
(01:27):
the year round schedule of school, and they have these
bigger breaks periodically throughout the year, and so they're sort
of starting their new school year in mid or late July,
and so we are going to dive into prepping for
back to school here in July, so that those who
(01:49):
are heading back will have these tools and strategies and
for those who have some more time, you just have
more prep time. We're starting that process early enough that
that proactivity and that prep is going to be successful.
(02:09):
It's going to be effective every year now in July,
I do a back to school prep week where we
get online together and we complete these preparation activities and
create tools and documents and strategies that are going to
help us both with the transition back to school and
(02:31):
with having a more successful school year. We're doing it
all in real time together, so we're not just watching
a workshop and then you have to go and implement
and get it done. We are doing it together in
real time. We are getting it done and checking boxes.
And last year was the first year that I did it,
and people really enjoyed it, said it made a world
(02:54):
of difference for them. So I am hosting that again
this year in life July. But in this podcast episode,
I want to give you some of the strategies that
we're going to work on in back to school prep week.
I want you, whether you join us for prep week
or not, to have some of these strategies that I
(03:14):
sort of learned the hard way that I found really
really helpful, really useful. Always, of course, being proactive is
more useful than being reactive and trying to put out fires.
When we are in that reactive space, we tend to
only focus on putting out fires. That's all we can
(03:36):
do because we have so many fires. But when we're
proactive and we're prepping ahead of time, we're setting ourselves
and our kids and our families up for success. There
are less fires to put out. They're not none, I'm
not gonna lie to you. There's always challenge. It ebbs
and flows, but you will be set up for more
(03:59):
seclus and less challenge, and so will your kid. So
let's talk a little bit first about how I came
to some of these strategies. You know, if you've been
a listener here for a while, you know that I
have a neurodivergent kid who is now at the time
of recording this twenty two, so we have finished that
(04:22):
K through twelve public education, and it was very very difficult,
very very difficult. He struggles with not only ADHD and
autism spectrum, but also dysgraphia, also pretty extreme executive function deficits.
Emotional regulation was often a problem because he did not
(04:44):
feel seen, heard, understood, or any sense of belonging at school,
and so there is a lot of emotion behind that
and a lot of difficulty managing those feelings. So we
got the diagnosis of ADHD toward the beginning of his
first grade year. His teacher in first grade, if you've
(05:05):
read my book Boy Without Instructions, you know she was
an angel. I call her Miss Marvelous in the book.
She was just so open to all different learning styles
and recognized that challenging behavior was a signal of a need.
And so she really worked with us to try different
(05:26):
strategies to be more creative and flexible in expectations for
him in the classroom and in the way that he
learned and in the ways that he showed how he
learned and what he was learning. And so that was
great and I felt like I had some tools in
my toolbox. I had some knowledge of what might be
useful in the classroom, and so I decided to meet
(05:47):
the second grade teacher ahead of the start of the
school year, and she was so open to it. She
was so open to accommodating him and doing whatever he needed,
which was wonderful. Like I was so really leaved when
we had this meeting a couple of weeks before school started,
and she had a student teacher in the classroom that
year two, and the student teacher was also there, and
(06:09):
they came up with all sorts of creative ways to
help him to be successful in their classroom. And then
school started and we walked in the first day and
all the desks were in groups of like four or five,
and then there were two desks over to the side
that were taped off in the side that were for
(06:30):
my kid. And you know, she was trying to give
him a lot of space, right because we talked about
how his stuff was everywhere, and his first grade teacher
had taped a rectangle to give him sort of this
boundary for his stuff around his desk and a boundary
for you know, if you're supposed to be at your
desk doing seat work. If he was inside that tape,
(06:50):
sitting on the floor, laying on the floor, whatever. If
he was inside the tape and doing work, he was
meeting the expectation. And so this teacher like took it
so much further, but actually to a point where my
kid felt really isolated. He felt even more like he
didn't belong right. And so she was really leaning into
with all of her heart, trying to accommodate him and
(07:14):
help him. But it was sort of so overzealous that
it didn't keep an eye on making sure that he
still had a sense of belonging. And fortunately she was
very open to these conversations. And one morning I went
in and I said, you know, he's just really feeling
(07:35):
like he's isolated and like he doesn't fit and he
doesn't belong and I was wondering if I could help
you and we could just move these desks really quick
and find another spot for him. And she was like absolutely,
I'm so sorry. You know, she felt so bad. I'm like, please,
don't feel bad. We're all trying to figure this out, right,
We're all trying to figure out how to navigate this.
(07:56):
And so going into his third grade year, I was like,
I'm not going to say a word, I'm just going
to see what happens, and boy howdie That was not
an appropriate solution either, And so over time I had
to find that balance of how much to prep teachers
without going too far, because they needed to experience him,
(08:19):
they needed to get to know him, they needed to
get to form a connection and relationship and see how
that was going to play out, not over months, but
over a week or two with a little bit of
information that we give them at the beginning, and we
work through in depth all of that and back to
school prep week. But I'm going to give you just
(08:41):
a few quick action strategies here in this episode, so
you can get started on that whether you want to
do prep week or not. So let's talk a little
bit before we get into those quick wins. Why back
to school feels so hard for complex kids. It's not
that they struggle in school and that they don't want
(09:03):
to be there because it's too hard. There's a whole
lot more going on there, and that transition is also
really hard. It's not just about getting up earlier or
finding the right backpack, the perfect binder or planner. What's
really going on underneath the surface is nervous system dysregulation.
(09:27):
Big transitions like going from free time in the summer
to school routines and this more rigid schedule are full
of unpredictability. They're starting a new school year. They don't
know what to expect. It's new teachers, it's new people,
it's new students. It's new concepts that they're learning, it's
(09:49):
new expectations. There's so much unpredictability there. And for kids
with sensitive or neurodivergent nervous systems, that unpredictability can feel
like danger. They do not feel safe when things feel unpredictable.
Their brain's going to high alert. What's expected of me?
Who's my teacher? Well? I remember where my classroom is?
(10:12):
What if I mess up? What if I make a mistake,
What if kids make fun of me? What if somebody
is picking on me? On and on and on and on. Right,
that's not just worry, it's really survival mode, folks. Their
emotional brain and survival brain are taking over and they
are running the show. And then what does that mean
(10:34):
for their thinking brain. It's checked out, it's dimmed. It's
much much much less accessible, if accessible at all. Then
we're going to layer on executive function, demands of a
school day, time management, task initiation, emotional control, organization, working memory,
social emotional layers to that also. And that's a lot
(10:58):
for any kid, but for are kids it can be
completely overwhelming and cause shutdown. So when you see a meltdown,
when you see that shutdown, if you see refusal to
even go to school, I want you to please remember
that that is not bad behavior, because in my book,
(11:19):
there's no such thing as bad behavior. It's dysregulation. But
it's a nervous system that is sending a signal that
it needs help. It's a signal that that child student
needs help. It is not defiance. It's a mismatch between
expectations and capacity, even biological capacity. Kids have to be
(11:46):
available to learn. When they are disregulated and their thinking
brain is less available, if at all available, guess what
they might be in the classroom. They might even be
still in quiet. They're not learning anything. They're not learning anything.
So the nervous system is very, very important here in
(12:07):
our kids' school experience and in that transition back to school.
But back to school doesn't have to mean back to chaos.
Only if we understand what's really going on, If we don't.
If we're not looking deeper, it is totally going to
be just back to chaos for you. That's exactly what
we're going to unpack in more detail in Back to
(12:30):
School Prep Week. But right now, I want to offer
you a few quick tips so that you have some
tools in your toolbox for back to school if you
want to get deeper and get more. Of course, as
I have said, you are welcome to join us for
Back to School Prep Week, and I'm going to let
you know how at the end of the episode. So
let's jump in. Quick tip number one, prepare the system,
(12:56):
not just supplies, folks. Back to school isn't just getting
supply list and going to Walmart or Target and buying
the supplies and being ready to send things in on
the first day. Right there's so much more preparation, especially
especially for neurodivergent kids. So we're preparing the system. What
(13:18):
does that look like, focusing on routines, making things more routine,
making and creating rituals. We're building habits through doing that,
so we have less demand on executive functioning skills. We're
using visual schedules. I cannot emphasize enough how much of
(13:39):
a difference a visual schedule can make, even for older kids,
even for teens. It can be an icon instead of
a picture. Right, we can shift it to feel less
juvenile if that's needed. But having checklists, having less having
visual sort of icons that I can just glance and go,
(14:02):
oh yeah, hygiene, it makes a difference, especially when we're
talking about executive functioning deficits. We also need to set
up the home environment less clutter less stuff, less chaos,
Dimmer lights if that's a thing for your kid, Softer
sounds and tones if that is a need for your kid.
(14:27):
We had an after school decompression ritual that really saved
our evenings because if we came home and we did
homework right away, it was not giving my kid a
chance to recharge, to have his nervous system get regulated again,
(14:49):
to have a break from the demands and the stress,
and it was a complete and utter failure. There would
be a meltdown if not multiples every day. And then
I transitioned into okay, you can have some free time,
we'll get a snack, well, you know, decompress, but no
screens because I didn't think we could transition from the
(15:10):
screens to homework and over time, I realized my kid
was telling me he needed to escape into electronics for
a short period, maybe thirty minutes, so that his system
could get back online. That was what worked for him.
It may not work for your kid. Your kid may
(15:33):
love screens, they may never ever transition to homework after
you introduced a screen. But we were very clear about
the expectation and the routine and that it was a
short time period and you were expected to transition and
take care of other things, and then you could go
back to that later if everything else was done. And
that really really helped, And I had to get over
(15:54):
my own belief and assumption and mental block about screens
for homework to find that thing that really actually was
very helpful, despite the fact that I believe that it
absolutely couldn't be. So think about talk about with your kid,
what does a break look like, what does recharging after
(16:16):
school so that you have the ability to do homework
look like? And if your kid doesn't have homework, if
they're in a school that doesn't believe homework, then hallelujah, amen,
I am doing a happy dance for you and with you,
because how I wish that was our reality, but it
was not, and this is true for everybody, whether your
kid has homework or not. Focus on relationship first. I
(16:38):
had two rules when my kids were in school. Their
mental health came first, and our relationship came first. If
homework didn't get done, fine, I don't care because my
kid's mental health, emotional health, and my relationship with them
mattered more than anything else. I encourage you to take
(16:59):
that same perspective and belief it really does make a
huge difference. Preview your routines now or soon before school starts.
Set them up together with your kid. Set up those
visuals early. Don't do it two days before school starts,
because then you're starting to build the pressure. You're adding
(17:21):
pressure that they're already getting because in two days school starts.
Do it early, do it together. Take your time, get
their input, but make sure that you give them a
preview of the tools, of the routines, of the expectations,
so that you're setting them and yourself and your whole
(17:41):
family up for success. Quick tick number two is to
collaborate with your school. With your teachers, try try, try
(18:02):
not to take on an adversarial relationship. And we had
a recent podcast episode on this with Scottie Weintraub about
creating collaborative relationships with the school and how that makes
a difference in your advocacy. I encourage you to listen
to that episode as well. But we want to initiate
(18:23):
communication with teachers ahead of time, and we had a
couple of different things that we always did for that.
We always went to the open house night where you
got your schedule when he was older, or when you
previewed the classroom and met your teacher, and if there
was a schedule, we walked the schedule. We did lots
(18:45):
of things that really helped. We outline all of those
in back to school prep week. But you know, setting
up the tone of the relationship with the teachers is
super helpful. Share a one page summary of your kid's
(19:05):
IEP or five oh four plan one page front only,
not front and back, a very simple kind of quick
reference so that teachers understand what are their goals and
what are their accommodations from day one. Because teachers typically
have many kids in their classroom with an IEP or
a five oh four, the IEP documents are ginormous, and
(19:29):
it seems like the stuff that you really need is
buried in there. When I started making this quick reference
guide for teachers, it changed so much. They knew from
the get go what accommodations they needed to be providing.
We didn't have to wait until things fell apart me
remind them that there was an IEP them try to
(19:50):
go find it and read it. And all this time
that elapses in all of this rate was time of
lost learning for my kid, stressful for everyone. So not
only are we preparing our kids, but we're also prepping
their teachers. And again we're setting up a collaborative relationship,
(20:12):
a collaborative tone, and we are leaning into proactive partnership
rather than reactive panic. And what often happens when we're
reactive is it's emotional and it can get nice and
kind of ugly, and we don't want that. Nobody is
going to make anything better with that sort of adversarial relationship.
(20:36):
Quicktip number three our last one front load for emotional safety.
As we talked about earlier in the episode, your kid
needs to feel safe at school to be available to learn.
And that safety isn't just physical safety, it is emotional safety,
(20:57):
cognitive safety, social safety. All of those things matter a
great deal at school. We're not just going to school
and getting academics. There's so much more at play and
we need to have all of that on our radar
to set our kids up for success. And this is
really one of the most powerful and often overlooked strategies
(21:20):
for supporting kids in school. So what does front loading
emotional safety even mean. It means that we're looking ahead
proactively and we're going to ask ourselves three questions. One,
where is my child most likely to feel disregulated during
the school day? What are those sort of pitfall areas,
(21:41):
those sort of sticky, sticky times, sticky points right, what
routines or moments tend to set them off? What do
you already know might be challenging for your kid. I
don't like to make assumptions that something is definitely going
to be challenging, but think about what might be and
(22:05):
really look at it proactively. And then that third question
you're asking yourself is where is my kid most vulnerable
to overwhelm, to shut down, to blow ups, to meltdowns
to refusal with school. These are the areas that you
want to be looking at very proactively. Talk with your
(22:29):
kid about some of it, Ask them what they need,
Ask them what they feel like might set them off
during the school day. What they feel like might lead
to dysregulation. What they feel like might lead to overwhelms,
shut down, meltdown, blow ups, not wanting to go, not
even being able to go. Then we take that information
(22:53):
and we create scaffolds around those moments to support our
kid's nervous system. An example, really quickly, I used to
dread mornings with my kid. Oh my gosh, it was
just so much chaos. Nothing would happen. I would nag,
nothing would happen. I would repeat myself, nothing would happen,
(23:14):
and I would end up yelling. Like every single morning,
I would end up yelling because it was the only
way I could break that spiral of chaos and get
the attention necessary to get the shoes on, to start
walking to the car, whatever it was, to brush your teeth,
to put some stinking clothes on. It was just horrible.
(23:38):
It started the day so awful for everyone, and we
all dreaded it and it affected everybody in the household.
I would walk on eggshells trying to avoid the meltdown,
and yet we would still have explosions because the eggshells
didn't work right. Things don't get done when we're walking
on eggshells and trying not to trigger something. And of
(24:02):
course I tried to stay calm. Of course I tried
to stay calm, right, we all want to be calm.
Of course we're trying to do that. But it would
evolve nonetheless every single day because we didn't have assistance
in police, and I didn't understand what was causing all
of this. To be able to be more proactive, to
be able to lean on some tools and strategies so
(24:24):
that we didn't have chaos, we didn't have to yell
to get out the door on time, with our teeth,
brush and clothes on our bodies, and of course it
makes everything worse. Our reactivity only escalates our kids reactivity.
You cannot help a disregulated kid regulate if you are
(24:46):
disregulated yourself. You cannot co regulate if you are disregulating
to yourself. If you have high intensity, you are co escalating,
you are not co regulating. So eventually I realized that
something had to change. I was definitely missing something, and
I had to create more of a sense of safety
(25:10):
and predictability. That unpredictability was huge for my kid. It
was really very derailing for him, and things just couldn't
get done that way. You know, we would definitely go
into shutdown and nothing would get done. So when we
were creating, when we were focusing on safety and predictability,
(25:35):
we weren't focused on we have to get these things done,
we have to get out the door. At this time,
that was still important. I'm not saying that it's not important,
but we were focusing on connection. We were focusing on
what does the nervous system need to feel safe enough
to follow these steps and get these things done and
get out the door without everybody yelling and melting down.
(25:58):
And I created this visual morning routine card that was
like a game. It was a miracle. I'm sure I've
talked about it here before. And I provide the templates
for it in back to school prep week and teach
you how to create them and how to use them
successfully because it's not just a checklist. There's much more
(26:20):
to it than that. And we also had sort of
this launch pad routine. We started with making choices and
prepping the night before. What do you want to pack
in your lunch tomorrow or are you buying lunch at school?
What do you want for breakfast tomorrow. We're laying out
your clothes for tomorrow. We're making sure the shoes are
buy the door and ready. And my kid was making
(26:43):
these choices where those choices were important to him. He
didn't care what he wore to school, so I just
set something out appropriate for school in the weather. He
did care a lot what he ate for breakfast. He
did care what was in his lunch box. So those
are the things that he helped with. Right, I had
to get his buy in. I went and prepped all
these things tonight before, and the next day he was like,
I don't like any of those choices. Then we were
(27:06):
in a worse spot in the morning instead of a
better spot in the morning. Then we added that visual
checklist that I was just talking about, and that checklist
was for good enough. It was not my ideal of
everything that got done in the morning, and that we
all left skipping and chanting and singing out the door
for school. Right, let's be real, real life. It was
(27:30):
good enough. What are the basics that need to get done.
We need hygiene, we need clothes on, we need shoes on,
we need food. Everything else can sort of wait. There's
no perfectionism in the mornings. You will never ever have
one peaceful morning if you are searching for perfection, because
(27:51):
it doesn't even exist. I also learned to keep the
lights low or off in the morning. We didn't do
bright lights, we didn't do loud noises. Sometimes there would
be music, but it would be soft. What could my
kid's nervous system handle in the morning. Thinking about that
(28:11):
makes all the difference. We were then building a rhythm,
not a schedule, not a checklist, right. We weren't checking boxes.
We were creating a predictable flow, and that changed everything.
Flow is a beautiful thing. People create some flow, create
(28:34):
some routine and rituals so that there is a rhythm,
and that rhythm makes all the difference to the nervous system.
As a side note, my kid was always up before me,
so I didn't have to wake him up in the mornings,
and I know that that's a struggle for a lot
of you. And if he did struggle, if I did
(28:55):
have to wake him up in the mornings, and I
knew then what I know now, I would have started
with sort of a buffer zone. I would have sat
quietly with him and been present while he woke up
for a few minutes, not asking for anything, not making
any commands, just hey bunny, it's time to start getting up,
(29:18):
and then zip it. That can shift that tone right
away in the mornings. One client of had even started
doing morning stretches with music with their kids, so they
were having a transition ritual. They were doing regulation and
they were co regulating, and again it really shifts that
(29:38):
tone and how you begin the school day. We're talking
about emotional readiness here. We're not talking about perfection. We're
talking about emotional readiness because when kids feel safe and
seen before any demands are placed on them, then they
can access their thinking brain. They're more flexible, they're more cooperative,
(30:00):
and they are way less likely to explode over the
small things like a spilled cup of milk or a
seam in their sock. But also seamless socks, folks, they
can change your life in the morning too. I promise
tagless clothes and seamless socks are a thing. So if
mornings are rough in your house, I want you to
(30:20):
do two things. Pause and ask yourself what does my
child's nervous system need in those moments at that time
of day. And then you are going to build a
simple scaffold, routines, rituals, visuals, gentleness, low demand that are
(30:40):
going to help your kid regulate, not just managing time
and tasks. So, if you'd like to do back to
school prep week with us, we dive deeper into those things.
We dive deeper into a whole bunch of other things.
You would leave back to school Prep week with your
Advocacy binder completed, done, ready for advocating effectively, ready for
(31:06):
being really productive in that right, Like your binder is
going to be there, You're going to know how to
reference things, and you are going to be on it
with Advocacy. We are going to do those routine cards
using my templates. We are going to personalize them and
create them together in real time. We are going to
do some things around nervous system. You are going to
(31:28):
first and foremost complete your child's profile and you're going
to take a quiz that tells you where their nervous
system is most of the time, so that you can
create these systems, tools, strategies, preps. All the things that
we're doing that are individualized for your kid, that are
going to work for your kid. Again, not perfect parenting,
(31:52):
proactive parenting, so if you want to join us for
back to school Prep Week, you can go to Parenting
adhan Autism dot com slash prep pr EP. You will
get all the details, all the sessions, the schedule, everything
there to know if it's a good fit or not
(32:13):
for you. If it is, we would love to have you.
There was so much collaboration when we did this last summer.
There was a lot of crowdsourcing. Parents are sharing their
ideas and what's worked for them, and we even go
into things like making your life simpler, how can you
make dinner time easier? How can you reduce the demands
(32:36):
on yourself as a parent to have less chaos and
less stress during the school year. I really hope to
see you there. It is not just getting things done,
we have fun, We support each other. You will leave
feeling so much less alone and so much more prepared
(32:57):
for the school year ahead. And also find the show
notes for this episode at Parentingadhdunautsism dot com slash three
two zero for episode three hundred and twenty and I
will definitely have the link there to register and get
more information about Back to School Prep Week as well.
If you are listening to this after prep week happened.
(33:19):
After the end of July twenty twenty five, you can
purchase all of the replays and you can use it
in the exact same way to walk you through prep
for this school year coming up, or for any school
year in the future. So I just I know a
lot of people find us later after the timeframe in
(33:40):
which the episode's published, so there's something there for you
as well. And I do wish you as smooth a
transition as is possible in our complex families, and I
will see you on the next episode. Take really good care.
(34:00):
I see you. You're doing hard and meaningful work and
you don't have to do it alone. If you found
this episode helpful, share it with someone who needs it
and leave a quick review so others can find this
support too. When you're ready for next steps, the Regulated
Kids Project is here with the tools, coaching, and community
(34:20):
to help you raise a more regulated, resilient child. Get
more info at regulated kids dot com.
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal
Gregg Rosenthal and a rotating crew of elite NFL Media co-hosts, including Patrick Claybon, Colleen Wolfe, Steve Wyche, Nick Shook and Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic get you caught up daily on all the NFL news and analysis you need to be smarter and funnier than your friends.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.