2021 Back-To-School Checklist: What We Know

We’re different.

Gone are the days when we checked boxes, reviewed rules, marked calendars knowingly as we prepare for fall. We know now that the future, even the school year ahead, could hold serious challenges. And perhaps we feel more equipped having lived through the past year and a half.

Have we come to know ourselves more clearly even as we are less clear about the near future?

It’s quite possible that we do know ourselves better thanks to what we’ve endured.

Post-trauma resilience. Like a phoenix from the ashes, the survival of trauma can embolden us.

Last year was a trauma.

Our time in the pandemic has been (and still is, to be sure) harrowing. Illness, death, and grief loomed. The desperate daily sacrifice of healthcare workers, and the futile attempts at cohesive messaging from our public leaders. The full exposure of our country’s foundational racism and a scared man dying on our televisions over and over while we could not look away. The divisive tribal politics and that day in January when we were working from home with our children and watched as a symbol of our democracy was violently breached.

These events happened, and we are forever changed as parents, families, and children. We’re different.

And even as we struggled, “2020” was a revelation. We cursed Zoom school and the endless flow of classroom meeting links, our rowdy homes that were also our offices, and the cloying feeling of being trapped in one place.

And we savored those silver linings: extra time with our children, the comforts of home, and the simplicity in living day-to-day with fewer commitments and plans.

We found ourselves looking inward because we couldn’t go out!  We talked about feelings, and we had awkward or difficult conversations with others when we had to set a boundary. We had to say “no” to friends who wanted to quarantine together, or we scrambled to create a “pod” for a lonely child.  

We had to make difficult choices to protect our more vulnerable family members. We had honest conversations with our children about what was happening, and how we’d get through it together as a family.

As for those searing instances of social injustice and assault, we knew that sitting in our houses feeling rage was not enough. We donated, we made signs with our children, we protested, and we wept.

We connected with others and took time to *begin* to learn anti-racism. Or if we were from a BIPOC community we felt more empowered than before to expect that the majority culture gets to work with anti-racism. Or move along.

Our relationship with anxiety has changed because the fear was unabated.

As parents, we were managing constant risk and health concerns combined with the tremendous pressure to navigate a new professional and financial landscape. Many women resigned from work to become homeschool teachers for their kids, and we will continue to deal with the fallout as individuals and as a society.  

But what a momentous shift for us to survive and model for our kids the survival of extreme, chronic exposure to anxiety and health risk. We checked information, managed obsessions about that information, and tried to apply our knowledge to the best use possible. But we had to accept the limits of our ability to protect our family because risk will always be a certainty in life.

Emotion regulation was at the heart of parenting in the pandemic.

And perhaps we were able to use our anxiety rather than feel abused by it.  Productive anxiety is a beautiful energy designed by human evolution to drive us to prepare and anticipate.  At its best, anxiety is fuel.  

The non-productive anxiety that disrupted our sleep or led us to eat or drink too much?  To lose our cool after one too many interruptions? We had to learn to accept, release, self-care and tolerate. Ideally, we adapted.

What will we take with us?

Are you wondering how to hold the silver linings as you move forward?  As a clinical child psychologist, I’ll highlight a few good ones:

·       Inward reflection and self-care, for ourselves and our children. We have learned to observe and care for ourselves and our families in a new way. As opposed to before (“my child deserves a trophy every time”), we now understand that they need attunement and empathy to thrive, even if concentrated in only five minutes a day. Or even when that means telling them mindfully that we need to focus on work and will not have time to spend together at the moment.  We parents now grasp how much we need our own self-comfort, validation, and gentleness when times are unstable (and a manicure is unavailable for ten months straight).

·       Family mindfulness and ease. Taking days one at a time was a practice that helped many families get through the long months of the pandemic. As we move on, I hope that families continue to take breaks, connect with the present moment, enjoy nature, and breathe. These simple pleasures became easier to enjoy when the usual scheduled distractions and engagements were off-limits.

·       Flexibility. We discovered during the pandemic that hours upon hours of video game usage helped our children feel connected to each other. Having a child enter a work Zoom call endeared you to your boss and did not get you fired. And asking someone for help, or saying no when someone asked you, strengthened your sense of self rather than depleted you.  The pandemic has brought a fresh perspective and a slowness to previously hasty assumptions. Context matters and viewing problems flexibly and thoughtfully was a value that served us all well in the darkest of family moments this year.

·       Joy became intentional. Without birthday parties, baby playdates, sports events, or community gatherings large and small, families were left on their own to figure out ways to create fun. Joy was planned and crafted out of necessity. The open schedule allowed children to be bored, and the typical parent guilt that comes with an idle child just made no sense anymore. Here’s to years ahead full of unique and intentional joy creation and hours of child boredom.

So, with our gaze turned more inward than ever before, with our newfound ability to tolerate risk and uncertainty and to find intention and meaning in our choices as a family, what will we do?

We know ourselves better than ever and perhaps we see battle scars evident in our families and our children.

It’s time to restore and mend the frays in our family fabric that inevitably ripped in the chaos. We’re rising from the ashes.  We now have the mental capacity and time and intention to care for ourselves and our children and families.

Therapy Lab Kids Meets the Moment

Therapy Lab Kids was designed with this moment in mind. The offspring of a long-established child psychology practice in Los Angeles, TL Kids is meant to be a therapeutic pit-stop in the journey of families.

As we roll into a new school year just now stretching beyond the most intense pandemic days, we offer you a choice of brief, five-session plans to cover the most typical mental health concerns and needs of children and families. All of our processes and interventions and supports are based on science and the most innovative strategies to support mental health in families.

Our TL Kids plans:

1.      Mood & Anxiety

2.     Sleep Problems

3.     Parent Training

4.     Families (with Teens) in Conflict

5.     Back-To-School 2021

In addition to our core plans, our seasonal plan is focused on “Back-To-School” prep by way of introducing skills from each of our four core plans, tailored to this phase of life and with your family’s goals in mind. This 5-session plan includes an assessment with recommendations and resources, giving you peace of mind about next steps toward family and child wellness.

We also came up with 10 helpful tips for family wellness this fall.

Learn more and get started today!