By now, everyone with a school-age child is probably dizzy with back-to-school lists. But the person who really needs a list isn’t the child going off to school; it’s the mother, father or other Designated Adult in their life. Here’s the list I wish someone had given me:
1. Alarm clock. Two, actually: one for your child and one for yourself.
Your child’s teacher will say that their clock is for teaching them numbers and how to tell time. But what it’s really for is so that it isn’t your face waking them up every morning, and your voice jolting them out of a happy dream.
Let the alarm clock do that. Then you can be the good cop: “Oh, gee, it sure is early, isn’t it? Come have some chocolate milk.”
2. Extra batteries for that clock. Or you will be awakened by the sound of the bus leaving your stop, instead.
3. Presentable pajamas. I’m not saying I do this, but … instead of pajamas, if you slept in your work-out clothes, then when you ran out of the house with your child, first thing in the morning, your neighbors might suspect you were still in your pajamas… but they couldn’t be sure.
4. Slip-on shoes. I thought I was so smart, getting Velcro-closure shoes for my boys… only to find myself still tying my own laces when we could have been dashing out the door. I finally got myself loafers, and cut nearly a minute off my time.
5. Outerwear. Believe it or not, the person to buy the best coat for is – yourself. Not only are you traipsing to the bus stop, or the school, with your little one – but you’re probably making two trips for every one of theirs.
Now add all the time you’ll spend waiting. And while I have yet to see this pattern reported on the Weather Channel, I can tell you that the worst weather always seems to brew up just as school is letting out.
I can’t count the number of afternoons I stood there, waiting for my kids, only to watch gray clouds sweep the blue skies away. That rain is far more on-time than the bus.
6. That’s why rain-gear is, if anything, even more essential. My two boys always plotted their course right through the deepest part of every puddle; and, since they also insisted on jumping with both feet into every one, the better part of every puddle ended up on me.
I’d have killed for some good foul-weather gear.
7. Your cell-phone is a necessary safety device. Not for 911, but for when your friend, two stops earlier, calls to warn you the bus is on time for once!
8. Laundry marker. The school depends on you to label anything that could come detached from your child in the course of the day. You’ll have to decide for yourself just what that covers. But be advised they take those labels darned seriously.
I found that out early one fall, when a sudden cold snap had me grabbing a ski jacket from the closet for my first grader as we went out the door. There was no time to write his name inside, with that indelible ink, or for it to dry before he put it on, so – rather than see his name inside-out forever on the back of his shirt – I just jammed it on him and figured, What could happen?
That afternoon, the start of a three-day winter weekend, my child came home without the coat. A frenzied return to search school grounds and classroom produced nothing. Of course not. The coat had gone home on the child whose name was still in it: a second grader whose puzzled mother thought she’d gotten rid of the thing at a tag sale the year before.
9. You’ll need boxes for the mountains of paper that come home in the backpack: memos; flyers; book club order forms; completed worksheets.
You’ll want one box just for the permission slips that need to be signed and returned to school… so you won’t confuse them with the thousands more asking for volunteers for bake sales, book fairs, and other fundraisers.
10. A list of all the personal goals you are going to reach, now that your child is in school. Put this in a safe place. It’ll give you a laugh the next time you see it… on the last day of school!
