368: Preparing for the Back-to-School Transition, with Penny Williams
About this episode
Penny Williams shares five key areas to focus on for a smoother back-to-school transition for neurodivergent kids.
The end of summer brings a very specific kind of dread for so many of us parenting neurodivergent kids — that creeping feeling that starts in July and gets louder every single day school gets closer. I know it well. I spent years bracing for the school year instead of preparing for it, and there is a real difference between the two. In this episode, I'm sharing the five areas I've learned, through thirteen years of trial and error, that make the biggest difference in a smoother back-to-school transition: mornings, bedtime, homework, school meetings, and overwhelm itself. We talk about why mornings are so hard for kids who are still building executive function skills, and why picking just one transition point to focus on beats trying to fix everything at once. We talk about bedtime, and why shifting sleep schedules gradually, starting now instead of the night before, protects both your child's nervous system and your own. We talk about homework, and the shift from won't to can't that changes how you respond when your child is avoiding or refusing. And we talk about school meetings: deciding your non-negotiables in a calm moment, long before you're sitting across from the IEP team…
More episodes of Beautifully Complex
- 373: Overcoming The Wall of Awful, with Brendan Mahan, M.Ed.
- 372: The Neurodivergent Learner, Emily King, Ph.D.
- 371: How Honesty (Not Reassurance) Is What Gets Your Kid Through Middle School, with Dr. Kim Pinckney
- 370: When Silence is Louder than Sound, with Luke Williams
- 369: PANDAS: When Strep Inflames Your Child's Brain, with Andrea Jones, Rn, BSN, FHP
- 367: Systems that Work with the Brain, with Angela Kingdon, Ph.D.
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