Ah, summer. The only thing better is fall—crisp new notebooks, crisp new school clothes, and crisp new resolutions to make this the very best school year ever. Whether you’re the parent that’s dancing around Staples singing “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” or the parent that’s already missing those relaxed mornings just hanging out with drowsy kids, you’ve gotta love the anticipation.

We’ll help you to set the stage for success with suggestions for finding the right supplies, starting your child out with good study habits, packing a lunchbox, encouraging early literacy, keeping kids healthy and locating a great tutor.

Make it Familiar
A new school or classroom and the prospect of a bunch of unknown classmates and—even scarier—a teacher that they don’t know from Adam, can make even the most confident pre-schooler or rising freshman quake in their boots. Take advantage of orientation days to walk your younger children to their classrooms and lunchroom and introduce them to their teachers: talk frequently about what they should expect. If possible, arrange play-dates with future classmates.

Older kids might complain, but attend orientations anyway and ignore the eye-rolling. Help them to decipher complicated schedules and map out routes to each classroom if necessary. Secretly they will thank you.

Scads of Supplies
Your child’s school will provide you with a supply list. But while you’re taking advantage of back-to-school sales and the sales tax holiday, think about stocking up with an extra set of supplies to keep at home. Much better to buy a big package of brightly-colored posterboard and a set of markers right now than to discover, late one Sunday night, that your child just has to have them for an incredibly important project that’s due—oh yeah, tomorrow, Mom.

Fabulous Fashionistas
Sales tax holidays (slated for July 31-August 3 in Georgia this year) are a great encouragement to stock up on the latest jeans and soccer shirts. Fashion mavens will already know that plaid, fake fur, and layers of stripes, dots and florals are hip for girls, and canvas carpenter pants with tartan shirts are in for boys. And of course they already have their sights set on checkered or plaid sneakers and hightops.

But keep school dress codes in mind. Even schools that say no to uniforms are insisting on decorum—shoulder straps spanning a minimum of two fingers; shorts and skirts that reach at least mid-thigh; inoffensive logos and designs only; and undergarments that are out of sight—literally. Check with your child’s school for rules before you head to the mall or that favorite specialty store.

The Coolest Backpack…
…is the one that has wide, padded shoulder straps and a padded back. Using only one strap isn’t at all cool when it leads to muscle strain and increased curvature of the back, so make sure they wear it properly. And no over-loading—a backpack should never weigh more than 10-15 percent of the student’s body weight. Consider rolling backpacks for kids that insist on carrying a ton of books.

Once you’ve met basic safety requirements, crazy designs, cell phone pockets, and those wild solar cells for charging iPods are up for grabs.

Lunchbox Savvy
Vintage tin. Batman cartoon. Supremely practical, with eight million pockets and a built-in Thermos. There are tons of lunchboxes out there, and somewhere is the one that will make your child’s heart go pitter-patter. Make sure they pick it out themselves, though; there’s nothing quite like the humiliation of carrying My Little Pony when everyone else is sporting Hannah Montana.

What goes in it takes more thought. Go for a balance of whole grains, protein, fruit and vegetables, and avoid the sugary drinks, refined carbs and snacks that will make blood sugar spike and attention spans plummet.
Here are a few ideas:
Peanut butter balls—Crush ½ cup whole grain cereal and mix well with ¼ cup creamy peanut butter; roll into balls. Freeze overnight and serve with baby carrots and sugar snap peas.
Turkey roll-up—Spread whipped cream cheese on a whole wheat tortilla, layer with turkey, romaine lettuce and tomato (a spoonful of salsa can be nice, too) and roll up. Slice into pinwheels if you like.
Go hummus—Try flavored hummus, chopped red and green peppers and shredded lettuce in a pita bread.
PB&J alternative—Almond butter with some sliced almonds for crunch and some dried cranberries for a flavor surprise, all slathered between slices of whole wheat bread, makes a change from trusty PB&Js.
Chips and dip—Buzz drained and rinsed black beans or a can of refried beans, a generous dollop or two of salsa, and a can of green chiles though the food processor. Pack with a small bag of blue corn chips and some celery sticks.
Frozen calcium-added juice boxes are a great way to keep lunches cool.

If You Don’t Snooze, You Lose
The verdict is in. Not getting enough sleep leads to a host of problems from inattentiveness and bad behavior to tantrums and even diabetes (yes, seriously), obesity and poor growth—not to mention anxiety, not-so-great memory, tearfulness, and lack of energy. Phew. Pre-school-aged children should get eleven to thirteen hours of sleep and school-aged children up to about the age of nine need at least ten hours, while pre-teens and teens can usually slide by with about nine.

Establish a regular bedtime and make deviations the rare exception. You can’t force them to sleep, but you can insist that they lie there quietly with a book. Nix caffeine within six hours of turn-in time and try to ensure that all meals are finished well beforehand; the body can’t wind down if it’s busy digesting spaghetti and meatballs.

Make the room dark—no flickering TV, no lights. Scientific evidence suggests that sleeping in an illuminated room might actually be dangerous as your body will become unable to distinguish between day and night and stop producing melatonin, a key antioxidant. If your child is nervous, take them outside one starry night, lie on your backs in the grass, and introduce them to Orion, Andromeda and Leo. Identify the sounds they will hear while snuggling under the bedclothes, whether those sounds are the hooting of owls, cat fights, or the prosaic clang of the neighbor’s garbage can lid. Make friends with the night.

All Stations Go
If you want to get out of the door stress-free and on-time every morning, prepare the night before. Ask your child to pick out an outfit and lay it out (or put together several complete outfits every Sunday). Make lunch and refrigerate it. Set the table for breakfast and plan what you’ll have, even if it’s just cereal and milk with a glass of calcium-fortified OJ.

Have a special table or basket right next to the door and be sure to put all completed homework, projects, backpacks, gloves and hats there each night. In the morning, just grab and go.

Mark Your Calendar
Few things are worse. You have an important meeting, but when you go to drop your child at school the parking lot is strangely deserted. It’s a teacher workday.

Avoid this horror by noting every workday, holiday, early-release day and vacation day on your planner as soon as you get the school’s schedule, and tape the schedule to the back of a kitchen cabinet door as a fall-back. Block out time for parent-teacher conferences, soccer games, plays, and PTO events as soon as you get the details.

And make sure you go. Involved parents who know their children’s teachers and friends and are up-to-date with school happenings can really help kids to succeed and stay safe.

Study Habits for a Lifetime
Take the groan out of homework by helping your child to develop good study habits. Homework fortifies and expands upon what they have learned in the classroom, and your child will develop good organizational skills and self-discipline if they, and you, take it seriously. Remind them that school and homework are not just some bizarre torture that you and their teachers have invented for your own amusement—schoolwork will ultimately help them to have choices in life and the ability to follow their dream.

Ask them if they have any homework as soon as they get home from school; allow time for a quick, energizing snack, and then help them to plan their attack. Some kids like to get the hardest stuff out of the way first, while others do best working up to it. Or they might write the essay first, and then review it once math is finished.

Kids these days will swear up and down that they do their best work while simultaneously watching TV, texting, and listening to their iPod. And indeed, steadily rising IQ rates seem to demonstrate that constantly shifting attention might have some advantages. But at the same time studies show that ADD and ADHD have reached epidemic proportions, and teachers complain that many kids are no longer capable of the sustained attention needed for the harder coursework that begins after third grade.

Encourage your child or teen to study with phone, TV, music and MySpace turned firmly off. Explain that they can probably spend, say, either half an hour of totally focused time on their homework, or two hours of distracted time. If they balk, suggest a compromise—half an hour of focused study, and then they can study any way they choose until all homework is done.

Websites like www.studygs.net are a good source for detailed plans for breaking large projects down into bite-sized chunks, or for finding hints for avoiding procrastination.

Calendars or websites with a word-a-day, a foreign word-a-day, or a math problem-a-day can prove helpful in teaching kids the value of doing just a little bit frequently, and are particularly useful as the SATs loom.

Cut the Clutter
The best study space is uncluttered, with room to spread out the books and papers necessary for each project and a bookcase to corral ever-increasing collections. If possible each child should have their own desk, with drawers to stow away pencils, markers and files. A mini-makeover with the paint colors and posters—maybe a world map?—of their choice can help kids to settle into studying.

The kitchen table, though, can also be a good study space when the TV is off and everyone else in the room is quietly focusing on their own tasks.

Real Literacy
Reading is still one of the most important skills that a child can master, but remember, it’s not nearly as important that your child CAN read as it is that they LOVE to read. A child that doesn’t read is not much better off than a child that can’t read.

Literacy starts early, but don’t force it. Reading shouldn’t become a dreaded chore or a look-my-kid-can-read-at-three show—it begins with simply having books everywhere, even in the bath! Read to your child often; while you’re waiting for dinner in a restaurant and between cleaning chores as well as at bedtime. Run your finger under the words to get them used to the left-to-right eye movement. Point out capital letters occasionally, and ask questions—what do you think happened next? What sound does the cat make?

When they tell you a story, write it down and then read it back to them. Ask them to illustrate it. Show them that words have meaning.

Perhaps most importantly, let them see you absorbed in reading. Set aside a quiet time every day for the whole family to read. Make regular trips to the library or a good bookstore, and ask the librarian or clerk to help you find books that you know will hold your child’s attention.

Finding a Tutor
If your child isn’t living up to their realistic academic potential, or is doing well but needs a challenge, or is losing confidence because of difficulties with certain subjects, it might be time to think about enlisting the help of a tutor.

Start with recommendations from other parents or teachers, and look for a tutor that has experience with your child’s age group. Ask for references. Remember that being incredibly smart isn’t as important in a tutor as being able to present material in such a way that your child understands it.

Then look for a personality match. If your child has done well in the past with a laid-back teacher who illustrates lessons with hands-on examples, for instance, then that is the kind of tutor you might look for. Some tutors are flexible and well able to assess and adapt to your child’s learning style, whether he or she is an auditory, visual, conceptual or kinesthetic learner.

The tutor should first assess your child’s strengths and weaknesses and set goals. They should pledge to give you regular updates and answer questions such as how they will handle it if your child doesn’t understand the material, or how they will assess progress.

Check in with your child frequently. Does she feel comfortable with the tutor? Does the material make sense to her? If your child isn’t committed to the plan and doesn’t feel that her feedback is important, you might be wasting your money.

The right tutor will help your child to grow in confidence, learn skills that will last a lifetime, and—yes—enjoy learning.

Staying Healthy
Rule #1 (and 2, 3, 4, 5…) involves hand-washing. Lots of it. Colds, stomach flu, ear infections, pink eye (yikes) and sore throats can all start with grubby hands meeting a door handle, and said door handle meeting another set of grubby hands. So get your little germ-breeders into the habit of washing their hands frequently with soap for as long as it takes to sing the ABC song. Have them wash their hands as soon as they get home, and teach them to sneeze or cough into the crooks of their elbows, never their hands, if they don’t have a tissue.

Sally Treadwell is a freelance writer, currently owned and operated by a seventh grader and a rising sophomore. Contact her at sallytreadwell@gmail.com