Slowing Down to Speed Up

The start of the school year is a unique time for children and adults - life accelerates with lots of activities in the calendar, which requires much of your time and flexibility.

For your child, this is a time of adaptation, with a lot to process. Their schedule has changed, their routines, the ways they spend their time and with whom they spend it. School offers a lot of stimuli - interactions with other children, new learning, new spaces to orient to and organize in the mind. It can bring the discomfort of change, as well as fulfillment that comes from new ways of engaging (one would hope).

This is a time to tend to your balance - for your child, and for yourself.

This is particularly true for young children, who thrive with routine and stability. As they adapt to something new - school - they need you, as their adult, to ensure a sense of consistency and calm at home. This allows them to maintain the resources required to take on new things during the school day.

So I hope you will remember that sometimes we must slow down to speed up. As your child accelerates into life this fall, taking on all the new, I hope you will honor their work of growth by prioritizing balance at home.

How to Prioritize Stability

Seek sensory calm - school can bring a high stimuli load - different sensations of sound, scent, touch, sight, even taste with school foods. Attune to the sensory calm available in the world around you. School is typically a louder place, and quiet can feel good to a child’s sensitive ears. Can you hear crickets, or birdsong, or the wind through the trees, the sound of a distant bus or train? School can be a visually cluttered place, with bright lights - seek natural light and calming surroundings when possible, which leads me to…

Be in nature in a present way - at the beach, a local park, community garden, nature preserve, a nearby farm. Time spent in natural spaces has a positive impact on emotional regulation and will help your child become more internally resourced for the stressors of school. The tactile input found in nature is soothing - the texture of grass or saltwater on the feet, of plant stems or seashells in the hands. Working with food preparation with fruits and vegetables also brings in natural sensory enrichment.

Return to familiar experiences - Your child is adapting to a lot of ‘newness.’ Returning to the familiar can feel like a comfort as they take pleasure in the known, in being known, and in having a sense of competence. Build in time for familiar people, places, books, toys, activities.

Take a leisurely walk around your neighborhood and take in the subtle signs of impending seasonal change. Visit a favorite library or bookstore without feeling rushed (or choose not to do so, if you know those experiences are actually overstimulating for your particular child). Go to your farmers’ market or grocery without a sense of hurry, and have some light conversation and connection with those you encounter there.

Limit the number of activities and outings you have in the day. Remember it is your job to honor your child’s needs - not simply fill their days. More is not better at this age. And you don’t need to present an idealized image of fall engagement or meet social pressures to conform. Your child needs you to make developmentally aligned choices - and that means prioritizing consistency, stability, and a slower pace of life. This goes for after the school day and on weekends.

Choose activities you can both actually enjoy. Set yourself up for success and choose activities you both can look forward to, that don’t require a lot of scaffolding or management. This may require saying no to some of your child’s requests (like a visit to the toy store, which results in a lot of limit-setting), and saying no to social pressures (like a hectic fall fest that you know may throw off your whole Saturday).

Say yes to experiences that bring both of you fulfillment so that you can take pleasure in the time together.

Be mindful with shows and technology, which many parents start to depend upon during a time of year when they need to get adult things done (laundry, packed lunches - and their full-time jobs) and when their children may need more emotional regulation support after the stimulation of school. Shows become tech-based pacifiers, which means your child is a) missing out on healthy opportunities to develop the capacity for regulation and b) becoming more dependent on these addictive tools. I know this is hard to hear - but I urge you to consider making different choices.

Offer your child a stable, grounded home base in the midst of this transitional time.

Do less, with greater presence.

This support is key. And so often overlooked by many parents, who are understandably eager to integrate both their children and themselves into new school social groups and activities.

Slow down so you can speed up, securely.