This week is a Back to School Special:
I discuss the importance of setting your children up for success and what that looks like:
1. Establish Expectations for The School Year:
At School:
What grades are required? What privileges are lost if those grades aren’t met?
Responsibilities: What does that look like for different ages?
At Home:
What household chores are expected throughout the week?
-Lunches packed night before.
-Unpack backpacks and set out notes/reminder binders/things to be signed after school
-Help with laundry, dishes, and kitchen clean up.

2. Remind Them of their Identity (especially in Junior High where they start to find identity in peers rather than family )
-Who are they?
-What traits make them leaders?
-What unique gifts did God give them to use to bring glory to Him?
-Let them know that they are not defined by their athletic or academic abilities. While greatness is admirable to strive for, who God created them to be, is far more important in life.

-What are their morals?
-What temptations will they face? What does this look like at different ages? 5th grade: lying about homework and bullying, 8th grade more serious temptations, vaping, drugs, sex, alcohol, porn….

-Re-establish Boundaries: Remind them of both their personal boundaries as well as respecting other’s boundaries. Have an age appropriate discussion about inappropriate actions and how to know when something doesn't feel right.

-Remind them of what characteristics make them a leader for Christ.
-Stand up for personal beliefs.
-Embrace their unique gifts.
-Be themselves and don’t change for others
-Be proud of who they were created to be.
-Give God the Glory
-Witness to Others: take up for the underdog, make the new kid feel welcome, speak up for the bullied.
-Be Humble & Kind

3. Ways to Stay Organized throughout the school year:
-Sync Your Calendars
-ICal: One address for all family events synced with hubs & one address for strictly kid events synced with hubs & kiddos.
-Cozi Family App: Never tried it, but hear it works wonders to sync all things family.

-Set Bedtime on Kids’ Phones: Set it for 15 minutes before bedtime so that they can know it’s time to wrap up whatever activity they are doing: practice piano, watch videos, read, etc…
Parental Restrictions on Kids phones: Set Parameters on Data & Screen time usage to turn off at bedtime & then turn back on at whatever time you wish the next day.

-What to do with ALL The Things that come home from school:
-Immediately enter dates into phone with notes & throw paper notes away
-Artwork: Download the ArtKive app: it creates digital files of your kids' artwork, stores it in a cloud file & you can order scrapbooks.

4. SAFETY:
-360 LIFE: Great Family Monitoring app
-BARK: monitors who your children are talking to and what they’re talking about. *Must have Apple/Android/or Amazon device:
-Monitors Social Media, Text Messages, Email, YouTube, Safari, and DropBox
-Monitors & Detects risks through algorithms that detect cyberbullying, violence, drugs & alcohol, self-harm & suicide, sexual content & sexting…so that you don’t have to manually read every message and it's only $9/month:
-For Children under 10 years of age:
NCMEC created a campaign to teach young children about safe internet usage: It’s called Into The Cloud and deals with Cyberbullying as well as inappropriate interactions: YouTube: NetSmartz Workshop.

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