Hi – Sue Blaney here with your Parenting Tip from Parenting Teens Info.com

My tip this week is Calm Your Teen’s New-School-Year Nerves >>Listen

Have you ever been nervous going into a new situation? Sometimes our nervousness isn’t even something we are conscious of, but it can derail us anyway by making sleep more difficult, or by making us crabby and  stressed.  In fact, these might be symptoms you are witnessing right now as your teenager heads into a new school year. This is a good time to put yourself in your teen’s shoes and consider how he might be feeling. Whether he admits to feeling stress about the new school year or not, there are some things you can do to help your teenager make this a smooth transition.

• First, do all that you can to begin to get your teen’s sleep schedule more aligned with the school schedule. If she is regularly sleeping in until 11 the change to the new schedule will be a bad shock to her system, so help her prepare for it. She may squawk about this, so you might need to do this gradually and include some compromises.
• Talk to your teenager about his friends whom he may not have seen over the summer. Encourage him to touch base with some of them so he’ll know if they have classes or lunch periods together. He may feel more comfortable if he knows where to look for familiar faces.
• Reminisce a bit with your teen about her positive experiences from last year. The objective here is to calm her nerves by reminding her that school can be pleasant and she has some nice relationships from last year.
• Have your teen clean his room and get his desk organized and ready-to-go. Get the backpack cleaned out; purchase the necessary notebooks, pencils and organizers and help him be ready to begin the school year in an organized fashion. If he is well organized it is one less thing to fray nerves.  [Here are some more helpful tips in helping your teen get organized.  Click here.]
• Check the bus schedule; make sure she knows what bus she is on and what time it will pick her up in the morning.
• Ask him what food he wants you to have on hand for breakfast and for snacks for the first couple of weeks of school. Oblige him and have the cupboards full.
• Plan to prepare some comfort food for dinner during the first week or so. In fact anything you can do to make home soothing and comforting will help calm the stress.

Make sure you are part of the solution so that your teen can begin the new school year from a place of strength and confidence. Thanks for subscribing to my Two-Minute Tips for Parenting Teens……. ‘Til next week…I'm Sue Blaney