Ep 59: [Bonus] Back-to-School Grounding Guide

It’s that time of year again -- back to school season is upon us. If you’ve been dreading the morning routine rush, you’re not alone, my dear co-conspirator. If you’ve been looking forward to having your precious little humans be occupied at school, so many families are right there with you too. Regardless of how you’re feeling about back to school, you and your child are moving through changes and transitions together. As chaotic as transitions can be, we can make it a little more manageable. Because when your daily life feels more manageable, you can keep advocating to end genocide in Gaza, keep supporting human rights in Sudan and Congo, and keep showing up fully in solidarity (not saviorism) with your child this back-to-school season…most of the time.

[INTRODUCTION]

Sawadee ka, and welcome to the Come Back to Care podcast. A place where we’re re-imagining parenting to be deeply decolonized and intentionally intergenerational. If you’ve been looking for ways to practice social justice in your daily parenting and nurture your child’s development while re-parenting your inner child, I’m so glad you’re here. I am your host, Nat Nadha Vikitsreth, a decolonized and licensed clinical psychotherapist, somatic abolitionist, and founder of Come Back to Care. A dot connector, norm agitator and lover of liberation. In this podcast, we turn down the volume of oppressive social norms and outdated family patterns so that we can hear our inner voice and raise our children by our own values too. We come back home to our body and the goodness within. We come back to our lineages and communities. And we come back to care… together. So come curious and come as you are.

[EPISODE]

In this bonus episode, you and I are going to explore two invitations to stay grounded amid the changes and transitions of back to school. Then, we’re going to unpack the sense of “here we go again” you might be feeling when it comes to both back to school and social justice action during these times. If that sounds generative to you, let’s get started. 

You’re here spending your invaluable time practicing social justice parenting and social justice actions with me. First, I’m so grateful for you beyond words can express. Second, and I know you already know this…you have strong and powerful intentions. Beautiful! And! With strong intentions comes high expectations for yourself, your child, and your family. However, developmentally speaking, changes and transitions can be rough for both grownups like us and our little humans. On top of that, you and I have been moving with the rage, pain, grief, and heartbreak over the lives of children being lost in Gaza, Israel, Sudan, and Congo. Keeping this political context, I have these two invitations for you to play with. Please nurture what resonates and compost the rest. More importantly, adapt it and make it Your Method. 

Invitation 1

The first invitation is to list out all the skills you’d like your child to cultivate this semester or from now until the end of the year. For example, expressing themselves when they’re upset whether with sign language, a communication device, or words and then moving through this intense feeling with you aka co-regulation. Or, making new friends. Or, communicating “No”, setting boundaries, and asking teachers for help when they’re being treated unkindly on the playground. Or, brushing their teeth and putting socks on more independently. 

Do you have a few things you’d like to work on with your child? This list is a working document so please expect no perfection at this moment. Alright?

Then, I invite you to unapologetically set this list aside and perhaps begin working on these skills three weeks after the school start date. So that the first three weeks can be all about holding space for changes and transitions. 

This way we’re honoring your strong powerful intentions while considering the child development science of transitions and using this understanding to adjust our expectations and timing. 

Allow me to elaborate. Transitions can be a potent portal to practice both-and. For our little humans, transition means the end of one activity and the beginning of the next. Depending on their development, this ending can feel permanent. So, of course, there’s sadness and disappointment there when it’s time to wrap up what they’re playing with to go brush their teeth, or to wrap up summer to go back to school. Sometimes this sadness and disappointment gets expressed as anger, resistance, and a meltdown. It makes sense, right? I certainly had a mild meltdown when House of the Dragons season two ended and I now I have to wait two more years for the next season. I love dragons and occasionally daydream about the squirrels I’m feeding riding on these cute dragons and being best friends…but I digress.

To us, grownups, the upset over this transition can seem so silly because we know that our little one’s going to feel much better after they take a nap, have a bite, or do whatever next activity they’re transitioning to. To say it another way, our mature neocortex or thinking brain can sequence these events together and then make proper decisions; whereas, our little ones are only beginning to learn that ending one activity also means moving on to the next one. That’s why a phrase like “first snack then books” or “first coat then go outside” can be so soothing to our little one’s worries. The both-and that we’re modeling to our little ones is we’re holding both the disappointment of having to put the books away on the shelf and the excitement of trying out new snacks during snack time. Both the sadness of saying goodbye at drop off and the excitement of playing in the kitchen area with their classmates. Both missing grandma as the in-person summer visit ends and the joy of showing love to grandma next week through a video call. You get the idea. When we’re holding space for both feelings (and everything in between), we add depth to our little ones’ emotional awareness. They get to experience these intense feelings of sadness and excitement and know that they can name them and move through them at their own pace and with someone they trust, which is you, my dear co-conspirator. 

And I know I’m making this teachable moment sound so blissful and social media perfect when, in real life, you have to do this 5,000 times a day while staying anchored through your little ones’ screaming and kicking. I honor your tenacity. When you have to be intentional like this on a daily basis while trying to survive under white, colonial, capitalist patriarchy, modeling this emotional resilience to your child can feel so mundane and monotonous…or- I don’t know- even like a chore.

As an auntie in your parenting village who has unlimited hope and optimism from her Sagittarius rising sign, may I please uplift the magic in these mundane moments? 

Imagine your tiny human as an adult who’s very skillful at holding space for nuances in ideas and complexity in emotions. They see the nuances of systemic oppression. They address conflicts by understanding the root causes of the injustice. They have the skills they need to practice Transformative Justice with their communities. 

These beautiful skills start with the seeds you’ve planted and are painstakingly nurturing right now. The magic in these mundane moments is that your daily, imperfect, small, good-enough, consistent-enough actions are incredibly powerful acts of resistance because you’re literally and neurobiologically laying the foundation of liberation for our future generations. 

If you’ve been holding your breath and thinking “right, Nat, no pressure whatsoever.” Ahhh, please exhale. I know the stakes are high. And we can check individualism at the door. We do this liberation work at home together. 

These quote unquote mundane moments in parenting are so powerful. To briefly connect the dots back to social justice organizing, the mundane, boring tasks of organizing are what mobilize the cause. Things like sweeping and picking up trash after a protest, as one example that Mariame Kaba often teaches. Yet, the value of this mundane care work is forgotten. Capitalism rewards hard work (with a D) not heart work (with a T). As Dean Spade puts it in Mutual Aid book quote “everyone wants a selfie with Angela Davis to post, but many people do not want to take the time to visit prisoners, go to court with people, wait in long lines at welfare offices, write letters to people in solitary confinement, deliver groceries to an elderly neighbor, or spend many hours in meetings about how to coordinate care for people in need.” End quote.  

Now back to you and parenting. We want well-adjusted, resilient, socially conscious children. And you’re raising one through all these mundane moments from the chaos of the morning routine to a screaming match on the way to school drop off.

To recap, the first invitation is to list out all the skills you’d like to nurture in and with your child. Then, set that list aside until maybe three weeks from now. So that you leave time, space, and grace to hold space for all the feelings your child might have about changes and transitions. This moment can be a powerful portal for your child to practice both-and skills with you…whenever you have the bandwidth to model it. And that leads us to our second invitation.

Invitation Two

Getting everyone prepped and ready for the new classroom, classmates, and teacher or even a new school all together is never dull. You’re coordinating transportation, afterschool programs, or IEP meetings. So this invitation is for you. 

I bet that you’re quite skillful at labeling your child’s emotions or engaging them in conversations about what they’re feeling. This invitation flips the script and asks you, my dear co-conspirator, to talk about your feelings with your child in real time. For example, your child is feeling their feelings and using their voice to protest going to bed early for the first day of school tomorrow. You’ve been holding space for their loud screaming for a while. It’s almost 8 pm. There’re dishes in the sink to do still. Your patience is running low and about to turn into irritation. This invitation can look like you saying to your child: “I know you’re pretty upset about going to bed early for school tomorrow. I’m feeling overwhelmed too. I’m going to put my ear plugs in, take 3 full breaths, and make a big sigh at the end so I can be more present with you after. Wanna do it with me?” 

At the heart of this invitation, there are two parts. First, you share your emotional experiences with your child. Second, you model what you do to move with and through those feelings. 

Will it feel awkward to take care of yourself for a moment or three breaths when your child needs your support? Perhaps. However, it’s only a moment to fill your cup for a little before reconnecting with your child when your cup is a little fuller and you can be a little more present, compassionate, and caring. 

Will it be strange to your child watching you taking care of your body? Perhaps in the beginning? Only because it might be new to them. But how cool is it for them to witness someone they love unapologetically taking care of themselves? How beautiful is it for them to witness you practicing radical self-compassion so that you can show up for them three breaths later in solidarity instead of saviorism? Prentis Hemphill beautifully said that quote “Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously.” End quote. How powerful is it for your little one to witness you practicing boundary setting and being your own ally instead of a martyr for three breaths? Okay, last one before I hop off this soapbox, how revolutionary is it for them to witness you in real time unlearning the oppressor’s idea that your love and dedication for them means you need to suffer through your own internal turmoil and appear calm?

By narrating your emotional experiences out loud, you get to pause the automatic chain reaction of getting triggered and then three seconds later yelling, snapping, shutting down, or people pleasing. Narrating your experiences soothes your threat center or amygdala, resets that internal danger alarm, and gives you a beat to pivot from automatically reacting to your child to intentionally responding to them. 

Still with me? If you’ve been with me a while, I often nudge the caregivers in our social justice parenting program (which by the way is open for registration now) and community at large to go a step further and finish off with a solution. In the previous example, the solutions or ways to take care of your body are using the ear plugs, taking 3 full breaths, and making a big sigh at the end. Your solution might be rocking your body, saying self-affirming phrases to yourself, taking a walk around the room, or taking a sip of water then reconnecting with your child. You know what works for you. 

To recap, the second invitation asks you to play with your own self-regulation as you’re riding the waves of back-to-school transitions. First, you narrate your emotions out loud to your child to soothe your nervous system. Then, you model ways you take care of your body and move through those intense feelings.   

Please play with these two invitations and adapt them to be Your Method. 

Whether your little one has to eat cookies for breakfast the first few days of back to school or they’re having a really rough time at drop off, the most important thing their nervous system will remember is that “yes, changes are hard sometimes and transitions can suck. But they’re not alone or made to feel ashamed for feeling their feelings. They got you riding the waves with them…imperfectly, consistently, and compassionately (most of the time).”

Thank you so much for being here with me and embracing the mess of transitions together. As an early childhood education saying goes: “mess is the evidence of learning.” The transcript, resources, and Palestine, Congo, Sudan advocacy links are in the episode show notes for you at comebacktocare.com/podcast.

If you’ve been enjoying our podcast, please consider supporting our heart-centered work by leaving a review and rating on Apple Podcast or Spotify. Or by joining our Patreon. You can find all the details at comebacktocare.com/support. These actions really, truly help sustain our work in powerful ways. 

As always, in solidarity and sass. Until next season, coming sometime in the fall, please take care.