Don't panic, here's your 10-point back to school survival guide

Already struggling with homework? Juggling play dates? Feel like a glorified taxi driver as you drive your offspring from one after school commitment to another?

The back to school survival guide

THE BUILD-UP

You took to watching the YouTube lady again around mid-August and began coveting her label-maker; even though you promised that, after the summer-holiday packing debacle, you were most definitely breaking up with her for good.

But she draws you in, like a moth to a flame, and you are powerless to resist her organisational skills.

The night sweats turn into 24-hour sweats. It’s all just a sweaty mess.

This is ‘Back to School’.

My eldest child has joined the ranks of second class. Therefore, it stands to reason that I should have it all considerably more together, given that I have had three years’ practice.

So you would think. I don’t.

But I have managed to develop somewhat of a coping strategy, which allows us tomake it through one week at a time (trust me; that’s as far ahead as you can plan), slightly bruised, but still standing; dishevelled, not talking to one another, but standing.

STOCK UP

Before I have so much as purchased a generic brand of string cheese for the lunch bags I stock up: on hooch. Or alcohol, booze, liquor, whatever name you choose toattribute to the liquid elixir that heals all parental gaffes.

There is vodka in the freezer. Two bottles of red standing to attention in the utility room along with gin, whiskey (purely medicinal) and a bottle of milky liqueur that a wayward relative gave to you circa ’92.

You will drink that liqueur, yet.

This may sound excessive to some, but, if it does, then you have yet to experience thedespair of a text from your husband, announcing he must work late, while you are supervising two lots of homework and your eldest announces that he has two birthday parties to go to the next day and has to build a rocket/skyscraper for a project.

And there is also a bake sale, so ‘Can you make something for it, like all the other mums and dads, please?’ ‘Yes son, yes, I can’.

Watch me buy the crap out of the bun section in the supermarket, before school in themorning, and bash them up a bit to pass off as my own.

But, first, I need to show this fishbowl measure of gin who is boss…

WATERPROOF

In a country where our average rainfall is 1,000mm, you would think that we would all be in possession of at least one item of clothing that won’t induce pneumonia when braving the elements.

But, no, we are hardy and laugh in the face of a bit of soft rain.

However, this much I have learned, since my kids started school: it will never rain harder than on school pick-ups and drop-offs.

It can be practically tropical the entire day, but as soon as you pull up to the carpark, a dark cloud of doom descends to spit fire and brimstone from the sky.

And, without fail, your children will choose to exit the school practically naked, because, ‘I’m ROOOOASSSTED!’

So, you stand in gale force winds trying to drag sweaters and coats from bags, whilst their wailing mingles with the torrential downpour. And you think to yourself that this must be what it feels like to shoehorn a seal into some bodycon. So, buy yourself a raincoat. And suitable footwear. And maybe a wetsuit.

TELEPHONE VOICE

Don’t worry. You’re only going to have to break this bad boy out once; at the very beginning.

You know the one? It’s that tone you reserve for booking a table at the restaurant that you have been trying to get into for months. The voice that denotes, ‘I am a capable, upstanding, contributing member of society, who can do all of the things’. That one.

And you are going to use it to get to know your child’s teacher. It needs only to be brief. A crisp, yet intelligible address, which you hope that he or she will remember when your particular brand of unstable claws its way to the surface.

Which usually rears its head around the beginning of December.

And that, my friends, is what I have learned so far.

Have a drink, while wearing a raincoat and trying to force your child’s teacher to make eye contact with you as they are bolting to their car.

Furthermore, if this has left you with many unanswered questions as to how I actually handle back to school, well… I just ring my mother. She’ll sort it.

Lindsay Woods

THE TEARS

It’s not unusual to see a playground full of parents crying their eyes out, weeping tears of unbridled joy.

Because now it’s someone else’s job to entertain their ungrateful kids.

Under no circumstances whatsoever should you make a sly quip to the teacher about their three-month holiday.

The last thing you need, now, is for one of them to get the hump and go out on strike.

HOLIDAY BRAGGING

There’s nothing like meeting other parents in the first few weeks back, and hearing their holidays weren’t as good as yours. Bear in mind that this is Ireland, so make sure to play down any enjoyment you had, in case people think you are a bit up yourself. Also, insist you booked it last-minute, for next-to-nothing.

The last thing you need is word going around that you’re loaded, or the principal will be on the phone asking for a voluntary contribution. (The roof is leaking again.)

TRAFFIC

There is only one thing worse than the back-to-school traffic in the mornings.

And that’s the person who insists on talking about it.

“The traffic is murder in the mornings now, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

“Imagine what it will be like when it gets a bit darker.”

“I know.”

“It took me 45 minutes to get from Douglas into town.” “Really?”

“Bumper to bumper the whole way, I was half-bored to death.”

“I know the feeling.”

LUNCH

Here is how lunch works. If you give your kids something they really like (i.e. crisps or chocolate), all the other kids will go home and tell their parents that they want it, too.

As revenge for all the grief, these parents will then report you to the Department for poisoning your kids with Hula Hoops.

There is a lot of hysteria around food now, which means this is more embarrassing than accusations of witchcraft in the Middle Ages.

So, stay safe and give them the kind of lunch you’d expect to get from a hippy.

(You can’t go wrong with rye bread. They use that as a punishment in prison.)

HOMEWORK

Helping them with homework is a drag. It’s hard, trying to work through the finer details of Boyle’s Law, when you could be re-watching season one of Homeland. What’s even harder is a child that didn’t do well in his exams and ended up living with his parents, all his life.

Yikes. So, turn off the telly, right now, and give them all the help they need.

Pat Fitzpatrick