Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Today we are gonna talk back-to-school because it’s back-to-school season for the majority of people in our community. I know that there are some people in the Southern Hemisphere who are blessedly in a different stage than we are, but for the most part—

Diane Dempster
They’ve been going for a while. But maybe it’s just an opportunity to refresh and go, phew, we’re four weeks in—how are we doing?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
I was gonna say, some of you have been in back-to-school for about a month now. Some of you are just starting in the next week or two. So it’s always a good time of year for us to remember that we have transitioned from one season to the next.

Diane Dempster
Well, and I’m laughing at myself because, I mean, those of you who listen know that Elaine and I both have kids who are beyond school age, right? And so when back to school—

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Well, we’ll get to that because I’m not sure I would describe it that way, but go ahead.

Diane Dempster
Anyway, we’re not in K–12 school anymore, right? And it’s interesting because in our small groups parents are dealing with the schedule—now my kids are back to school—and, “What’s my calendar like? What’s my kids’ calendar like?” There’s this difference between summer and not-summer that I think those of us who don’t have kids in that same age group… I don’t miss it, but I do on some level because it was the flow of life. So I had to take myself back there for a few minutes to get ready for that.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
That cracks me up because I was going through something recently and I found a really early video that you and I did a dozen years ago, and it was a back-to-school video. What was hysterical was basically you were saying, “I love back to school,” and I was saying, “I hate back to school.”

Diane Dempster
Yeah, no, I used to love back to school, and thank you for saying that because for me it was a universal do-over. One of the tools that I used with my kids a lot was, “OK, let’s start over again,” right? I’ve never been the kind of person who could just do a start-over tomorrow—because theoretically you can start over in the middle of the day; you could do a start-over whenever. But there’s something about the beginning of school that gives us a fresh perspective. Many of us have kids who are really excited, and it can be a very exciting time. Not all of you have kids who are excited to go back to school—we’ll talk about that in a minute—but it can be a really great time to regroup, realign, recharge, whatever language you want to add in there—spoken like a true executive function.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Mom, because for you it’s like, “Oh, here—my structure’s back,” right? And for me it was like, now I have to get up an hour earlier, and I gotta start dragging people out of bed, and now we gotta start dealing with homework. For me, the school year was torture. I remember at one point when my son was 9—this was January—he used to come to me every year in the school year and he’d say, “I’m done.” One year he came to me in January/February and said, “I’m done.” I’m like, “Good job—you made it all the way to February this year.” And so he would take a slip of cardboard and write out all the dates until summer break, and he would start checking off the dates because, for him, school was about wearing away back to summer as opposed to the excitement about school. And that’s the energy—I mean, this is the kid who I always said, “He didn’t bother to let school get in the way of his education.” Right?

Diane Dempster
I think a lot of us are in that same boat—one direction or the other. I was on the phone with a mom this morning, and she was like, “Oh my gosh.” (We’re recording this in the summer, just so you know.) She said, “We’ve gotten 47 days done, and I’ve got 47 more to go. This is torture.” They love the structure. And this is not an executive-function mom; this is a neurodiverse mom who uses structure to accommodate herself. In summer there’s less structure. I think that’s part of the setup: consciously looking at what’s different during the school year vs. not in the school year, and how we can take advantage of this transition. What do I want? What do I want to bring in? That’s where the fresh start comes from—whether you like school or not. It’s an opportunity because life changes—significantly for most of us—when you’re on this threshold of not-school to school.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
What comes up as you’re saying that: the coaching question for me is, What’s your relationship with structure? Are you someone who loves structure—and it’s helpful when someone else creates it so you can lean into it? Or do you like structure but prefer to create it yourself? Or do you resist structure—and find it exhausting to adhere to? If we understand ourselves, how are we in relationship to the structure of the school year—and how are our kids? We can even talk with them about it so it becomes a conscious relationship with structure instead of a demand some of us might want to avoid.

Diane Dempster
And your kid’s relationship with structure may be different from yours. They may not know what their relationship is yet because they’re too young, or they may resist your structure because they don’t want someone imposing it on them. There are lots of aspects to this. What you’re describing is a process: What does the family system need? What do we want to experiment with to help the family system, wherever we are? That’s such an important part of what we teach—looking not at “this is the problem, bring a solution,” but “this is the problem; what’s the thing underneath it?”

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Let’s get clear about the challenges that are going on.

Diane Dempster
Let’s get curious about it, and then let’s experiment with different things. Right. For me, the invitation of back to school is: “OK, it’s a new year. My kid’s in a different grade, there’s a different teacher, a different bus route, a different whatever.” Not “How do I lock it back into what used to work?” but “OK, what do we want to try differently? What do we want to do more of, less of?”

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
So before we get into solutions, the other thing that’s coming to me is—I love this notion that it is a transition time. I love this word threshold, and there’s a lot of structure change involved. Understanding how we’re in relationship with structure, and then understanding— for each of our kids, and it could be very different (my kids’ relationships with structure are very different from each other)—that bringing them into the decision about how we’re going to do this became essential. One would want really strict rules and boundaries, and the other two didn’t. When we were all part of creating it with each other, that was really helpful.

So structure is a piece of it. The other thing is that there’s a lot of emotion that comes up around back-to-school—whether it’s academic expectations or social expectations. Some of our kids are pleasers and there’s that expectation; some are perfectionists and they’re afraid of engaging because they’re afraid they’re not going to… There’s a lot of emotional stuff that comes up that we forget because we’re so busy trying to do the time, the structure, the sleep—all that stuff. What’s underneath it is: how do they feel about this transition period?

Diane Dempster
That’s such an important piece, because it’s easy to get caught up in the busyness—back-to-school, going to the store, buying the things, all the other stuff. Especially if you have a specific relationship with back-to-school—favorable or unfavorable—take a step back and ask, “How does my kid feel about this?” Get curious with them. Are they anxious? Worried? Excited? Part of it is getting underneath and looking at how our kid feels about going back to school. It’s hard to do when you’ve got all the things going on in your head and you have a particular perspective about school, but slow down a little and ask: Are they excited? Are they scared? Are they looking excited but secretly scared? Are they—

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
“They’re excited” is what we used to call it.

Diane Dempster
“They’re excited.” I like that.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
It’s the same energy in the body.

Diane Dempster
Oh yeah, it is. Some of you will have kids who can talk about it; some of you will have kids who can’t. That’s a reminder that some of what we have to do as parents is guess what might be going on—particularly if we have kids who are acting out or acting out of character. It may be because there are big emotions around back-to-school—either really excited emotions or really not-so-excited, avoidant emotions.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
And it’s different for elementary school kids than it is for teens. Your elementary school kids may still be rolling through that expectation of “I’m going to please everybody.” By the teenage years, you’re seeing a disconnect between the expectations we have for them versus where their brain is developmentally, and their reactivity shows up. You may begin to see resistance you haven’t seen before, because something different is happening for them developmentally.

Diane Dempster
It’s a reminder—I know we don’t want to jump too much into solution, but I want to share a tool that came up for me as you were talking, which is ACE. So often when our kids say, “I don’t want to go to school,” or, “I’m so excited,” we do the, “Oh, but your friends… Oh, but your…” We try to get them over their fear or over their emotion. ACE is the tool we use to Acknowledge and show Compassion for the emotion they’re feeling: “Wow, I can tell you’re really anxious about a new teacher.” “Wow, I can tell you’re really sad that your friends from last year aren’t going to be in your class again.” Instead of explaining and trying to get them excited about school, stay with them where their emotion is. It’s Acknowledge, Compassion—wait, there’s a dash—and then Explore.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
We are talking about back-to-school. In the first half, we’ve talked about our relationship with back-to-school and the structure of back-to-school, and we’ve started looking at what else might be going on for our kids—social issues they may be looking forward to or not. We haven’t talked much about academic expectations—maybe let’s do that before we move into solutions.

Diane Dempster
The thing for me on the academic front is just how important it is to create a partnership with the teachers. It’s so easy to walk in with our 504 or our IEP on day one and hand it to them and say, “OK, you gotta do this and fix this.” We get anxious and want to make sure our kids’ accommodations are in place from day one, from moment one. Yes, that’s important—and it’s a great time to go back and look at the accommodations or the agreements, and partner with teachers to make sure they’re up to date, appropriate, and supportive. I wanna encourage us to slow down a little bit and go: part of what’s going to help you be as effective with your child’s education team as possible is letting them get to know your kid. Because if you think about it, this teacher’s gotta get to know 30 kids, 35 kids, and you can help them do that. Doing that in a way that’s not going to overwhelm them is probably likely a more effective way of what you’re really trying to do, which is create a partnership with your kid’s education team.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
My kids went to a school where they always asked, “Please wait two weeks before you…” I loved that they asked those of us with kids who had accommodations and special needs to write a letter to the new teacher, but they would wait two weeks before they gave it to them. To your point, the teacher had a chance to get to know them a little bit. I would say it worked more than it didn’t. There were times where it didn’t always work, but it worked more than it didn’t, because by the time you come to the teacher saying, “This is a challenge area for them,” or, “This is what they’re struggling with,” or, “This is how we help ’em with it,” they know what you’re talking about—they’ve seen some of it; it doesn’t feel out of the blue. And if it does and they’re like, “I don’t see any of this,” then that’s a great conversation to have too, to say, “Is this a skill area that may have shifted over the summer?”

Diane Dempster
As you’re saying that, part of what I think is that an in-between space might be, “Hey, my kid has a 504 and they’ve got some challenges. I’m not gonna bombard you with all that information right now. Just know that in two weeks we can meet and talk about it—but I really wanna see what you’re noticing in the classroom with fresh eyes to see whether things have changed from last year,” because it’s a great opportunity for us to look at it fresh. And I think that’s the question: a lot of teachers—part of it is, how do teachers… what’s their relationship with accommodations—and it’s hard to… and their adversity.

The thing for me on the academic front is just how important it is to create a partnership with the teachers. It’s so easy to walk in with our 504 or our IEP on day one and hand it to them and say, “OK, you gotta do this and fix this.” We get anxious and want to make sure our kids’ accommodations are in place from day one, from moment one. Yes, that’s important—and it’s a great time to go back and look at the accommodations or the agreements and partner with teachers to make sure they’re up to date, appropriate, and supportive. I want to encourage us to slow down a little bit and go: part of what’s going to help you be as effective with your child’s education team as possible is letting them get to know your kid. Because if you think about it, this teacher’s got to get to know 30 kids, 35 kids. And you can help them do that. Doing that in a way that’s not going to overwhelm them is probably going to be a more effective way of doing what you’re really trying to do, which is create a partnership with your kid’s education team.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
My kids went to a school where they always asked, “Please wait two weeks…” I loved that they asked those of us with kids who had accommodations and special needs to write a letter to the new teacher, but they would wait two weeks before they gave it to them. To your point, the teacher had a chance to get to know them a little bit. I would say it worked more than it didn’t. There were times where it didn’t always work, but it worked more than it didn’t, because by the time you come to the teacher saying, “This is a challenge area for them,” or, “This is what they’re struggling with,” or, “This is how we help ’em with it,” they know what you’re talking about—they’ve seen some of it; it doesn’t feel out of the blue. And if it does and they’re like, “I don’t see any of this,” then that’s a great conversation to have too, to say, “Is this a skill area that may have shifted over the summer?”

Diane Dempster
As you’re saying that, part of what I think is that an in-between space might be: “Hey, my kid has a 504 and they’ve got some challenges. I’m not going to bombard you with all that information right now. Just know that in two weeks we can meet and talk about it, but I really want to see what you’re noticing in the classroom with fresh eyes to see whether things have changed from last year,” because it’s a great opportunity for us to look at it fresh. And I think that’s the question: a lot of teachers—part of it is, what’s their relationship with accommodations—and it’s hard to… and their adversity…

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Yeah. Well, here’s what came up for me as you said that. One of the big things we’ve learned over the years of doing this—our last solo episode we were talking about what we’ve learned over the years—one of the big things we’ve learned is that, as parents, we think all the professionals in our kids’ lives are experts. We think the teachers are educated; we think the therapists and the doctors are educated about neurodiversity—and it’s just not true. That was a huge shock, I think, to both of us. And so part of re-engaging with a new teacher every year is beginning to assess what they know—and not assume they know everything—and not get mad at them if they don’t, but make yourself available as a resource. It’s like, “I don’t know where you are with this.” Don’t assume that they do, or assume that they don’t know. Again, get curious and be open to being in partnership with them. You’re going to be more effective doing that than if you come in with expectations of, “I expect you to give my kid this and do that.” That does not tend to bode very well.

Diane Dempster
And it’s hard because so many of us have been burned before, and we’ve had teachers that didn’t get our kids, and we’ve had our kids struggle. It’s hard not to go in as the fierce mama bear/papa bear. And a lot of times teachers just don’t have the space at the very beginning of the school year to really be available for those kinds of conversations.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Yeah. And so we really want to think in terms of partnership. So what else is helpful for parents to think about in terms of back-to-school, Diane? What are some of the solutions, the strategies, the tools that come up for you?

Diane Dempster
I think the other piece of it is… you know, we were talking about advocating; we were talking about the—did we talk about Fresh Start? I mean, I think that’s—

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
We—yeah, we talked about Clean Slate. I’m going to say something that I think is really important, which is—I know this sounds crazy—but there are probably no times of year more… there are three times a year that are really essential to pay attention to taking care of yourself and getting enough sleep and eating well and staying hydrated and all that good stuff. It’s the start of the school year, the holidays, and the end of the school year. Those are the three hot-button times for our families, and if we can slow down just enough to make sure that we keep ourselves on the list—that you don’t pull those late-night all-nighters while you’re trying to get the school stuff ready and all that. Really make sure that you’re not only trying to get them to bed a little bit earlier each night, but you’re trying to do the same for yourself. Really taking care of you in the process can be so powerful.

Diane Dempster
As you’re saying that, I think about the moms who are like, “OK, the kids are back to school; now I can do all the things that I couldn’t do over the summer,” and so we pile up that first week. I just scheduled a session with one of my private clients, and she goes, “Oh wait—that’s the day after my kids start back to school. That’ll be a great time to meet with you and go, ‘OK, now that they’re back at school, what do I want to be different? What do I want to focus on? What do I want to take aim on?’” The other piece is the reminder that there’s going to be a lot of stuff at the beginning of school, and it’s going to be this reminder of, “Oh my gosh, it is different.” And not just to slow down and take care of yourself, but slow down and take aim. You can do it all, but you can’t do it all at once.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
One thing at a time.

Diane Dempster
One thing at a time. It’s not that we’re not dealing with the other stuff, but we’re taking it slow enough that things have our attention and our focus, and we’re willing to consider—just to give the example you gave—that the world will not end if my kid’s teacher doesn’t have the 504 plan in their hand on the first day of school. There are parts of us that are just checking off the list and making it happen and all the things. So there’s a self-awareness to know how you’re approaching this situation.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
I love that. Slow down, take aim on one thing at a time—don’t try to do it all. The other thing that came up for me as you were saying that was—remember we teach this in Sanity School in the “Systems” section: don’t expect whatever system you put in place for mornings or homework or bedtime to work right the first time. Creating a system takes a little bit of trial-and-error experimentation, and it probably won’t work the very first time you decide, “This is how we’re gonna do it.” Allow for a little flexibility in your home structures so you can work together to figure out what does work and what doesn’t. Instead of, “We all agreed bedtime’s gonna be 8:00; computers are off at 7:00,” try to allow the flexibility so that you can all figure out what’s going to work for your family.

Diane Dempster
And just to put a plug in—if systems and structures are an important part of what you’re either struggling with or what you love—we did a masterclass in August 2025 around making systems and structures really work. It’s a great masterclass, and if you join either Sanity School or a Lifeline Membership, you can get access to those.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Yeah. So it’s available to all members. Beautiful. OK, so we’ve talked about what we call the marathon mindset, we’ve talked about flexible structure and self-care, we’ve talked a lot about mindset shifts. Anything else—any kind of closing thoughts as we prepare for back-to-school?

Diane Dempster
No, I think finding ways to take your kids’ lead is the one thing that I wanna button back up again. It’s just sort of whether your kid’s a teen and heading off to college, or a young adult and heading off to college, a teen heading to high school, or elementary age. But really find some space to let your kid be who they wanna be in the space of starting back-to-school, and help them figure out, “What do you want back-to-school to feel like? What do you want it to look like? What’s important to you?” Because there’s this consciousness of having them figure it out instead of them getting caught up in our rigmarole of what it is that’s important to us for back-to-school.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that’s really true. And what’s coming up for me is you’re in the beginning of a process, so go with it, right? Be in the process of it. Trust yourself; trust your kids. Trust that everything is gonna happen over time. One of the things that I’ve learned watching my kids is that their relationship with it changes over time. And I really tried to prioritize what was important to them about school and what was important to them about their learning. Because it is their education, and we want them to want to become an educated person. And I’m sure that you have—I know I have—heard many times, “Why should I have to take that course? That’s not gonna help me.” So to understand that’s a common refrain and a very typical resistance that we get from our kids, and to stay in that place of compassionate support as we support them and collaborate with them on their education, making sure it’s not about everybody else’s expectations but making sure they have a role in it, because this is their journey.

Diane Dempster
Oh, I’m sorry. As you say that, the thing that—and I know you say this all the time about your kids—is the difference between learning and educating, right? It’s this sort of: many of us want to grow lifelong learners, and if we can help our kids see that learning is something that happens in life, not just in school. Yeah. And then to that, if they love to learn—even if they may not love to be in school—they may love to learn. Finding ways for them to see that thread of the distinction between learning and schooling can be an amazing gift to give kids.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
And the other thing I’ll say is that for some of you, this is the best time of year, and for some of you it’s hard. And we get that. We know that. As Diane was saying earlier, we invite you—if you’re not already a member of our community—we really encourage you to step in this year, get some support, whether it’s with us or someplace else. You do not have to do this alone. There’s no reason to do this alone. There’s so much amazing support out there now. And it really helps to be in community and to connect with other parents of kids around the same age as yours. And to understand that everybody’s going through this—you just may not be seeing it in your home community—but I guarantee you there are tens, hundreds, thousands of other parents going through the issues you’re going through all over the world. When you come together in small community and small groups with them, it can make an extraordinary difference to end the isolation. And remember that you’re not the only one doing this. So don’t do this alone, folks.

Diane Dempster
It’s just too hard. So before we close, take a minute and reflect on the conversation Elaine and I just had. Is there an A-ha? Is there a takeaway? Is there a heavy sigh? What do you wanna take away from this conversation today about back-to-school?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
And as always, what do you wanna do with that information? We’re always encouraging you to take the information, integrate it, and implement it. How do you wanna apply it to your life in the coming weeks?

Diane Dempster
And thank you for what you do for yourself and for your kids. At the end of the day, you really do make a difference. Take care, everybody.