7 Back-to-School Survival Tips for Working Moms

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In this week's episode of the podcast, I’m diving into the chaos of back-to-school season and sharing my best tips for making it feel calmer, smoother, and a whole lot less overwhelming. If the early mornings, afterschool shuffle, endless forms, and general “why does this feel so hard?!” vibe have you worn out already, this episode will help you reset. Think of it like your survival guide for fall transitions—so you can show up with more calm, space, and control during one of the busiest times of the year.  

Topics in this episode:

  • Why transitions are hard for both kids and moms (and how to expect big emotions). 

  • How to define success for the back-to-school season—on your terms. 

  • The power of choosing what to lean into and what to let go of right now. 

  • Practical ways to distribute the mental load with your partner. 

  • Building in buffer + recovery time so you feel more grounded and less frantic. 

Show Notes & References:

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Transcript

Intro

Back to school is here. And if you are anything like me, you are already feeling the shift, the early mornings, the endless forms that need to be signed, the afterschool shuffle, the lack of childcare during off-school days. And somehow you're still trying to do your job through all of it. It is a lot. And if you've ever thought, why does this feel so much harder than it should? It's because transitions really are hard. For our kids, for us, for everyone. 

In this episode, I am sharing my best tips to help you feel calmer and more in control during this back-to-school fall season. So the push out the door isn't so exhausting and the afterschool hours aren't so rushed and you actually have more space for the things that matter most. If you're ready for a back-to-school season that doesn't drain you, then this episode's for you. Are you ready? Let's get to it.

Welcome to the Ambitious and Balanced Working Moms podcast, your go to resource for integrating your career ambitions with life as a mom, I'm distilling down thousands of coaching conversations I've had with working moms just like you, along with my own personal experience as a mom of two and sharing the most effective tools and strategies to help you quickly feel calm, confident, and in control of your ambitious working mom life. You ready? Let's get to it.

Back-to-School Survival Guide for Working Moms

Hello, hello, working moms. I am writing this podcast today, literally one day before my kids are off to school and it has been like a whirlwind of the end of the summer. My husband and I just got back from a short last-minute trip to the Napa Valley to do some wine tasting as we celebrated our 18th wedding anniversary.

It was also my birthday last week. I turned 43. Woo-hoo! Not a very exciting year, I should say. My best friend’s in town for three weeks visiting. The soccer season started last week, which means we have soccer four days a week. We have baseball three days a week. We just wrapped up swimming. That was four days a week. Oh my gosh, so many things going on as we are transitioning out of summer and into the fall and back to school.

Fall Rhythms and Why Transitions Feel Overwhelming

All the things—which is why we are here having this podcast today. It just feels like the perfect day, right? To talk about heading back into school and getting into fall rhythms.

This episode is gonna be sort of like a survival guide, if you will, whether you have already transitioned back to school (’cause I know some of you already have done that) or maybe that's happening in a few weeks. This podcast is definitely gonna be relevant to you either way.

And then, if you don't have kids in school—maybe your kids are in childcare or with a nanny or preschool or something like that—this is definitely still going to be a relevant episode for you because really we're talking about the fall transition. All of us go through this transition season. Some of us more than others based on activities and things like that, but we're gonna be talking all about how to have a really great transition into the fall.

Back-to-School Strategy Workshops for Moms

So I'm excited to get going into that. I also wanted to let you know that I am deciding to host a few different Back-to-School Strategy Workshops. So if this episode is resonating with you and you would like some additional support in how to really set yourself up for success during this fall transition and into the holidays and into the craze of the fall and all the things, then this workshop is going to be for you.

I'm gonna be hosting a couple of them over the course of the next couple of weeks, so you're gonna wanna check the show notes for a link on that and you're gonna find the couple of times that I will be doing that. I am gonna keep these nice and small. I don't want too many women in it 'cause I actually want this to be a very interactive workshop.

I want you to walk away with a plan for exactly how you want your fall rhythms to go, some strategies on how you can show up calm, collected, not so rushed, and really just enjoy this fall season.

So definitely join me in one of those workshops as I am talking about this topic here today and if it resonates with you. So again, go to the show notes, you can find that there. Of course, you can also find it on my website, rebeccaolsoncoaching.com.

All right, so here's what we're gonna do today. I'm gonna talk a bit about the idea of a transition season, why it's sort of important to label this as a transition season, and then ultimately to offer you seven tips for how to thrive during this fall transition / back to school season. It'll include some mental strategies as well as some very tactile strategies, okay? You ready? All right, let's jump in. 

Why Transitions Are Hard for Kids (and Parents Too)

So transitions are something I certainly have talked about here on the podcast before, but it's been a while. So let's just take a step back for a moment and have a little perspective over the challenges of transitioning, just generally speaking, right?

If you have an infant or a toddler right now, I know you can relate to this. But even if your kids are older, like mine are eight and almost 11, transitions can be really, really challenging no matter your age.

I remember when my daughter was little, I remember the full-on meltdowns and resistance that would happen during transitions—whether we were talking about transitioning her from being in my arms to being in a car seat (she didn't like that so much), or transitioning from the car to daycare, or transitioning her from being awake to in bed, or transitioning even from playtime to bath time.

These transitions are really difficult for our kids. No child transitions really well. Meaning, no child is exempt from having meltdowns during transitions. All children have meltdowns during transitions—of course not all the time—but every kid struggles with the idea of transitions.

The Science Behind Why Transitions Feel So Hard

And it makes sense, of course, from the standpoint of human design, because our brains are literally hardwired to kind of keep doing what you're doing now, right? They're hardwired for comfort, for safety, for ease.

So stopping and transitioning into a different task, or into a different priority, or into a different location—that requires a lot of effort of your body and your mind, and our brains don't like that. And they haven’t ever liked that, literally from the moment we've been born.

This is one of the reasons why context switching is really difficult. Transitioning from one type of task you're doing to another type of task that you're doing—it takes a lot of effort and brainpower. Your brain doesn't do that very well, and it kind of provides the natural resistance to it on some level.

So transitions are challenging for everyone at every age.

The Specific Challenges of the Fall Transition

And so let's then talk about like the specificity of the fall transition. And for some of you, I know that that's specific to the back-to-school transition, right? This is a bigger seasonal shift that essentially takes place across our entire country on some level.

Long days of summer begin to get shorter, daylight gets shorter, which means playtime and being outside lessens, and seasons begin to take over. And for almost all of us, that means some sort of transition in commitments as well.

Why Back-to-School Expectations Feel So Different

If you have kids that are school age, this is the season that school starts up. And even if your kids were in some form of summer camp over the summer—meaning like they still had a normalish kind of day away from home—there are still really, really big differences between what the expectations are of them over the summer versus what the expectations are of them during the school days.

And that transition is really, really challenging for our kids. There are lots of transition points throughout the day where adults are asking them to do something, and they are very much in control of their schedule and what they’re doing—in ways that the summer schedule doesn’t really have for them.

A lot of kids get a lot more free choice. Even in summer camps, they have a lot more free choice than they do during the school days.

Extra Stressors for Families During Fall

And so for many families, it’s their school activities, but then there’s also fall activities, right? You have maybe different sports starting out. My kids are starting both soccer and baseball. Maybe you have other types of commitments that are happening during the fall.

For many of us as adults, within our jobs, there are fall rhythms that take place. We’re heading into the final quarter of the year, which has a different level of stressors. We also have the holidays coming up. So big commitments, big change, big rhythm changes for everybody involved.

And then of course, if your kids are younger—infants or toddlers—there could still be quite a lot of transition in your schedule even if they’re not going back to school. I know a lot of childcare facilities close for several days as they sort of transition out of summer schedule and into fall schedule, which can leave parents kind of high and dry without any childcare.

And even in my school, there are a couple of days coming up within the next month that the kids don’t have school because the teachers are doing in-service days. And so we’re kind of out of luck in terms of childcare.

So many things go on during this month to maybe even six weeks—this transition period out of summer and into fall rhythms. Decision fatigue is high, mental overload is high, emotions are high. All of this is happening. I’m really painting kind of a stark picture of how challenging it could be.

The Emotional Rollercoaster of September Transitions

And for me, it really was—my kids are again a bit older now—but I remember those first couple of years of transition into the school season for my daughter when she was heading into transitional kindergarten and then into kindergarten.

Literally the entire month of September was a disaster. Like, total disaster. We saw behavior from her we had never seen before—from tantrums and emotions to startling things like locking us in rooms. Things she had never done before, all during this transition period.

So I know that's the case for so, so many of you. It's why we're having this conversation here in the podcast.

Why Transitions Trigger Bigger Emotions in Kids (and Parents)

But why am I painting this picture for you? It really leads into the first tip out of the seven that I wanna offer to you here in the rest of this podcast.

And it's that when we expect transitions like this to happen, then what we can also expect is a lot bigger emotions—from both our children and from ourselves. Again, our brain is not hardwired to easily move through a transition. It's going to be resistant to it at all costs.

So even though my son is eight, and we don't oftentimes have meltdowns as we transition from the house into the car anymore, there is still this transition resistance that happens as we try to head out the door to get to school.

First Day of School: Resistance, Tears, and Hope

Tomorrow, which is the first day of school, I expect that my son is—I’m gonna have to ask him if not twice, maybe three times, maybe even four times—to get his shoes on. Because he's not going to be listening to me the first time. In fact, I expect that I will likely find him in his room listening to an audiobook and playing with Legos after I have just asked him to go get his shoes on.

I can also expect that he might not want to eat breakfast tomorrow. He's not consciously resisting or delaying going to school, but internally, he's got all of these big feelings about this transition. It feels really uncomfortable. He doesn't know if he's gonna like his teacher. He doesn't know if he has friends in his classroom. He feels a little bit scared. He doesn't wanna let go of the summer and the fun of the summer.

And so this is all coming out in resistance behavior because of what's going on inside of him emotionally.

And I can also tell you tomorrow, what's gonna happen is when I drop off the kids at eight o'clock in the morning for school, I am going to cry. Literally, I'm going to cry my eyes out because I always do on the first day, if not multiple days into the school year.

I'm gonna think about them probably all day. I'm gonna wonder if they're enjoying their teacher. I'm gonna anticipate hearing if they have any friends in their class. It's gonna make me tear up as I just think about them because I really want the school year to go well for them.

I want them to be happy. I want them to have fun. I want that for them. I want that for our family. It's gonna be difficult for me to shut that down over the next couple of days and weeks—if not near impossible—because I'm a whole human being and my kids mean the world to me. They mean more to me than anything else. And so I'm gonna expect that my brain is gonna think a lot about that.

And so because of that, I'm gonna build in some extra—I’ve already built in some extra time really for my morning routine. I've learned over the years that I need this time. So I built it into my morning routine.

I'm not jumping right into work. I'm probably not gonna put makeup on before I take them to school. Maybe a little bit, but not much, because I know I'm gonna cry and then I'm gonna have to take care of that. So I am sort of taking care of myself as I expect my own emotions to come up during this transition time.

Tip #1: Expect Big Emotions (and Normalize Them)

So this first tip is to expect emotions from you and certainly from our kids. When emotions don’t come out of left field—when we can easily normalize them and know that they’re coming—then we can remember that, oh, this is normal. Everything is okay. This season will pass. Nothing’s gone wrong here.

You have more compassion for your kids and what they might be experiencing during this transition. And you have more compassion for yourself and the emotional exhaustion that’s likely going to occur during this season when you expect big feelings to happen.

Okay, so that’s tip number one. I want you to expect all of the emotions during the time, totally normalize them, and give space for them.

Tip #2: Redefine Success During the Transition Season

The second tip I have for you is to redefine—or define maybe for the first time—success for this transitional season. You get to decide how long this transition season is, and I do encourage you to actually pick a season, like the next two weeks or the next four weeks, something along those lines.

I wouldn't go much more than four to six weeks tops, for sure. But what does success look like within this transitional period for you and your kids and for your family and for the fall rhythms?

Success is probably not a clean house. It's probably not your kids' rooms picked up. It's probably not a home-cooked meal every night, or your kids not having meltdowns, or even making it to every soccer practice for the next couple of weeks, or even getting through every piece of homework that might come home over the next couple of weeks.

Success is probably not that level of perfection. I guarantee it.

Why Success Isn’t About Perfection

And if it's hard for you to wrap your brain around what success is and what that even looks like—and if it's not this kind of like, get my kid to every activity and make sure that they are not having meltdowns and things like that—if that's difficult for you, I wanna offer to you this Back-to-School Workshop that I'm hosting.

That's gonna be for you. We're gonna actually spend some time together defining success. There will be some time to do that individually. There will be some time to do that collectively.

So definitely, definitely, definitely schedule one of those couple of strategy sessions that I am hosting—those workshops, if you will, for back to school—because we're really gonna dive into that. I'm gonna walk you through exactly how to do that.

My Personal Definition of Success: Spaciousness and Calm

But for me, when I start to think about what success for me in this transition season looks like, what I am choosing is to not feel frantic. I'm choosing to not be in a hurry. I do not want to push my kids out the door.

I want this sense of calmness about me. And so the word that keeps coming back to me as I think about success during this transition season is spaciousness.

Meaning, I want there to be space in my calendar. I don't wanna book myself every minute of the day. I want myself to have spacious energy. I want to have space for my children. I want to have space to hold their emotions.

Another word that comes to me is grounded—not really reactionary or snappy, but me remaining calm and cool even when there could be heightened emotions or difficult moments in this family.

So what does success look like for you? How do you wanna define that? And make sure—our last piece of this—is to make sure that you are entirely in control of your definition of success.

This is one of the principles that I teach my clients, both my one-on-one clients and my group clients that are a part of the Ambitious and Balanced program. Success is something you want full ownership over.

Which means success can't be your kid not having a meltdown, because that's not something entirely in your control. Success can't be you getting recognized by your boss or superiors, because you're not in control of them recognizing you. Success can't be your husband helping out more around the house, because you sure as heck cannot force him to do that. You're not entirely in control of it.

Always, always, always—when we are talking about defining success—you wanna frame it in such a way that you can achieve it, right? That you alone are in total control of being able to achieve that version of success for you.

Okay, so that's tip number two: define success. Your brain needs that clarity.

Tip #3: Lean Into One Thing, Let Go of Another

Tip number three and four are—I’m gonna kind of combine here—and this is where we're gonna get a little bit more practical.

Tip number three and four for having a really smooth transition back into school or into the fall (and really surviving during this transition) is to pick one thing that you want to intentionally lean into that's gonna help you execute on your version of success.

One thing that you're going to lean into, and then one thing that you're gonna let go of—or lean out of—during this transition time. Right?

So: What are you gonna lean into? What are you gonna lean out of?

Leaning Into Spacious Mornings

So when we talk about leaning in, this is like: how essentially are you gonna make sure you are successful during this transition season?

Remembering, for example, my definition of success during this season is spaciousness and feeling really grounded. What that means is that the moment I know that I tend to lose my footing in that, and I tend to snap at my kids, is the morning time—getting them out the door on time.

So I'm gonna really lean into spaciousness in the morning. I'm gonna make sure everybody gets started—getting dressed, having breakfast, packing their backpacks—at least one hour before we have to get out the door.

We certainly don't need all of that time, but I'm gonna give us all of that time so that there’s lots of space for emotions, questions, dawdling, resistance, and all the things. And so by the time we actually have to get out the door, we have really set ourselves up for success.

Parenting with Gentle Guidance (Instead of Pressure)

I know my daughter, she's gonna tell me, “Mom, I do not have to get dressed right now. I still have like 20 or 30 minutes.” And I’ll be like, “Yes, I understand that, but we're just gonna try to get ahead of this right now.”

I'm gonna try to explain to her and be very gentle around it and guide her: “I get it. And let's see if we can get dressed a little bit early so we leave lots of space for being on time and being successful.”

My son, on the other hand—being spacious and grounded with him in the morning is gonna mean that he’s gonna need a lot of my help. And I mean doing things that for sure he has been doing and can do on his own.

Which means that I'm not gonna push him. I'm not gonna ask him multiple times to do things. I'm gonna ask him once. And if it looks like he's not gonna execute on that—like if I just find him in his room playing with Legos and listening to his story—then I'm gonna go in and help him the second time.

Rather than telling him, “Hey, bud, it's time to get dressed right now,” for the second or third time, I'm gonna come in and say, “Hey, bud, you're having a difficult time getting dressed right now. I'm gonna help.”

Then I'm going to pick his clothes out, get down on the floor, and actually assist him all along the way. Which means we need more time—because if I'm helping him, that means I'm not taking the time to get myself ready. And so we need a lot more time to get ready.

Spaciousness. That's what I'm leaning into: a really spacious morning routine, giving lots of space for that over the next couple of weeks.

And so that's tip number three.

Tip #4: What Are You Letting Go Of?

So tip number four is: what are you letting go of in order to be successful? Like, essentially, what are you choosing not to do during this season in order to help you be successful?

And maybe you're gonna let go of an expectation, right? Maybe you're gonna let go of the expectation that you're gonna get through all of your to-do list right now—because you're probably just not.

Maybe you're gonna let go of something like vacation planning or logistics that are coming up for something during this fall or holiday season—because really, in the next two weeks, it's not the thing to be focusing on. It's not the thing that should be getting your attention. So you're just gonna choose not to do it right now.

No, that doesn't mean you're choosing not to do it forever. You're just choosing to not make it a priority during this container of time that you've decided for yourself as your transition season.

The Power of Naming What You’re Not Going to Do

What are you gonna let go of that is probably low on your to-do list anyway, that it's better for you to just feel empowered and say, “You know what? I'm gonna decide right now. I'm just not gonna focus on that.”

And I'll come back to that in a couple of weeks when this transition season is over. But right now, it's not the priority. So I'm not even gonna feel guilty for not doing it. I'm not even gonna try to trick myself into believing that if there's time, maybe I'll get to it. I'm just not going to do it.

I love this practice of naming what you're not going to do because I guarantee that there are several things you're not going to get to during this transition. Literally, there just isn’t space for it. There's too much going on. The transition is too much. You don't have the emotional capacity. Your mental and emotional space is shot at the end of the day in a way that it wasn’t just a couple of weeks ago.

So it's so much more powerful to decide ahead of time. You feel much more in control and you have a lot less guilt when you just decide ahead of time: “You know what? I'm not going to do that. I'm gonna put it on my to-do list for when I get back.”

Maybe you need to lean out of some commitments, like “I'm not gonna say yes to anything in the PTG or the PTA.” (I call it the PTG. I'm a part of the PTA essentially at my school, but we call it the PTG.)

“I'm not gonna say yes to anything going on there. I'm not gonna say yes to any evening commitments over the next couple of weeks, because I just want my evenings to be sort of spacious and lingering. I wanna be able to go to bed when I wanna go to bed. I'm not committing to working after my kids go to sleep.”

What are you not going to do?

Tip #5: Distribute the Mental Load (and Stop Carrying It All Yourself)

Tip number five is to distribute the mental load with your partner or your spouse or maybe one of your parents, like a grandparent of your kids. Truly, as women, we carry the majority of the mental load for our households and for our families.

I've done episodes talking about this, but part of the reason we carry so much of the mental load is because we don't ask for help. I guarantee there is something you can ask for help from your partner or your spouse or a parent or a grandparent right now that would alleviate some of the load that you are carrying—one of the stressors you are carrying. And you need to have an intentional conversation about it and truly let it go.

Over the weekend, I brought up to my husband how school was starting. Obviously he knows that—we’ve been talking about that. But I also brought up: here’s a whole host of mental lists, these mental load lists, that I’m about to take on for the family. And I said to him, “I bet you don’t even know that’s about to come, but I’m anticipating it starting this week.”

And he was like, “No, like what?”

And I was like, “Well, for example, thinking about school lunches and printing lunch menus and talking to our kids about what they're gonna eat and what they're not gonna eat and helping train them—’cause we’ve talked about training them to start making their lunches with us at home. The teachers are gonna start sending out emails that we're gonna have to read, and there are gonna be get-to-know-you forms to fill out, and where’s your kid going after school? I wanna make sure they're safe. There are gonna be allergy forms, sign-ups for things, and then there's gonna be back-to-school night that we have to get on the calendar and make sure we have childcare for.”

There are going to be so many additional things that are gonna come up in the next week or two that you don’t even think about. Like, maybe you read those emails—but my husband doesn’t own those like I own those, right?

But the truth is, I own them because I’ve never asked him. And he hasn’t taken the initiative to own any of those things. And now we’re just in a rhythm, like, “Oh yeah, Rebecca does that.”

Sharing the Mental Load: Handing Off Real Ownership

So I said—and really to his credit—it was like, “Hey, what can I do then to help you?” And that was what I hoped his response would be.

And again, I'm just trying to be really transparent with him, and in that transparency, he's very interested and willing to help me. So it was like, “Okay, well, what can I take over?”

And I said, “You can own lunches. Like really own-own lunches. Everything from printing the monthly calendars, to conversations with our kids, to training them up so they make their own lunches, to what do we need to stock in our refrigerator to make sure we have those things for their lunches—everything related to lunches.”

If it's like 7:20 and we're supposed to be out the door in 20 minutes and you're still sitting on the couch and you haven't gotten yourself ready or made lunch, I'm not worried about it. That's what I want—I don’t wanna worry about it. You said you would own lunches, and so I know that's in your plan and you're gonna do it.

And he was like, “Yep, I got it. I'm totally on it.” That's something that he did quite a lot of ownership of last school year, and so we're kind of upping the ante on some of those things as well.

Why Letting Go (Even if They Fail) Alleviates Stress

So he's gonna own that. And already me thinking like, “Oh, that means I don't have to remind him. I don't have to think about grocery shopping for it. I don't have to do the training-our-kids-up part of this.”

That's his to own, not me. All of that feels so good to me—to take it off my list. So now, every time my brain thinks about school lunches, I go, “Nope, that's not my job. My husband's gonna own that. Daryl's gonna own that.”

That just alleviates this level of stress.

I promise you, people want to help you. Your partner wants to help you. You have to make that request for help—and then you have to let them own it, which sometimes means you’re gonna have to let them fail.

That's a whole other conversation here, about actually letting go. Transferring ownership means letting your spouse fail at that, maybe for a while, as they figure out what they need in order to be successful at it. That's part of the job too.

We're not gonna get too far into that right now. Right now, your tip is to figure out at least one thing that you can truly let go of that would alleviate your stress over the next few weeks at a minimum—and offload that to your partner.

All right, we’ve got two more here for you.

Tip #6: Build in Buffer Time (Everything Takes Longer in Transitions)

Tip number six, in terms of being successful in this fall transition—back-to-school transition—is to build in buffer time.

And when I say buffer time, I mean like sometimes you need to double the amount of time you think it's gonna take for you to get out the door on time. Or if it usually only takes you 30 minutes to make dinner, it might take you 45—because your kid is gonna come home hangry and upset, and so you're gonna have to stop what you're doing as you're making dinner to deal with him. And it's just going to take longer.

Everything is going to take longer during this transition period. I want you to just expect that. I want you to build that into your time.

If usually your commute to work is 30 minutes, that's great—it probably isn't gonna change. But maybe you need an additional 10 or 15 minutes to emotionally shift. Maybe you're gonna need to add in some buffer time for yourself to handle those emotions that are coming up and to be the calm, confident—in my case, spacious and grounded—person that you want to be.

Quick Recap of Back-to-School Transition Tips

Quick recap before we get into our very last tip that I have for you.

Number one: Expect higher emotions from your kids and from yourself during this transition season. That means there's gonna be higher levels of resistance and tantrums and tears all across the board.

Number two: Define success for you over these next couple of weeks during this transition time—whatever you decide that transition to be. Focus on things that you are in control of. Make sure your definition of success is totally within your ownership.

Number three: Pick one thing that you wanna lean into during this transition time that's really gonna help you feel successful based upon your own definition of that. And pick one thing that you're gonna let go of intentionally that's also gonna help you feel successful during this time.

Number five: Ask for help. At least one thing—let go of it. Ask someone to take on the mental load of whatever that is. You are certainly not alone. By all means, lean into your support system.

Number six: Give yourself buffer time for absolutely everything. Everything is gonna take more time just because there's gonna be more emotion, it's gonna be more exhausting—all the things. So expect the need for buffer time and build that into your schedule.

Things should not be back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back ’cause you're just gonna be behind all day—and then that's gonna have its own set of problems, right?

Tip #7: Give Yourself Recovery Time

And then the last tip I have for you is to give yourself recovery time.

Remember how I said tomorrow when I drop off my kids, I'm gonna be like an emotional basket case? Well, I'm gonna give myself some recovery time. That's the buffer time essentially that I have built in so that I don't start work right away.

I'm blocking off 30 minutes to pull myself together—to finish up my walk, to put on my makeup, to take some deep breaths, to center myself, maybe to meditate for a few minutes. Something to literally allow some recovery time from all of the emotions going on from myself and from my kids during the day.

Because even if you remain calm all throughout your morning transition, if your kids have a lot of high emotion, your emotional capacity bucket is overflowing by the time that you actually drop them off. You don’t just drop them off and feel relief. Yes, you feel relief—but you’re still carrying heightened emotion. You're still in this kind of nervous system overload that requires recovery time.

Maybe that time is in the evenings for you, which is why you should not be working in the evenings over the next several weeks. You need to build in that space: “I’m exhausted. I’m emotionally drained. This is just an emotionally draining time.”

So, build in buffer time, emotional processing time, and clear your calendar to allow for that.

Or maybe if you are, for the very first time, dropping your kid off at preschool or kindergarten—those are typically very high-emotion times for working moms. I absolutely cried in my car for weeks after those experiences: preschool, transitional kindergarten, kindergarten—all the things.

So much emotion.

Maybe what your buffer time looks like is planning a couple of early end-of-workdays. Go pick them up early. Have some really good connection time with your kid to help alleviate the emotions that come with sending them off for the first time.

You absolutely can plan for that time that you need in order to transition really well.

Final Thoughts and Back-to-School Workshop Invitation

All right, amazing work, mamas. I have seven tips for you to feel successful during this fall, back-to-school transition.

Remember, I am hosting that Back-to-School Workshop just for you, to help you feel really powerful and clear and remain calm during this upcoming back-to-school season. I would love to see you in one of those upcoming calls.

Again, you can go to the show notes to find the website for that. You can also just go to my website—you’ll find it there too: www.ambitiousandbalanced.com/back-to-school.

All right, working moms, ’til next week. Let's get to it.

Back-to-school workshop for working moms

Hey, working moms, if back to school season already has you feeling rushed, exhausted, or like there's not enough time in your day, then I've got something that's gonna change all of that. I am hosting a brand new set of back to school strategy workshops, 60 minute live workshops, specifically designed for you. 

In just one hour, you're going to create a personalized survival plan for this upcoming season, so you're not feeling like you are rushed and scrambling all of the time. You will know exactly what you should be focusing on, what you wanna let go of, how to make the mornings more smooth, how to make the after school rush calmer, and ultimately create for yourself a schedule that you feel in control of. 

Imagine having more space for the things that matter most and setting yourself up, not just for a smoother fall, but for this busy holiday season ahead. 

There are several small group workshop times to choose from, but once they're full, they're full. It is just $27 and you can grab your spot and pick your time by going to the show notes and to my website, www.ambitiousandbalanced.com/back-to-school. 

All right, working moms, I will see you next week and in one of those workshops. Till then, let's get to it.

Rebecca Olson