The first day of school: Don't worry, be happy

Parents should stop making such a big deal about their kids going back to school, writes Samantha Boardman. You're not protecting kids from stress. You're manufacturing it.

"There's nothing inherently traumatic about getting a new teacher, walking between classrooms, or adjusting sleep schedules," she writes. Kids adjust.

Instead of asking, "Are you worried about school?" try “What are you looking forward to this year?" Rather than preparing for problems, communicate your belief in their capabilities.

A professor of psychiatry at Columbia, Boardman is the author of Everyday Vitality: Turning Stress into Strength.

Photo: Ben de la Cruz/NPR

In a lovely essay on NPR, James Kassaga Arinaitwe compares his son's first day of kindergarten with his own first day in Uganda.

"My wife and I . . . waved goodbye and encouraged him to be brave," he writes. "His classroom has colorful posters, smart boards and cozy reading corners filled with books and comfy swivel chairs. Each child has a cubby with their name on it for storing the school supplies tucked into their backpacks."

When Arinaitwe was four, his mother sent him to live with relatives who lived walking distance from a "church school." The room had a dirt floor, shutters instead of glass windows and a tin roof. "When it rained, the noise was so deafening that classes had to pause."

A year later, he transferred to a different school. "Our first job every morning was to sweep the classroom before we sat down," he writes. "It taught me to take care of the space around me, to be responsible even with very little."

At 19, orphaned by AIDS, he started at Tallahassee Community College. An American couple had adopted him. He earned a scholarship to Florida State and then graduate school. Co-founder of Teach For Uganda. he now works for Teach For All.

Watching his son walk into a school full of opportunities "felt like witnessing a dream we'd carried quietly for years — one we wish every child, not just our own, could one day live," writes Arinaitwe. And, unlike his father, he was able to be there to see it.