3 Back to School Menaces (and How to Deal With Them)

Despite what the onslaught of shopping commercials tells you, Back to School isn’t all bento-box lunches, happy trips to the mall with your 3rd-grader, and smile-filled drop offs at school. There are a handful of menaces every mom can relate to that eat up your free time, cost money, and itch like crazy.

Check out easy, fast solutions for your biggest Back to School menaces below:

Super Lice: Did you know Super Lice have been reported in half the country so far? Resistant to over-the-counter pesticide treatments, Super Lice have been extremely hard to battle. For families dealing with an outbreak, this can mean expensive treatments, missed school days and make-up work. Thankfully, Nix®, the #1 Pediatrician and Pharmacist Recommended brand, has launched the New Nix® Ultra System.  Nix® Ultra is a new safe and effective over-the-counter system that kills both traditional and super lice, as well as their eggs. Learn more >

Nix® also now offers the ability to track and prepare for lice and super lice with the launch of the Nix® Lice Tracker: the first-ever and only data-driven lice tracker, which combines both retail and crowd-sourced data from school nurses and parents to develop a real time map of where lice outbreaks are occurring.  Visit www.nixlice.com\lice-tracker to track lice outbreaks in your area, report an outbreak, and for more information on Nix® Ultra.

“Reply-all” Emails: The inevitability of 25 “reply-all” emails can bring a single tear to mom’s eye, but the chaos of coordinating the class party, library volunteers and fall fundraiser is coming to an end with seamless coordination solutions from SignUp.com. Free, online SignUps help room parents and teachers organize class helpers and Back to School events while recurring volunteer calendars can get multiple month’s worth of recess, library and cafeteria volunteers coordinated. Parents can sign up for activities 24/7 from anywhere, at any time, on any device – no password needed. Learn more >

Interrupted Sleep Patterns:  Adjusting to sleep patterns that support and empower young kids on early start school schedules isn’t easy for every family. The New York Times reports, “The American Academy of Pediatrics recently endorsed the 2016 guidelines issued by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, that 3- to 5-year-olds need 10 to 13 hours of sleep per day (including naps), while 6- to 12-year-olds need nine to 12 hours for optimal health and well-being.” That’s a lot! Experts recommend a few best practices for helping kids get into the mode of early wake-ups for the new school year:

• Cut late mornings cold turkey: Stepping down from late summer mornings of sleeping in to early mornings of catching the bus simply isn’t a feasible. A quick adjustment of just waking up at the new time is better for brains and easier for kids to manage.
• Have an adventure right before school starts: Encouraging kids to wake up bright and early is easy when they’re excited for the day! A final vacation, camp or other excursion before school can get kids in the mode of “wanting” to wake up early, and help them get back on the right schedule for starting school.
• Pay attention to eating habits: Help kids get back on healthy snacks and right-sized meals before the school year starts - especially during the second half of the day, to ensure early bedtimes and bright mornings.