Dr. Becky knows back to school can be stressful. The parenting expert's tips can help you through it.

It’s time to break out the backpacks, dust off those lunch boxes and start stocking up on school supplies. Back-to-school season is here. If you or your kid is feeling a bit overwhelmed or less than ready to greet the new school year, you’re not alone. More than half of parents with kids under 18 say back-to-school season is the most stressful time of the year. Transitions like these can be hard for all ages — not just kids — but there are things you can do to make it a little easier.

We tapped clinical psychologist and mom of three Becky Kennedy, aka Dr. Becky — who recently released the new Good Inside mobile app, which offers age-based, personalized support for parents — for some helpful tips.

How can parents help prepare their kids for back to school?

“There are so many small things we can do to help our kids have a successful transition to school,” Kennedy says. She offers three suggestions:

• Talk to your kid about the school transition. “This sounds simple but so many of us forget to do this because this time is so hectic,” she says. Kennedy recommends having a conversation with your kid about how many days they have before school starts and creating a visual representation. “Maybe it’s a paper chain and every day leading up to school you rip one chain off so they can see when there is only one chain left. Maybe, for an older child, it’s a calendar where they can cross out each day before the first day of school.” Kennedy explains that these simple visual representations can help a kid feel more in control.

• Develop a separation routine. Saying goodbye and separating for school can be hard, even for some older kids, so it can be helpful to know what to expect and develop a routine in advance. Kennedy recommends keeping the routine relatively short since lingering can communicate your own uncertainty about leaving them, which, in turn, can make a child feel more unsure. “Your routine might be a hug, it might be a kiss, it might be a ‘see you later alligator,’” she says. The key is to practice it at home. “Then, when the separation moment at drop off comes, there are elements of the moment that feel familiar and practiced,” she says.

• Make the unfamiliar more familiar. The start of the school year is chock full of new, unfamiliar moments, places and schedules, which can be intimidating for kids. “Before school starts, you might think about driving past your child’s school or talking to them about how they’ll have blocks in their new classroom or using the name of their teacher in conversation (‘I wonder if Ms. Smith likes bagels for breakfast, you’ll have to ask her!’),” Kennedy suggests. For older kids, they can do a dry run of walking to their classes to familiarize themselves with their new schedule. That way, when your kid walks around their new school, plays with blocks or sees Ms. Smith, instead of these things being completely unknown, they are more familiar and your kid will cope better in the transition, she says.

Adults get stressed too during back to school. What’s a good way to handle it?

Kennedy says her “No. 1 tip” for parents to help them manage their own stress when their kids are going back to school is this: Think about how many minutes to yourself you need in the morning.

“I know most parents think, ‘I just want to sleep as late as possible’ or ‘I don’t care if the morning is rushed’ or ‘I get up when my kids get up’ and if that works for you, do that! But when parents tell me that their mornings are rushed and hectic I often feel as though their own needs are not being met,” she says. “And so I ask them: ‘How many minutes do you need for yourself?’”

Kennedy says it doesn’t have to be a lot of time. For some parents, she says, it’s taking five minutes to have a cup of coffee while sitting down, she says. For others it’s 15 minutes to do a 10-minute workout and check an email.

“Then, when you’re setting your alarm just a little bit earlier, instead of thinking, ‘Ugh I have to get up early,’ you can say to yourself: ‘These are the minutes I’m going to get to myself.’ That framing makes a big difference and can help mornings feel a lot less stressful,” she says.

What should parents do if their child or teen doesn’t want to go to school?

Kennedy suggests starting by validating their feelings and listening so you can learn more about the possible cause. “It is so powerful and important to meet ‘I don’t want to go to school’ with ‘There is something about going to school that doesn’t feel good. I believe you. Tell me more,’” she says.

Some parents worry that validating their kid’s feelings “makes them bigger or turns feelings into actions,” but Kennedy says those are actually very different things. “If I’m validating my kids’ feelings about not wanting to go to school, I am in no way communicating that they don’t have to go to school,” she explains. “All I am communicating is that I am curious to learn more about why. I’m communicating that I believe my kid is the owner of their feelings, that I care about those feelings and that I care about them.”

For most kids, Kennedy says, when you validate their feelings you actually hear the story underneath them, such as, “I don’t want to go to school because math is hard” or “I don’t want to go to school because I’m always left out at recess.” Validating can help parents figure out the root cause of those feelings. But “when you respond with a hard, firm and immediate, ‘You’re going to school,’ you miss the larger story. You miss connecting with your kids and you miss the opportunity to effectively problem-solve.”

How can you build up your child or teen’s confidence?

Although people often believe that confidence is feeling good about yourself, Kennedy says that confidence is really about self trust. It’s why many parents think they need to make their kids feel good when trying to build up their confidence. “So when our kid comes to us and says, ‘I’m nervous to go to school,’ often our impulse is to say, ‘No, but you had such a great school year last year,’” she says. “That actually lowers a kid’s confidence.”

Instead, when your kid says they are nervous to go to school, Kennedy suggests saying, “I get that. Tell me more.”

“When kids learn to trust their nervousness, ironically, they feel more confident going into tricky situations because they trust their feelings of nervousness are manageable because someone was willing to talk to them about it,” she says. “The more we try to convince our kids out of their nervousness, the more we lower their confidence. What that does is teach them that they have to feel a different way than they do in order to be successful.”

Kennedy says that the best way to build confidence is to listen and then say to your kid, “I believe you,” “that makes sense,” or “I felt this way too.” She says, “You can then follow up with a message of hope. It’s not just ‘I believe you’ but also ‘I believe in you.’”