Create special homework hours and homework zones to help keep your kids focused on their studies.

Back to school time can be difficult for both children and parents. Fear and anxiety over the coming school year can combine with sadness over the end of summer vacation to create quite a bit of stress. But with careful planning and a few helpful tricks, you can ease your child into a new year of school with a minimum of frowns and tears.

Deborah Skolnik is an editor at Parents magazine, specializing in early childhood development and personal finance. A mother herself, Skolnik has also written for publications like Baby Talk and American Baby, and writes a parenting column called "The Early Years" for the New York Daily News. Here she gives us her expert advice for relieving stress during back to school time.

• Calm tone. If your child is facing a new year of school, his or her emotions are most likely going a little bit crazy. There's probably some fear mixed with a lot of excitement and anticipation. As a parent, your job is to be (or at least appear to be) calm, relaxed and in control so that your child will be able to find comfort in your attitude.

• Time. One way to do this is to make sure you and your child are never crunched for time. Being late just adds to stress, so make sure your child gets out of bed early and starts the school day with plenty of time. Missed buses or homeroom bells are just going to make things worse.

• Homework. Homework can be especially stressful, so try to create specific times and areas for your kids to get their studies done. Turn off the TV and let your child focus on the night's assignments in a designated homework zone, even if it has to be a cleared area of the kitchen table.

• Lists. Planning and organization are two of the biggest tools to beat stress, and Skolnik is a big fan of "to-do" lists. Make lists of daily responsibilities for both yourself and your child, and work towards ticking off each item on the list as you go through the day. If you set a calm tone, make schoolwork a priority and keep things organized, you should be able to eliminate a lot of unneeded stress when it come time for your child to return to school.

Parents Magazine
www.parents.com

It's My Life: the School Channel
pbskids.org/itsmylife/school/index.html

Back to School Stress from About.com
stress.about.com/cs/backtoschool

Helping Children Succeed in School: School Stress
www.urbanext.uiuc.edu/succeed/03-stress.html

Bigchalk: the Education Network
www.bigchalk.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/WOPortal.woa/db/Home.html