Save yourself a load of headaches during the next school year by getting organized now.

As kids across the country get ready to head back to class, parents are feeling the back-to-school crunch. Already stressed out about getting back into the swing of packing lunches, doing homework, and getting out the door on time? Check out what organizing expert and mom-of-three-boys Jennifer Jones at I Heart Organizing does to make the school year a breeze.

Even if it takes a few reminders, encourage your child to be more mindful of some basic etiquette.

Over the eight years that I've been an etiquette expert, and the 12 years that I've been a parent, I've seen children of all ages make similar mistakes when it comes to manners. A lot of these mistakes occur when the child is a guest in someone's house; they start when the child rings the doorbell too many times and ending when the child doesn't thank his host. Here are the manners kids often forget or neglect that parents should be aware of, along with solutions to help your child be an etiquette superstar.

I'm a policy guy, not a daddy blogger. As a general rule, I don't discuss my children in this column or on my  Eduwonkblog. But when TIME asked me to write about how my wife (who also works in education) and I chose our kids' elementary school, I figured why not? We are constantly besieged by friends and colleagues who want to know how we went about picking a school, as if there were some secret education-analyst methodology I was privy to. I wish that were true! But even though I don't have access to the secret sauce, I do have a pretty good sense of how to kick a school's tires. Plus, I think it would be a shame not to use all of our parental angst for the greater good. And so, as our kids start a new year at a public school, here are some lessons from our school-hunting experience that might help guide yours.

Potty training isn't the only skill your child may need to know before heading to preschool. Here are a few important things you should consider before committing to a preschool.

If your child is starting preschool and having difficulty with the new routine, follow these strategies for saying goodbye without tears.

The start of preschool is a milestone that's often anticipated with great excitement and joy, but also with lots of crying, uncertainty, and heel digging -- from both kids and parents! "For children, the main source of anxiety around entering preschool is that they have absolutely no idea what to expect," says Katrina Green, a certified early childhood and early childhood special education teacher at the Just Wee Two program in Brooklyn, New York.