My son starts third grade next week, and this is the first year where instead of being all, “Yay for friends and learning!” he’s more like, “yeah, school, great.” I can understand how he feels. He’s got nine months of work ahead of him and dude would rather watch reruns of Pokémon.

Whether they’re navigating the high school hallways for the first time or just trying to get through the uni year, getting an education can be stressful for teens taking on ever-harder coursework and new responsibilities. Even they must realise they could benefit from the advice from those of us who have been there, done that, and survived.

We know what we’re supposed to do at preschool drop-off. Leave them at the door (don’t enter the classroom!), give a swift and cheery goodbye (“Have a great time! I’ll be back to pick you up in a few hours!”), and leave. Even if they’re crying, every preschool teacher will tell you, you will only make it worse if you linger.

There’s something so hopeful about first-day-of-school photos: clothes look a little brighter than usual (possibly because you’ve ripped the tags off just an hour before), backpacks seem massive enough to topple your children right over and if you’re especially creative, chalkboards or whiteboards display a sweet little interview to capture this moment in time. (When asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, a friend’s daughter put down “singer of giraffe songs,” which is clearly the best job ever).

When my son started kindergarten a few years ago, I vowed to myself to draw a cute little picture on his foil-wrapped sandwich every day. Just a little something to remind him of home, to let him know I was thinking of him, to make him smile or feel loved.

After taking the obligatory front-door photo on my kid’s first day of kindergarten, I noticed that her backpack looked a little droopy.

Most Aussie students return to school next week - which makes it a great time to snap up a tech bargain! You can currently save big on laptops, smartphones and computing accessories over at Amazon. To save you sifting through thousands of products, we've handpicked the best deals from Amazon's Back To School sale.

The feeling I associate most with my early university days is exhaustion. I wrote all my papers at night and fought sleep every time a lecture got a bit dull. You can’t live for years on a sleep deficit, though, so here’s what I should have known from the start.

I am two things in the morning: angry and nauseated. I have always been this way, even as a youth, which made getting to physical chemistry at 7am all the more difficult.

Frying an egg for breakfast was simply not an option, but I’d be so hungry during lecture that I’d end up eating my lunch (usually a ham sandwich) for breakfast. Then it hit me: why didn’t I just make two ham sandwiches?

Jolie Kerr is a cleaning expert, advice columnist and author of the New York Times bestselling book, My Boyfriend Barfed In My Handbag ... And Other Things You Can’t Ask Martha. Her flagship column, “Ask a Clean Person”, debuted in 2011. Here on Lifehacker, we’ve launched a new iteration of it, focusing on parenting and all the messes it brings. 

There's no magic force field that holds back germs while you shout "five-second rule!" and scoop up your dropped cured meat. Duh, right? Here's how you can prove it.

This is the season when we send our kids off to school with shiny new backpacks, and every year, they bring home the same thing: The first round of back-to-school colds. In our house, with a two-year-old intent on drooling on everyone he touches and a six-year-old still perfecting her personal hygiene practices, pathogens are passed out like hugs, and it's only a matter of time before the whole family is sick.

As a parent, I often feel like a walking stopwatch. "Three more minutes of TV!" "Eight minutes before it's time to brush your teeth!" "Twenty-four minutes until bedtime!"

The fortune-telling game MASH, kept alive over decades by primary-schoolers, requires nothing more than pencil, paper and a friend. Here's how to play this little bonding game.

I am a very big fan of store-bought recess meals, both as a product and a concept. The no-cook, assemble-and-eat boxes of food are convenient, customisable, and fun for all, including actual school children and those who are just children at heart.

I've been both a student and an instructor, and I totally get it. Textbooks are dry and hard to read. But if you don't have time to read the whole chapter like you're supposed to, there is actually a better solution than just glazing your eyes over the first paragraph a few times.

The only thing sadder than opening your lunchbox to find a soggy sandwich is opening your kid's lunchbox at the end of the day to find a completely untouched one. Thankfully, you can prevent soggy, disappointing lunchbox sandwiches by making them with frozen bread.

At the beginning of the school year, every writing assignment, certificate and work of art that your child brings home is a sweet thrill, a memento to hold onto for years to come. But then, soon enough, your house is flooding with papers, and it's only November, dangit.

Studying can feel like a solitary activity - looking back at my student days, I remember sitting alone at a desk with just my textbooks, highlighters, cans of Coke and expanding self-doubt. If I didn't understand a concept, or couldn't find an answer, I'd search deeper into the pages, desperately, thinking maybe there was a clue I had missed. If it still seemed hopeless I'd sleep, rationalising that perhaps somehow the revelation would appear in my dreams. (It usually did not.)