Back to School. The words have been rammed down parents' throats for at least six weeks.

Some shops started promoting their back-to-school wares the week the kids broke up.

What I find amusing is that year-after-year parents go through the same motions, suffer the same anxieties and behave in exactly the same way.

You would think we would all learn from experience - but we don't. If we did, the start of a new term would be so much less stressful.

I have compiled a list entitled Where Parents Go Wrong', which mums and dads are free to cut out and keep, so that NEXT YEAR WILL BE DIFFERENT. This what parents should not do: Put off buying uniforms Over the past week, the number of people I have come across ranting and raving as they trawl through the left-overs of a once-well-stocked school uniform department in shops and supermarkets, to kit out their children, must run into hundreds, if not millions. But the summer holidays are supposed to be about enjoyment and relaxation. Who can blame parents if they choose to head for the beach or the park, rather than check out the uniform aisle in Tesco?

But as anyone who has left this chore until the final week knows, you delay at your peril.

I left it too late to buy PE shorts, and could I find them? At the end of my 34th trip to supermarket/sports shop/children's fashion store, I concluded that it would have been easier to buy the material and pay a machinist to make them.

I'm lucky, my daughters' primary school does not have a uniform. To have to find shirt, jumper, skirts and the like, would certainly leave me popping the Prozac. My advice. Buy BEFORE they break up.

Forget to make a note of when the new terms starts.

I have spent the best part of a week ringing round (estimated phone bill £650) parents to find out when the school reopens for business. Knowing that teachers find six weeks inadequate and must have an extra one or two days tagged on the end for training', I dismissed the idea of a return on the Monday. But, having rung a number of confused parents, I remained in the dark as to whether they went back on Tuesday or Wednesday. Sadly, for me, it tuirned out to be the latter, throwing up childcare problems. If I had checked at the end of term, around 490 hours of blood, sweat and tears would have been avoided.

Forget where they put (for safe keeping) the rucksacks.

In an attempt to keep a small house tidy, I always stash things away when we don't need them. Every year this backfires, when the children can't find their school bags. It happens at Christmas too, when I can't find gifts bought months earlier and squirreled away in the backs of cupboards. This results in a general ransacking of the place, undoing all previous attempts to clean up.

I have made a pledge that next year will be different. The thing is, I remember making one last year