The day has finally arrived. The first of September, the first day back to school and a new year for our six and 13-year-old. The time is 7.20am and, unlike normal mornings, both kids get up without any argument or fuss. They come downstairs, one eye open, one eye closed. The six-year-old asks to be carried the last couple of feet to the dining room table. I have breakfast on the table, having risen at quarter to six.

Clearly, I am also very excited about the first day of school. I laid out muffins that had vitamins and fibre smuggled into them, hopefully avoiding detection before they realise that I was secretly feeding them something healthy.

I am under no illusions that the rest of the year is going to be like this. But I know that it is important to start as you mean to go on, and I will take this brief honeymoon period for as long as it lasts. Our first day was last week because we are schooling our kids in Italy, a move that may seem like an upgrade, but it is a trade-off.

Since Cup Match, I have been reading a book by Ryan Holiday called The Daily Dad: 366 Meditations on Parenting, Love and Raising Great Kids. A great read that’s digestible in small chunks that also gave me one leg to stand on while demanding my children do their summer reading. The September 1 entry resonated deeply — will they take advantage of a great education and reach their full potential?

I liked the passage at first, attributed to a Princeton basketball coach named Pete Carril, who plucked it from his father to share with his young athletes. The gist of it is “strong guys overpower weaker guys, and the smart ones overcome the strong”. One’s smarts are the secret weapon of underdogs everywhere.

While I like the philosophical nod to meritocracy, the reality that most millennials understand, particularly those hoping to do a good job as parents, is that smarts are a crop that need tending, care and time. The oversimplified notion that “smarts” are a free, great equaliser, available to everyone, stuck in my teeth a little. It assumes that one’s brain power and attention is just sitting, waiting to be used, and not actively being contested for.

I bring this home to Bermuda and the friends and family who are striving desperately to work, enjoy life, get enough exercise, and get enough sleep.

Some private schools have already returned, and the public schools start next week. That split is roughly 3,841 public school students beginning after Labour Day with their private school counterparts at 3,590. More than just the difference in start date, what struck me was that the enrolment numbers have narrowed considerably from well over a thousand a decade ago to around 250 at last count.

The data point that is more concerning by far is the recent revelation that no public primary school reached the international average for English, mathematics and science. The most recent 2026 results, apparently, landed with the Ministry of Education just over a week ago. What this means goes beyond the blame game with the ministry, in practical terms it underscores that what happens at home is that much more important.

Through that filter, if you subscribe to the idea that your brains and your smarts are the great equaliser — then you’re leaving out the reality of cost to access private education as opposed to public. Private school fees range from $13,000 to $29,000 per year. We like to think that, in a meritocratic world, a person’s willingness to work hard and use their brain, is what will make the difference. Carril’s advice assumes an opponent you can outwit. An enrolment split so narrow and a standard so shocking in the public schools points to something different.

To be blunt: the input, the factor, the resource that does not show up on a pay stub or a report card, is time. Time in the form of attention provided by parents. Time that you put into preparing for the school day or term ahead.

That input, or lack thereof, has real-world implications set against a backdrop of an economy where the median gross annual income from a main job is $75,718. Balance that equation against utilities that range from $500 to $1,000 a month or more, and a weekly grocery shop for a family of four can easily run $400 to $600. I have left rent and healthcare costs out, but still, ‘the math ain’t mathing’ is the point. Between one third and half a paycheque getting gobbled up by food and power alone makes the thought of private education look and feel like an impossible option.

That cost-of-living reality puts serious constraints on the amount of time you have. Time is frustratingly finite and fleeting but it does not mean that you can’t do anything. What counts is what you do with the time that you have.

What we try to do, with successes and failures, with pre-planning and set-up, is to start the day before. Lay out as many things the night before: uniforms, bags and shoes. Win at the wind-down and win the morning: cut screen time of any kind by at least an hour before bed. It seems obvious, but the benefits to sleep cannot be overstated because you cannot always predict how your morning will go. Remove the friction in advance.

The quality of the fuel impacts the quality of their learning. I love me some frosted flakes in the morning, but after that “they’re great!” feeling wears off and the sugar crash kicks in it becomes a lot harder to demand focus and attention. This doesn’t just apply to our kids. Protein and fibre are great for your muscles and digestion, and they also strengthen your ability to stay focused.

Homework and reading support play a huge part in making sure the hours in class aren’t wasted and our need to earn a living doesn’t have to come at the expense of homework. We look for resources that already exist, either at school or youth centres that offer after-school support at a reasonable cost or free. One programme that exists and fills a huge gap in this area is Beyond Rugby. A twice-weekly event open to CedarBridge and Berkeley students that serves up a trifecta of physical training, feeding and homework support is game changing.

Learning by doing is also an underrated tool. Model the behaviour that you want your kids to follow, and it makes it that much easier to get them to take on more responsibilities and do the night before prep themselves. Like we say in the army: explanation, demonstration, imitation and practice.

My wife and I have come to understand, the hard way, that the energy we show up with around our kids, has a larger impact on their energy and focus than anything else we do.

If you have any time, if you have any spare moment, I urge you to use it wisely. Treat it like a resource that exists right now and that you will never get back again. Because that is the reality of it.

If you are working multiple jobs, hustling, doing what you need to do to make ends meet — I invite you to consider that the moments you give your children matter as much as what you earn to sustain them.

• Paolo Odoli is a captain in the Royal Bermuda Regiment, on leave of absence in Italy. He is a former aide-de-camp to two Bermuda governors of Bermuda and a former government communications officer