What does your morning routine look like? Is it full of nagging and yelling and rushing around? Or did you finally throw your hands in the air and give up?
I will give you some strategies to put a morning routine in place. You will hear how to address stalling, as well as getting dressed and having lunches made.
I have seen it time and time again, in my family and the families I work with. In fact, I would argue that every family faces this at some point. This could look like a rambunctious preschooler not able to focus in the mornings or a sleepy teen dragging their feet. Whichever it is, it’s enough to make you scream.
Young children are still learning how to pay attention and follow instructions. It’s important to remember that, in most cases, you are still their external brain. This means that you need to be the one guiding their actions because they are not actually able to do so. It may be that they are still at the stage that they are only capable of completing one task at a time. In this case, you need to give them small steps at a time to complete. When kids get into grade school they are better able to focus and follow more complicated instructions. This could be difficult if your child is not a morning person. You can understand this if you are also not a morning person. Morning people can be super annoying first thing if they’re cheerful and chirping at you right away. I’m a morning person and I’m ready to give instructions as soon as I bounce out of bed. My kids are teens who need time to process that it’s morning and they have to be able to function before I should direct them to do anything.
Some kids are just naturally slow and drag their feet. They don’t want to leave bed so they hang their head off the side and dangle their arms to the floor in an attempt to stay under the covers as long as possible. They slide slowly off the bed to sit or lie on the floor and contemplate the value of making their bed. They weigh the cost of being slow and being yelled at versus getting things done and out of the house on time. Some kids have spirited natures and get distracted by sights and smells and the feeling of their socks. Sometimes we have strong willed kids who are still learning that you mean what you say even though the routine hasn’t changed for four years. They understand what they are supposed to do, they are perfectly capable of completing the tasks, but they are still testing to see if you will react the same way if they don’t do what they’re supposed to. And then there’s our teens. Their brains are literally hardwired to stay up later at night and sleep later in the morning. They aren’t necessarily deliberately stalling, they are truly trying to figure out how to open their eyes and function. Their internal clocks haven’t caught up with chronological time.
I see you nodding your heads at some of these.
So, Kheri, you ask, what do we DO about this? I’m glad you asked! There are a lot of strategies that you can use to help your kids with getting ready on time in the morning. The first thing is to determine what type of kid you have. Are they developmentally able to follow more than one instruction at a time? Are they not a morning person? Are they more sensitive to the environment than other kids? Or are they a teen struggling to come to terms that the day is truly already beginning?
Once you figure out what type of child you have, then you can start to plan. If you have a younger child, start with one small task at a time. Stand up and make your bed is a good first step. Brush your teeth and hair is the next logical step and, since both are likely in the bathroom, should be easy to accomplish together. Break things down in your mind and remind yourself that you are their brain right now. One thing you can try if things are still taking too long is to choose your child’s clothing with them the night before. Figure out what they want to wear for the next day and lay it out so it is easy to find in the morning. Do a little more planning by putting toothpaste on their toothbrush just before you wake them up and place their hairbrush right next to their toothbrush on the counter.
If you have a sensitive kid who gets easily distracted by environmental sounds or smells, etc, do your best to eliminate those distractions. Wake them up but then close their door behind you so they don’t hear anyone else getting ready or smell breakfast being made. They could get dressed and their backpack ready before they leave their room to brush their teeth. A strong willed kid just needs consistency. Your response to them should be exactly the same every day until they finally stop testing you. If your child struggles with staying focused, you could try a visual, like a poster, to show them what step goes first and what follows next.
Teens need completely different strategies. They’re perfectly capable of understanding and following more than one instruction at a time and stay focused. They are old enough that they shouldn’t need a visual reminder of what steps to follow. That being said, their struggle to get going in the morning is still challenging. Try problem solving with your teen first. Sit down when everyone is calm and at their best to discuss solutions to the morning routine troubles. Talk about what needs to happen in the morning and on what timeline. See if they are able to make suggestions that will accomplish what needs to be done. Try those and see how they work out. If it’s still an issue, talk again or have a reward/consequence system. Rewards work better than consequences as they are positive and promote positive behaviours. You could agree that for every morning they are ready on time, they get a marble in a jar. Once there are 5 marbles or 7 marbles or however many you agree on, they get a donut on the way to school or money for a school lunch. Some sort of reward for achieving what needed to be done. If you choose to do consequences instead, for every morning they aren’t ready on time, they lose a privilege. A week of not being ready means losing their phone for the weekend. Again, agree on what the consequence will be beforehand so that everyone is on the same page and no one can say they weren’t aware.
I promised to talk about lunches. The best strategy I’ve found is to have your child make their lunch the night before and have it waiting on the counter or in the fridge for the morning. Then it’s just grab and go instead of trying to figure out what to pack and struggling to get things ready. If your child isn’t old enough to do it for themselves, make sure you are getting it ready for them so that you have one less step in your morning.
These strategies should provide less stress to your morning routines. If you are still struggling after implementing any of these solutions, or want to go deeper in parenting practices, please feel free to schedule a free one hour Step by Step Parenting session with me to discuss how a one to one coaching relationship might be helpful. https://calendly.com/kheritaylor/60min