Getting their children out of bed and out the door on school mornings is a common problem for many parents. For these parents, their days begin with discord, upset, and uproar, which all too often set the tone for their day.
Parents fall into the trap of doing the same thing every morning and hoping that the results are different. Typically they begin with a pleasant attempt at rousing their child, followed by increasingly frustrated efforts to get the child moving, until both parent and child are worked up. There is lots of sound and fury which produces few positive results, repeated day after day.
What parents are missing here is the root cause of the problem: they are taking the responsibility for the single most fundamental behavior their child must perform each day-rising from bed to meet the day.
If you are having this difficulty, you need to remove yourself from the problem loop. The key is to shift the responsibility for getting out of bed from you to your children.
This is typically a simple matter for younger children. I recommend that when kids begin kindergarten parents buy them an alarm clock, teach them to use it, and explain their expectation that the children will be getting themselves up in the morning.
The start of a child's school career is a rite of passage that makes it more likely that the child will adopt the new behavior. Plus, five-year-olds typically rise early without a problem, making it easy for the parent to establish a life-long habit when they are young.
Some parents have enabled their children to be dependent upon them for awakening well into their teen-age years. The dynamics in this case are the same; the parents have assumed the responsibility (at this point, for years) of getting their children going, but by now the problem loop has been well-established and is harder to break. Adding to the difficulty, the teenager is now at that stage of development where rising in the morning is more challenging.
For my solution to the teen-age morning malingerer, check in to the next newsletter.
Parents fall into the trap of doing the same thing every morning and hoping that the results are different. Typically they begin with a pleasant attempt at rousing their child, followed by increasingly frustrated efforts to get the child moving, until both parent and child are worked up. There is lots of sound and fury which produces few positive results, repeated day after day.What parents are missing here is the root cause of the problem: they are taking the responsibility for the single most fundamental behavior their child must perform each day-rising from bed to meet the day.
If you are having this difficulty, you need to remove yourself from the problem loop. The key is to shift the responsibility for getting out of bed from you to your children.
This is typically a simple matter for younger children. I recommend that when kids begin kindergarten parents buy them an alarm clock, teach them to use it, and explain their expectation that the children will be getting themselves up in the morning.
The start of a child's school career is a rite of passage that makes it more likely that the child will adopt the new behavior. Plus, five-year-olds typically rise early without a problem, making it easy for the parent to establish a life-long habit when they are young.
Some parents have enabled their children to be dependent upon them for awakening well into their teen-age years. The dynamics in this case are the same; the parents have assumed the responsibility (at this point, for years) of getting their children going, but by now the problem loop has been well-established and is harder to break. Adding to the difficulty, the teenager is now at that stage of development where rising in the morning is more challenging.
For my solution to the teen-age morning malingerer, check in to the next newsletter.