I received the following note from an Aha! Subscriber last week:
“In light of impending school starts and no one being ready, I was wondering if there was any way to get feedback on how to get your kids up in the morning? We are challenged to get my son up no matter what we try, so I would love to hear if others have any good ideas!”
I feel her pain. I’ve got one kid who could sleep through a police siren and have not been able to find an alarm clock that will wake him. Do they make alarm clocks with arms that shake kids out of bed? My other is a snooze hitter.
So…can you help us….? Any ideas to motivate, threaten, cajole this kids up and out in the morning? Help us all eliminate morning routine stress! The comments are open……help!
I found these two articles to get the ideas flowing:
When our kids were younger we tried 2 things:
(1) Broken: We would go in and lift an arm…..if it fell back down, we’d say, “Oh no….it’s broken again!” We’d try lifting a leg…if it fell down, we’d claim that was broken too. Lots of dialogue about how we didn’t get our money’s worth, wondering out loud if it could be returned, that we can’t believe it needed work again, calling in the other parent to come see the “broken down piece of equipment”…until there would be giggles. Eventually, we’d lift an arm, and it would stay up….and we’d be close to rise and shine.
(2) Walking Man: Our fingers would do a walking pattern on their back and arms with an accompanying chant (in 3 beats) of “walking man, walking man”…..until there would be giggles and an attempt to sit up.
A sense of humor is key in the morning with cranky kids! 🙂
Now, a homemade bread or muffins, or fun baked treat from Panera does the trick for a quick giddy-up and go….
Our team at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta has developed a parenting website called Strong4Life and this month the articles and tips are all about heading back to school – Waking kids up, packing better lunches, creating a morning routine and more.
http://Strong4Life.com/school
The smell of cooked bacon works, but obviously you have to get up early enough to cook it and put it under their nose!
If you feel it is really abnormal what you need to do to get your child out of be it could be a sleep issue called Hypersomnia and in need of a sleep Doctors testing and diagnosis. http://Www.hypersomniafoundation.org
I got a laugh out of all the creative ideas, games, rewards, etc…in one of the suggested articles. I will preface this by saying we are empty nesters so I have a bit of perspective/distance on this. Here is a novel idea. At the beginning of the school year, be clear to your children that they are expected to be up, dressed, fed and ready for school by the appointed time. Their breakfast will be ready from the time they are expected to be up and out of bed. You will help them organize their clothes, back packs, etc… the night before but only until it is clear they can do that themselves. You will be in the car at the time they need to leave. If they aren’t in the car, the car leaves when it is time to go to school. Any child not in the car will be picked back up upon the return home. Whatever the consequences of the school are (tardy, detention, etc…) are imposed without any parental influence to do otherwise. I suspect that a few days of desperation of seeing Mom pull out of the driveway and/or missing some things at school will get the child in gear from that point on. And guess what? You’re making your day less stressful, too. If I come across as too John Rosemand on this, well OK. In retrospect, most of his ideas seem spot on.
Jon…I love Rosemond….and your ideas!
I am a huge John Rosemond fan, too! My teenage daughter has been just about impossible to get out of bed this summer (like 2pm in the afternoon after several wake-up calls). I’ve taken away her “luxuries” (phone, computer,etc) for the days when she doesn’t get up, just like Mr. Rosemond suggested. It didn’t work. So I tried something a little more extreme. I threatened to dump water on her if she didn’t get up. So far, so good. I have not had to use the water yet. We’ll see if it continues in the school year 😉
Julie…I’m literally laughing out loud!