I’ll take all the help I can get when it comes to making mornings with kids easier!! Trying to get us all moving and out the door is a nightmare. It’s really the second most stressful part of the day for me. The most stressful obviously being after school pick up when everyone is exhausted and we have to do homework with my son… but let’s not go there!!
Unfortunately, I can’t take credit for this post. Making mornings with kids easier is courtesy of Angela and her wonderful team from The Good Stuff. They’ve helped me out with some great posts in the past – remember the post about How to Travel with Kids on a Budget.
Making mornings with kids easier!
If your morning routine involves preparing kids for school, then you’ll understand why most parents dread the experience.
While it’s the joy of lots of parent to see off their kids every morning, it can be an awful experience for others.
Instead of just trying to survive the mornings, you should try develop reliable methods that can improve the quality of mornings for both parties.
Here are 8 suggestions to making the mornings with kids easier.
1. Establish a Highly Inclusive Routine
This trick works for the majority but you need fully appreciate the needs of your children. They need to be identified and then addressed throughout the process.
You can only achieve this by giving your kids a chance to participate in the preparation of the routine. If you make them feel part of the process, they certainly adhere to all the activities that you opt to include in your daily morning routines.
2. Prepare the Night Before
The easiest way to make the mornings better is through pre-preparation.
You should always endeavor to decongest your morning routine. To facilitate that, get some of the work done the night before.
Some of the activities that should never wait for the morning include:
- selecting the children’s clothes,
- ironing,
- preparing breakfast,
- chopping up what you can for the school lunch boxes; and
- sorting and packing school supplies.
These activities can consume a lot of time in the morning, which may lead to frustrations on your part and for the kids.
3. Adopt a Strict Sleeping Timetable
If you want to have active kids in the morning, you have no option but to ensure that they get sufficient sleep. It’s recommended that you develop a plan that should be followed religiously. For example, put the children to sleep by 8:00 PM and wake them up at 7:00 AM every day.
When the program is static, the body will adjust, and your children will have an easy time waking up at the prescribed time. This will save you the hassle of forcing them to wake up, which can be energy-draining
4. Design Unique Storage Areas
Your children will most likely be in a hurry to leave for school. But if your kids are like mine, they tend to leave things lying around and then can’t find them in the morning. Hurrying doesn’t make it better either, things get muddled up and mixed up and no one can find what they’re looking for.
To avoid too much cluttering in your house, you should develop designated storage areas for each kid.
Ensure that each cabinet has specific items. For example, let the socks and vests stay in one cabinet, school supplies in a different one, and trousers in another. Or you can have it differentiated for each child.
This segmentation saves your child from the frustration of searching for an item for hours, yet time is limited. You should also teach them to return all each item to the respective space for enhanced efficiency.
You could use different colour baskets or storage boxes. Or just have neat baskets which could match your furniture and decor so it doesn’t matter that its in plain sight. Or use different drawers in a chest of drawers.
The next one is one I would struggle with no matter how much easier it would make my mornings…
5. Wake Up Before Your Children
When you wake up before your kids, you’ll get adequate time to plan for their day. Ensure that you strategize and create an environment that will ease their morning routine.
Before they wake up, ensure that the breakfast is ready and countercheck whether they packed everything they’ll need for the day.
6. Checklist
Many parents are highly prone to forgetfulness, which can lead to a disorganized day for your kids. As such, it’s necessary that you have a checklist to confirm that the children have included all the required items.
You should also ensure that your kids understand the importance of using the checklist. Have them apply it each morning as they prepare for school. This way, you can be certain that you will have an easy morning without panicky moments resulting from too many unattended needs and little time to fulfill all the requirements for a productive day.
7. Motivate Your Children
You should regularly award exemplary performance in following the morning routine. This will instill a culture of independence where the kids will strive to perform all the necessary tasks in the morning without your help.
However, the primary role of the awards should be to motivate. Be careful not to do it in a way that leads to fights between the kids.
8. It sounds unusual but: Be Friendly and where possible FUN
Children are likely to rebel, especially when they realize that you are forcefully imposing rules on them.
If you want to make your mornings with kids easier, you should try remain as calm as possible. Not easy when you just want to get out the door!
When correcting them, ensure that you do not shout but rather talk WITH the kids.
Also, you should creatively devise techniques that will make the entire morning routine fun. This may include playing games and exercising together. When they enjoy every minute, they’ll be longing for the mornings, and you’ll have no difficulty in managing them.
The Bottom Line on making mornings with kids easier
Handling kids in the morning should never be so traumatizing. Yes, it comes with its fair share of challenges. And that’s what makes it so important to develop mechanisms to circumvent the problems.
You should make an implementable morning routine and ensure that you involve your children in the entire process. This way, they will be readily available to contribute to the success of its implementation.
Thank you to the Author
I really do love the guest posts we get from The Good Stuff by Coupons.com. They’re always on the look out to help moms and parents.
Thank you so much for the insightful posts.
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