Give me your best tips for school mornings

[Kissthepastrychef]

10 year old DD seems completely unable to get ready for school in the morning without a large amount of chivvying up. I'm totally fed up with it, she drifts around like she is in a daze and every single morning without fail I end up cross and shouting and she is plaintively wailing about how hard it is to get ready. Even on the mornings I think I have managed to actually get her ready she fannies about at the last minute or forgets something. So we end up late.
I wake her up at 7 (we have to leave at 07:45). I then spend the next 15 minutes going back in and trying to get her out out bed. I've tried pulling the covers off but just felt so cruel. She goes to bed (ie lights out go to sleep) at 8pm but often won't be asleep until 9 so I can't get her to go to sleep any earlier. If I put her to bed later she would just stay awake longer and quite honestly, with both of us working full time 24/7 shift patterns I need the evening for some peace.

The main issue seems to be that she is just unable to focus or actually spring into any form of action. Eg she will sit there with her breakfast staring at the wall not actually eating. If I don't chivvy her up to eat it she won't. Dh is equally useless in the morning, when it's his morning to take her to school because I'm working she's always late. NB it's rarely that her stuff isn't ready because I get it all ready the night before - it's getting her up and out that's the problem.

Pls give me your tips or experience, I'm so fed up of every single day descending into an argument.

Ps. She is NT and loves school so it's definitely not that she doesn't want to go. Indeed she's like this with everything, even when she goes riding it takes her ages of faffing to actually be ready

Get her up an hour before she has to leave. Use alarms on phone or smart speaker to keep her on track. Dressed before leaving room. The end of breakfast is the end of breakfast - if she hasn't eaten enough to last until lunch before getting hungry, then she might focus more the following day.

My DD10 is very similar. The only thing that worked is that she meets a friend and the friend's mother at the end of our road and walks with them. When the mother got fed up of being kept waiting she Had A Word. I have no idea what she said but being told off by someone else had a real effect and it hasn't happened since. Instead she gets hysterical if she isn't ready 5 mins early!

Firstly on your DHs day it's more of a DH problem i would say and he needs to buck up and get her there on time.

However i have similar problems with 8yr old DD I make morning as easy as possible and don't worry too much about good parenting. That means a 30 minute window to eat her cereal watching tv/iPad etc. That gives me 30 mins to get dressed, have a coffee etc. IF she then puts uniform on she can carry on watching TV. If she doesn't, devices go.

Even though she is 8 I help her dress to motivate her. Because I have had half an hour to sort myself out i don't feel too stressed at this point. If we don't have time to brush teeth we do this in the car. It works for us!

When we've had really bad mornings I usually start a reward system so £1 each morning we are in the car on time which gives £5 to spend at the weekend.

I feel your pain though!

Use a countdown timer (or lots of them eg one for breakfast, one for getting dressed).

Allow more time and set a bunch of Alexa alarms. One for getting up/wash and dress/breakfast/clean teeth/leave house. Also try to keep it positive as you can manage. I find mine are a bit more lively when theres a fun tune on the radio and I'm upbeat not bawling up the stairs. Yup. I know that's hard I only do it as it seems to work here

I make sure we have lots of time so my kids are up at 7 to leave at 8.30 which means it doesn’t matter if they faff. DH is the only morning person in our house the rest of us look like the cast of The Living Dead. I’d get her up earlier and if she’s not happy she’ll need to move herself in the morning.

Radio is a great idea and I will try the alarms tomorrow. She likes goals and limits so maybe this will work. Thankyou all ! I have set up a small drawer in the dining room this morning after HairbrushGate v379 (I can't find it mummy !) to keep everything she needs to get ready in one place

Agree to alarms for each stage of the morning to keep on track. Plus then it's the phone / Alexa nagging and not me.

And allow longer so get her up at 6.45.

Can you get an Alexa / other device to wake her up with radio or music 5 minutes before you go in so you're not starting from scratch?

And agree that lovely music keeps everyone moving that little bit quicker.

I’d be getting her up earlier and doing as much the night before as possible.

Get everything upstairs done first (dressed, hair, teeth, etc.) and then it’s down for breakfast, grab stuff and off. If she hasn’t finished her breakfast take it with you. (If you live on one floor then do it by the room - bedroom, bathroom, kitchen...)

Find a balance between mitigating your frustrations and her natural tendencies.

Fusion she has a phone so we can use that. I think one of the reasons I leave it til 7 is so I can clean the kitchen in peace but mainly because I dread starting the morning arguments so put off the evil hour as long as I can ! Probably not a sensible policy looking at it. It's interesting to see how early you all get yours up

I feel your pain OP, DD is nearly 12 and is still like this. She likes school but just seems to have no sense of time or urgency. She can also walk to school in less than 10 minutes.!

At 10, I would be tempted to stop with the nagging.

By all means wake her up at 7am, but then leave her to it until you give her a "5 minute warning" at 7.40. She's old enough to take responsibility for getting herself ready and it's possible that the constant nagging is actually counter productive. And it's certainly getting you stressed which is not helping either.

Are there consequences at school if she's late? Would she be horrified if she was? If yes, to either of these, then maybe letting her be late is the way so she suffers natural consequences is the way to go?

I actually think with a faffer, that getting up early doesn't really help - it just gives them the false illusion of lots of time so they spend more of it doing nothing.

I was (and still am) like this but I have inattentive ADHD. I use a SAD lamp to wake me up with light and loud music that I love, perhaps try to find something to stimulate her or make it enjoyable....