To think that having been at school for nearly 7 years, my 11 year old DD should have mastered the art of leaving the house by 8.30

[sandyballs]

Im like an old broken record, every bloody morning. I bore the arse off myself asking her again and again to get herself moving, look at the clock etc etc ..... She's been at school 7 fecking years, it's nothing new that she needs to be ready to leave by 8.30 or she's late for school.

She starts secondary in sept and will need to be on the 7.30 bus. How is that ever going to happen?

How can her sister get up half hour later and still be at school before her?

Didn't help this morning that DH rang to speak to her at 8.45 to wish her good luck in her piano exam later. Very nice, but I snatched the phone from her and bellowed down it 'SHE SHOULDNT EVEN BE HERE AT 8.45'

And breathe.

cardreader I was thinking about AS too.

I never quite understand this. We all leave the house at 8am. I don't care what state the DCs are in, we are all out the door at 8am. I wake them up in good time and if they haven't brushed their hair, got dressed, packed their pencil case - that is their problem - but we leave at 8am, otherwise I am late for work.

When they were little, I organised them, but now they are older, I'll issue reminders and help them get their act together as much as I can the night before (getting as much done the night before is like some kind of mantra in our house). If they forget stuff on the morning itself, then tough luck. Once we are out the door, there is no turning back.

I'm sure having to get the bus at 7.30am will sharpen up her act Sandyballs.

My DS has a dx of Aspergers and DCD (of which dyspraxia is a symptom). He likes routines although not excessively so but if you do something that is out of place he would notice. He is OK if you explain it first though. Its surprises he can't handle. He is classically dyspraxic because he can't ride a bike, swim, tie his shoelaces very well (almost got that now through necessity) but still gets his father to tie his school tie in the morning. He chews things, fiddles constantly, talks too loudly, interrupts, doesn't really get where he is in relation to the rest of the world - if he can find the worst place to stand he will stand in it - never looks where he is going, gives me kittens watching him cross the road. To me he has classic DCD rather than Aspergers but like a lot of these conditions there are massive overlaps (also with ADD and OCD too probably) so who knows. You could read Caged in Chaos for more examples if you are really wondering - excellent book written by a chronically late, chronically disorganised 16 yr old as she was then who is now reading English at Cambridge. He has no friends because he can't see the need but I wouldn't say he was particularly literal or lacking in a sense of humour. He has empathy but it would never occur to him to help anybody out unless they asked. He was dx at 4 and I don't think the final decision was the right one for all sorts of reasons and DCD has been added since by the occupational therapist.

I am not saying your DD has anything wrong with her sandyballs but only that there are similarities in our DC's early morning behaviour!

Also, my DS has a diagnosis of ASD, dyspraxia & dyslexia & he is incredibly organised - it is my "normal" DD who will be late!!!

oh shit OP i have this issue with my eight yer old DD, so what your telling me is that i have years of this to look forward too. great, jut great

Give her a time table and set a timer. 20 mins to get dressed, 20 mins to eat, 20 mins to do teeth/hair/coat/shoes on etc.

I told my boys when they started High School that if they missed the school bus I'd drive them in so they wouldn't be late, but I'd have to charge them for the ride. The high school is a 40 min drive away. The bus take just over an hour to get them there, classes start at 8.20am I never had to drive either one.
Ds used to see as soon as the morning news came on TV it was time to leave the house.

I'm 35 and I still struggle to get up and out on time in the morning

For a lot of children, starting secondary leads them to make a massive leap in maturity. You think it is going to be awful when they are in juniors and then suddenly they actually do OK. I must admit it helped to put the fear of God into DS before he went too. If he forgot something or didn't do his homework justice or was a bit slow in getting out the door at the end of yr 6, I'd say 'you wouldn't get away with that in secondary' and it seemed to help to approach it with the right level of seriousness. However, he is only in Yr 7 so it could all go pear shaped from now on as the teenage hormones kick in more and more!

I also think that the way secondary works helps the terminally scatty. The timetable and routine are a lot more rigid than junior school. You have a time table that never waivers, they have less trips, less special weeks like art weeks. There are policies that mean homework matters every time and if it is late you get some sort of punishment whereas ime, some weeks in juniors you do and but mostly you don't.

My 10 year old is useless at getting ready, he seems to have no internal clock. We break the morning into chunks, so certain things need to be done by certain times, inget him to look at the clock and tell me how much time he has left. It still doesn't stop frequent situations. I told him last week to put his his shoes on as we had to go NOW as it's time to leave for school. He said ok.

He disappears, I deal with the younger one. I then find him in the lounge with an iPad and some knitting. He couldn't remember a kind of stitch and needed to look at You Tube videos on it. He then had a melt down because I was cross. Apparently I never told him to get his shoes, I never told him it was time for school. He starts secondary soon, that'll be fun. Oh how I laughed when I read their detention procedures on forgotten kit, homework, lateness.

I need to install a warning system. A light in each room that's green, Turns orange when there's half an hour to go. 10 mins and it flashes red and an alarm goes. In the mean time I've started showing instructions. It's CODE ORANGE. cODE RED CODE RED WARNING WARNING

My 7 year old is very different, we have the usual moments but he was born with a sense of time. He'll eat breakfast, get dressed within half an hour, look at the clock tell me it's 7.30 and has half an hour to relax. He then sits there looking all smug.