to find school mornings so stressful I'm on.the verge of tears?

[Yolo89]

So I have a 4 and 7 year old and I find school mornings so stressful. My youngest never wants to get dressed or go to nursery, they fight, they scream about some toy I need to find now as their life depends on it. All amongst a messy house tidied yesterday. I just can't cope with this stress. Too much shouting and screaming from.them. I then get very agitated and unfortunately have peri menopause which can make you very irritable and angry and have a lack of control over these emotions.

My question is - do you get very stressed before school days woth two young children or more? Or do you think mu symptoms play a large part in this?

I'm so worried my children are mirroring my own anger and this will become their default mechanism. I am working on a way to make myself better though it is not easy.

thank you please go gently

I loose my shit on many a morning, esp if it's a work day for me. My kids are 2 and 5. I find the last few weeks they have woken earlier and it really helps. Plus we have new pets so they now leap out of bed to feed them :) I have no tv or playing until ready with shoes on..then if it's dry I try and get them out to the front garden. A tick list of jobs for the 5 year old did help massively.

Yes to prepping as much as possible the night before. I used to make lunches in the morning - no more, as it means I get stressed if/when the kids wig out for the last minute.

Also, I discovered that the younger kids can't read the time, so they took their leaving cues from the sound of my voice. Nothing happened in the morning until I started shouting, which -for them - was the cue for them to start getting ready, the problem was that I only raised my voice when we were already late and I was stressed out. (As I realised this, I experimented with raising my voice earlier, which made them get dressed, but didn't feel very nice for me even though I was calm at the time).

So - we now have a clock for old people which has the time digitally, so everyone can read it. They know that if we leave past 8.30, we will be late, as we went through a stage where we all looked at the clock before we left to help them make the connection between leaving time and when we arrived at school. The clock has a medicine alarm on it at 8.15 which means we have to get shoes on and another at 8.30 to tell us to leave. All of these things have taken the pressure off me and my shouty voice being the only cue to action.

The other thing that has worked is giving each kid a role and explaining that we are a team whose goal it is to get to school on time, but the kids have to be old enough to understand it. Each of my kids have different roles- oldest has to remain calm and get bikes out, middle has to remind everyone that it is time to go at 8.15, youngest... well, I have yet to tackle that one, but will do one day soon!

Good luck with it all xx

My life is similar. The truth is that I get up too late and am generally exhausted from
The general tidying of the house that I haven't sorted out the specifics. It all runs like clockwork if I iron and lay out their clothes the night before, pack their bags for them and make packed lunch the previous evening. Provided I get out of bed on time. I end up yelling at them when I'm late.

Classical music may or may not calm the children but if it calms the parents, I say go for it! I don't have any top tips OP, as they've all been said already, but I wanted to say your DH is the most unreasonable one here. Give him one DC to entirely get ready and you do the other. Ant backsliding - you develop an early morning G m or brisk walk habit on Drs orders and he does it all!

'Any' backsliding

I feel for you! I found mornings horrific and was delighted to have a new job where I leave early and dp does the mornings (I then do pick up, tea and bedtime which are much nicer!)

Dp manages the mornings better than I do. He is very consistent with times and rewards (he has a system where if they are dressed and downstairs by 7.30 they can watch tv while having breakfast). He is also better at doing their hair!

I prep like a mofo. The night before, I make sure my and DS’s coats, shoes and bags are ready and where I need them to be, I lay out clothes, make sure I have my keys, I put milk in his cup and put the cup in the fridge next to a bowl of fruit for him. (He has breakfast at nursery)

In the morning I get myself ready before I wake him. I don’t leave too much time for him in the morning as that’s where you run into danger that the time will be filled by fannying about, making a mess, having tantrums.

Same here - I prep as much as I can the night before. I have a list of what each DC (I have 3 - 9, 7 and 4) needs for that day and I just glance at that - much better than trying to remember.

DC watch TV as they gradually get up/ are told to get up until I'm ready to come through and start breakfast. TV then goes off and doesn't go back on again. Once they have all had breakfast and got dressed then DC1 does piano practice and DC2 reads - this keeps them occupied and (more importantly) from killing each other until we are all ready to go.

I only have one DD who has just turned 7 and just getting us ready Is enough. I always make sure I make her sandwiches the night before and we have a morning routine which helps. The only problem is if we don't follow it I tend to forget something.

Yes it’s really hard. My rules are:
Everyone is dressed and ready to go before tv, breakfast, playing happens.
Homework done the night before
Bags, lunches, etc all done the night before

That definitely helps me.

I think one of the issues is that schools start too late, my eldest dc is at an independent school can drop them at 8 and the younger at nursery at 7.45.

I find it reasonably OK, with the night before prep, because we just get dressed, have breakfast and go.

But when I go to her ballet class at 9am on a weekend it is so much harder as there's more time to faff or start playing etc.

I find mornings stressful too, I have 5 kids, 14, 9, 8, 5 and 18 months, 3 of which need to get to school for 8. 3 also have ASD which adds to the fun!

I get everything ready that can be got ready the night before, uniforms laid out, lunches made, coats and bags by the door with school shoes so nobody can lose anything or forget anything.

We have to leave at 7.30 so I get up at about 5.30 to get myself showered and dressed before they start getting up at 6. Definitely leave lots of time so nobody needs to rush around it really helps!
That way if anyone goes into meltdown (happens every morning in my house with at least 1 child) we have enough time to not be panicking about it making everyone late.

I learnt this through spending way too many mornings flapping and stressing with everyone losing their shit over just about everything. It's all in the organisation and getting up as early as possible

We found it was less stressful to get up later so there was only time to dress, scoff food and clean teeth. The shouting I remember but was worse as teenagers tbh

I also have a 4yr old and 7yr old in year R and year 2.
I have found for me the main way to make mornings as stress free as possible is to make sure school bags are packed the night before, including any admin like letters, reading records and lunch menus, aswell as water bottles and snack. On Fridays DS is allowed to take in a toy from home for golden time in the afternoon. This is chosen by him on Thursday eve and put in his bag so there is no last minute decisions in the morning on what to bring and meltdowns when he can’t find what he wants. Bags are then left by the front door along with their shoes and coats.
Uniforms are also laid out the night before on the back of their bedroom chairs.
In the morning my alarm goes off at 7am and I get myself dressed and the DC’s breakfast ready (cereal or toast). They are then up at 7.15, and come down and eat their breakfast. Then it’s back upstairs to get dressed, do teeth and do DD’s hair.
If once they are ready there is still enough time before we have to leave for school, they get to watch something on TV - this is generally a good motivator for them to eat their breakfast in a timely manner and get dressed without a fuss. I do not allow them to get toys out in the morning as they always want whatever is at the bottom of the toy box/cupboard and get EVERYTHING out which means the living room quickly looks like a toy shop lorry has crash landed in it and I don’t want to return to a messy house after work.
We are out the door by 8.30am. Fortunately we live just a 5 min walk from school so are there in plenty of time for the gates opening at 8.40.
If they have generally been well behaved during the school mornings for the week, they get to have a fancier breakfast such as muffins or pancakes at the weekend.
Good luck OP and I hope the school mornings become better soon.