My son hates getting ready to go anywhere, need help

[Munchkin291]

Going anywhere, from school to the cinema is a task in our house and has been for as long as I can remember. All it takes is something small to set things off and everything goes downhill from there. I have tried lots of different things from getting him up earlier, bringing his bedtime forward, getting him dressed myself and nothing that have tried seems to be very effective in the long run. I am running out of ideas and patience, as this affects the whole family, my daughter often has to walk herself to school, so that she is not late, this upsets both her and me because she would prefer that I walk her. Some advice would be greatly appreciated.

How old is he?

Let him pick his own clothes but give only 2 choices: Do you want the red pants or the blue pants?
Make it into a race: DS, I bet you cannot get dressed before me!
Print out some pics of him doing the things he must do in the morning, like eating breakfast, brushing teeth and getting dressed, and put them up in his room.
Have you tried a reward chart of some sort?
If it's time to take DD to school and he isn't ready, take him out in his pajamas.
Make sure he knows what is happening: DS, we're going to take DD to school and then we're going to play in the park. We can only go to the park if you are wearing clothes instead of pyjamas.

Does he do this if you're going somewhere that he wants to go as well? Or is the problem that he doesn't want to go anywhere?

He is 7, most of the time he does pick his own clothes and i have tried making it more fun by having races or getting him to shout the items of clothing out and that is what we have to put on. I will try the reward chart as i haven't done this, we done this when he was having problems at meal times and it seemed to work. This is a constant problem even if he really wants to go to a certain place, he is fine as soon as we step out the door but will make a fuss of the smallest thing before we leave.

I'd try the reward chart thing. It has worked a bit with my 3 yr ds.

Basically what mainly works with him is motivation. This week getting ready really quick so he could go & feed next doors cat before we went to where we were really going - I've never seen him mice so fast or be so compliant!

I couldn't tell the time at that age, but maybe you could get a countdown clock or something?

Ultimately I'd go with tough love. If he's not ready, he doesn't get to go or goes under prepared. With my ds, he was using not getting ready to try & not go to nursery. He ended up in the car with no socks or shoes & no tshirt or coat on! He's been a bit better since! (It was a warmish day we could get away with it without killing him!)

My 7yo has been like this, but is much better. What i find works well is I say "We will be leaving in 10 minutes, you need to have got dressed/put shoes on/something else. If you aren't ready we won't go/you won't do X" After about 5 minutes, I do a general shout of "5 minutes to go", then a "two minutes to go", then "everyone by the door"

The "I'll take you to school in pyjamas/naked" doesn't work for him. he says "fine, I'm ready to go" and would be quite happy to go

Occasionally beat the clock (or me counting) works. But for every day the letting him take his own responsibility works best. He hates leaving what he's doing, even if what he's doing isn't brilliant and he's going to something fun. Giving him the control of when he stops seems to work better.

Thanx everyone, I went and got a digital clock today as he is already learning time in school, so he can learn the time and hopefully get ready a bit easier if he can see for himself that it is time to go.I have always let him know how long he has, before leaving or when it is bedtime, the 2 minute and 5 minute warning have been used in my house forever.

My husband thinks tough love may be the answer, my opinion never mattered as a child so I think i do give my kids a lot of choice. I do punish him by taking his Xbox away or no TV, but this just fuels his temper and really doesn't make the morning go any easier.

I am going to give the reward chart a go to see how that works out and hopefully if he can see the time for himself it might make life a bit easier in the morning.