Are your mornings really stressful with everyone rushing around at the last minute, running out of the door with forgotten PE kits and work bags, arriving at school with no time to spare? If this sounds like you, it may be time to take a long hard look at your morning routine.
Sit down with pen and paper and work backwards. For example, if you have a school run, write down when you need to leave the house in order to ensure that you arrive calmly and panic free. Then work out how long it takes to get everyone up, washed, dressed and breakfasted and work backwards to give you a getting up time for everyone. In our house, we need to leave the house by around 7:50 which gets us to school in 15 minutes before the traffic builds up. My daughter then has about 10 minutes sitting in the car, listening to her music and generally chilling before walking into school. In order to achieve this, I get up at 6:30am and get her up at 7am. This gives her time not only to get up but also to pack her school bag. If I got up at 7, it would make the whole morning very rushed. Sometimes just getting up half an hour earlier makes a big difference.
Ideally of course her school bag would be packed the evening before but some battles are not worth fighting! Having said that, there are a few things you can do the night before to make the whole getting out of the house thing less stressful.
- Get as much ready the evening before as possible. If you make packed lunches, make sure the bags are visible for the morning and pack ahead anything that doesn’t need to be refrigerated like crisps. It gives you a head start and you get that warm, organised glow when you totter down in the morning.
- School uniforms can be hung up ready to go which also means you can check that your child has a clean shirt, socks etc.
- Put anything that needs to go out with you the next day by the front door so that it isn’t forgotten, anything from musical instruments to ‘own clothes day’ money.
This can all be part of a written down evening routine which I find really helpful at the end of a day when you are feeling tired. You can just look at your routine and work your way through it. See my previous post about routines here.
Having an organised morning gets the day started off right and can make a real difference to how everyone feels.
