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The Weekday Morning Rush Hour — Steps to Deal with Whining, Meltdowns and Other Delays
Posted by Jeff on April 5, 2008 408 views Comments (View Comments)Which do you think is worse? Sitting in a traffic jam on the way to school or having your preschooler meltdown right before you are on your way out the door to dropoff at daycare? Ok, neither is the best situation, but the meltdown or delay in actually leaving can raise stress levels rather quickly, especially if both parents need to leave to get to work on time.
I am wondering how most families deal with this morning “rush hour” with their kids (leave us comments below). My wife and I have had about 3 good mornings so far this year with getting both kids up, dressed, fed, and out the door without TV, whining or meltdowns. That is 3 days in 3 months — great! Nine more perfect days this year!! There needs to be a better method to our morning madness.
Ok this is. I am spending a Saturday morning alone at home and can now finally read the articles my wife sent me regarding morning routines, dealing with whining and other such valuable information. The first article deals with some tips to help create a “No-Yelling Morning Routine” (from Parents.com). This is great information for our household, as both Mommy and Daddy work and the kids attend a daycare school, The Malvern School.
Some of the best tips from the list include:
Pack your child’s lunch the night before and leave it in the fridge. Yes this is definitely a good thing to do but there are times when we just don’t have the energy to pack the night before, of course this then leads to a hectic morning. Check out my next blog post about A Hack on How to Pack your Preschooler’s Lunch.
Pack backpack and leave it-and anything else that needs to go to school-by the front door. This is simple to do and definitely keeps the morning routine less chaotic. Our children (3 1/2yr and 20 mo) pick up on the
fasturgentfrantic pace in the morning and this leads them to feeling rushed and stressed. Pack the bag and even stick it in the car the night before. This is definitely important if you need to take an extra pack of diapers or wipes to school.Get up 15 minutes earlier so you’re not rushed. Huh? Why would anyone want to do this? Of course that is not me, Jeff,talking that is the voice in my head of my wife. She loves to sleep and those 15 minutes of sleep in the morning really make her day. But shhhh, she doesn’t know that I’ve set the clocks in our bedroom 20 minutes a head. It’s better to see the clock say 6:10am when it is actually 5:50am! Those extra minutes sure come in handy and have made our mornings a little less rushed.
Give your child a to-do list. Even if your kids cannot read yet sit down with them and go over the morning routine (wake up, get dressed, eat breakfast, brush teeth, go to school). You can also draw your list which gives your child visual clues as what is next. But if any of you have a 3-4 year old you probably already know that they can remember things, like the smallest thing, or something that you told them 3 weeks ago. So give them a little reminder from time to time and say, “I know you can remember things, here is our morning routine,” and review that each morning for a week. The next week you may have to nudge them a bit but soon they’ll remember.
Keep the TV off. Seems like a simple thing to do. Not in our household, but we’re getting better at it. We haven’t had the TV on (in the morning) for maybe 10 days. Even if your child says “Only one show” you have to know that by giving in that “one show” will become “one more, pleeeeze” and once you say “No it’s time to go” the meltdown happens and your morning routine is out the window. We struggled with no morning TV for a few days but then things got easier and now no weekday morning TV unless it’s the weather report so we can dress the kids appropriately. I now allow Boo, who’s 3 1/2 years old, to watch 2 Diego or Dora episodes on the weekend mornings before Mommy and K-Bop wake up. It is a way for him to know that the weekends are TV time for him and weekdays are parent time.
So give some of the above tips a chance and I hope it leads to less chaotic mornings for everyone!
Please leave a comment if you have a good tip to share with us and other readers.
