Is waking up your child in the morning for school always a war? Is he too slow to have breakfast, get ready and not listen?
If cannon fire is needed in the morning to get your child out of bed, you’re not alone! And if you don’t want to get up, make a fuss and would like to watch cartoons a little longer, you are welcome on board!
If your problem is that she wakes up late and you can’t get to school often on time, I understand you perfectly well.
For years I myself found myself waking up 3-4 or even 5 children of different ages to make them have breakfast, take them to school, all possibly without wars, endless fights, without having to call them several times as the minutes passed inexorably.
Here are some pointers straight from the battlefield.
A mom asks:
I have two children and it’s a mess every morning. To accommodate our times they have to wake up at half past six, we all have to go to work early, there is school. Yet it is a struggle! They don’t want to get up, they fight who has to go to the bathroom first, they don’t want to wash and dress when it’s time to finish breakfast. Turning off the TV and cartoons is again a war, you can never have a quiet morning. How can I do?
The morning represents the start of the day and, if we want, it is possible to make this moment more harmonious.
To do this, it is important to optimize times and at the same time do it in a pleasant way, both for us and for our children, also respecting their needs.
6 ways to wake up your children in the morning, get to school on time, avoiding anger, endless fights and scolding
1. Wake up and try to stay calm!
I know it is difficult because you are running out of time and you do not want to get up in the morning … I can assure you that calm is the first fundamental thing for everyone.
Because if your child or your children see you calm, they perceive that the situation is under control and it will be much easier for them.
It is even more so if your child is a sleeper and is slow to get ready in the morning.
To stay calm, in addition to taking a few deep breaths, you can go deeper into the true why, what triggers your anger, try to understand what bothers you, why it bothers you so much that they don’t want to wake up or if they are slow to get ready in the morning.
You can ask yourself:
“Ok, but why do I get so bothered? Is it because I hate repeating things over and over again? Or is it because I at first hate being in a hurry? Maybe it’s because I think of all the parents who make it and I get angry because I can’t? “
Among these questions, try to identify the motivation that is valid for you, the real cause.
This will help you to have a resource to be able to work on the reason, in order to be able to be more peaceful and serene always, during the day.
2. Strong organization
Even if you already seem to wake up very early, set the alarm again ten minutes earlier and take those ten minutes just for you, to stay a little bit in bed, in order to do things even more calmly, to have a quiet breakfast. I can guarantee you that those minutes you take away from sleep are really essential to be more peaceful and organized .
They will be precious minutes to be able to do the things calmly that they require and you will have a benefit during the day, rather than a disadvantage.
They will help you wake up the kids in the morning to go to school on time and avoid crises.
3. Avoid long explanations in the morning if possible
When you go to wake up your kids and they obviously don’t want to get up and still want to sleep, what I suggest you do first is avoid explanations.
Avoid explaining and making long rantings as you could make the situation worse by irritating them more and more.
Avoid phrases like:
“Eh I understand, but you have to get up!”
“Every morning the same story!”
“You have to go to school, dad has to go to work, mom has to go … and do the pleasure, you have to understand!”
“Look, tomorrow in life …”
Avoid all these things especially with young children as they are asphyxiating and your child does not understand them as he does not understand rational language yet.
And they don’t even work with a teenager, because in the moments of awakening rationality there is very little of it.
You are coming from the planet of Morpheus and really those “why you have to get up” do not interest you. You just need someone to embrace the emotion of “I don’t want to wake up!” .
You, in the morning, would prefer the boring BI BEEP BI BEEP of the alarm clock or that Cinderella’s fairy godmother would come to you with her magic wand and tell you:
“It’s time to go to work. Oooh I know you don’t want my honey. Puppy! I understand you. So wait, I’ll give you five more minutes, then I’ll give you some cuddles. I’m going to prepare your nice steaming breakfast, your favorite biscuits, your favorite fruit, you can stay quiet ” .
Then after five minutes the fairy godmother comes back and tells you:
“So here we go! Oooh I know it’s really tough. Don’t worry, I’ll help you. I move the covers, slowly, slowly, I’ll take you, I’ll let you down. Look here are the slippers “ .
Wouldn’t that be cool? Absolutely!
It’s the same for your children!
So if you want to save your skin in the morning, I suggest you be the fairy godmother and go and wake them up by welcoming their emotion a priori .
Perhaps it will be necessary to welcome your emotion first, with or without fairy godmother, but then welcome theirs.
Go to them and you can say:
“Mamma Mia!! this alarm clock that rang, these children who don’t want to get up. Love, you are right. Then stay here a moment longer. I turn on the light, raise the shutter a little, go over there and prepare breakfast. You sleep a little longer, stay a little longer and roll over, slowly, open your eyes … “
In the meantime, go do something there and come back after a few minutes:
“So are we there? No, we are not there. Capers !! here we need a crane, wait, come and I’ll lift you up … “
And help them get up at the cost of picking them up, physically helping them, accompanying them to the bathroom, helping them get dressed …
If you think they will become spoiled and will not learn by themselves, you are wrong, because they can learn in more peaceful moments: in the afternoon and in the evening when you have to get dressed and put on your pajamas, in the summer, on the weekend, there are many other moments. They will not run, you will not run, you will not take this risk.
But in that moment, if they need help, the ideal is to help them.
Feeling understood in this way, they will immediately avoid having a fight, getting on the defensive saying “but I don’t want to, but you don’t understand, you are a bad mom”. You will avoid all these problems and conflicts in the morning.
Also always remember that threats and harsh tones tend to create bigger and bigger conflicts and, generally, do not resolve situations.
With a soft and gentle tone it will be easier to wake up your child without making him angry and guarantee a peaceful good morning to the whole family.
4. Your smile in the morning favors the awakening of the whole troop
The same thing is true for you and maybe also for your partner or your partner: if you wake up at the last minute in a hurry, angry because you have to go to work, angry because every morning is always the same story, of course you know very well that this does not help everyone awaken.
So, adopt these tips first of all with yourself, because they will help you to get up on the right foot, to be a little more sunny, a little more positive, a little more calm.
Because your children, breathing this air, will want to get up and when they wake up they will be able to see and talk with smiling people, with sunny, calm people, who want to start the day.
You have to go to work anyway, we might as well look for a way to smile starting in the morning because otherwise everything becomes very difficult with the children.
5. My child is always attached to cell phones, TVs and cartoons
I admit that having to fight in the morning at seven, seven thirty, quarter to seven with television or screens is a battle lost in advance, because television or telephone, from this point of view, are very powerful.
I suggest you to import in an authoritative, not authoritative way, but to import and if possible avoid turning on the television and screens in the morning.
It is obvious that your children will not want and make a fuss. So try to welcome their emotion and understand. You can say:
“I understand you, I know you like cartoons. Mom likes movies too. Mum and Dad like the news too. From this morning it has been done like this. To meet you – avoid saying “if you want” – to meet you we look at them a little more in the evening, we look at them a little more in the afternoon, but in the morning it doesn’t turn on ” .
Obviously they will make their grievances, but if you welcome their emotion, if you show that you are welcoming, you are understanding them, you are not accusing them, they will understand.
Then the ideal, if possible, is that you can have breakfast and interact with them, otherwise it becomes even more boring and the desire for television increases.
When I had children in foster care, there were often at least five children, of different ages, whom I had to wake up at once and take to school, to have breakfast and to dress, from middle to elementary school, to kindergarten.
I had to organize myself, I had to wake up much earlier, but being able to do everything calmly and above all by welcoming their emotion is what helped me so much. Going to them and understanding them, knowing that it was difficult for them, joking, understanding how they felt, helping them: only in this way I had no difficulty.
Boys and children began to appreciate this modality, they saw that even if they tried because maybe they wanted to make me angry, in truth they couldn’t, so maybe they used other ways, but in the morning it was possible to go to school on time and in a manner serene.
If you want to learn more about how to solve your children’s tantrums and reactions without yelling and scolding, you can read this article: Complete Guide to Children’s Tantrums (if you ignore them they multiply)
6. How to prevent the unexpected with the quality of the relationship during the week
One last very important tip is: keep your day, your week at bay.
If your children feel that they are not getting enough quality attention during the week, in the evening or during the day, in the morning, when they know that you are in a hurry and that you have to take care of them because otherwise you waste time, they will all start. that construction at the level of emotions to be able to tell you that they need you, they will try, without malice, to waste your time because they need to attract attention.
If you give them more quality attention during the week or in the evening they won’t need to be nagging in the morning when it’s time to run and shoot.
Good wake up!
If you want to learn more about how to give your child quality attention, you can read here the article Quality time with children: here are 4 ways to guarantee it
