Mornings are hard.
It doesn’t matter what your family looks like or what the responsibilities of your mornings are, mornings are hard. My normal morning includes getting seven people, including myself, up, dressed, fed, in the truck, and headed down the driveway by 7:30. Then, I drive to town where I drop off four children at three different schools by 8:05.
It is an adventure. Every morning.
In the last year, I have come up with a pretty good system to keep the family as a whole on time. But before I tell you about that, I want you to tell you something else first. There has been more than one morning that I got into the truck with wet hair, no makeup on, my shoes untied, and a loaf of raisin bread in my hand. As we are driving down the dirt road, the kids are putting on socks and shoes, hopefully they grabbed two of each that match, looking for backpacks, and yelling about missing sweatshirts and coats. I would open the bag of raisin bread, pulling out one slice at a time, and toss it behind me into the back seat, hoping it would make contact with the child who was strapped into a car seat in the third row. This happened more than I would like to admit.
Ok, I know you just giggled at the mental image of me hurling food into the back of the truck like a crazy person, as you should, but the truth is it was awful. I started my day rushed and behind. There was always some kind of fight, and there were often tears. More than once I had to rush one child out of the car so that I could drive to the next school in hopes that the next drop off would not be late. I hated that my last words in the morning to one of my kids was, “grab your backpack! Go!!!”
I decided that this year would be different, so I made some changes to my morning routine. I get up and get myself completely ready for my day first. It took a little while to get used to getting up earlier, but having myself ready before the crazy starts makes a huge difference. Then, I wake up the family.
Over half of my kids can not tell time yet, and the other’s skills are growing, but by no means mastered. So saying “you have to be up and dressed by 7:05” just doesn’t work. I was the one who kept us “on task” all morning and it was creating lots of conflict between me and the kids with me nagging ALL. MORNING. LONG.
“Get up.”
“Why aren’t you dressed?”
“No, you can’t wear your swimsuit.”
“Go put your underwear on.”
“You need socks.”
“That’s on backwards.”
And so on and so forth.
Now we just follow the clock:
When the minute hand is in the blue section, it’s time to get up.
The green section is to get dressed.
Pink is time for breakfast.
Yellow is time to find socks and shoes.
Red means it is time to go get in the truck and put your buckles on.
It works amazingly, because I am no longer the bad guy in the morning. I just point out what the clock says, it’s the bad guy now.
It was really easy to make too. I just bought a clock like this one, took the plastic front off (very easy), then colored the sections in with colored pens. $10 and 15 minutes later, the fighting, tears, and bread-throwing are no longer part of our morning routine.
(Mostly. I still keep a loaf of bread on hand, just in case.)
