Managing the Morning Rush

Child eating breakfast in the morning before school — It’s 7:25am, you should have left the house 10min ago, and you’re already picturing your colleagues judging you for arriving late at work, one more time. For the last hour, you’ve been nagging everyone to get ready. Your oldest is now finally waiting out the door, but your youngest started drawing. You tell her “put your shoes on” once, twice, three times… and then you lose your cool. She finally drops her pencils and you help her putting on her shoes while she’s screaming that you’re the meanest mum in the whole entire world. You grab her backpack, everybody jumps in the car feeling upset.

And you ask yourself “where did that go wrong?”

The importance of the morning routine

How you go through these first morning hours sets the tone for the entire day. Just think about those mornings where you felt rushed and overwhelmed and you ended up yelling because your child wouldn’t listen otherwise… it’s likely that on your way to the office, you were feeling guilty and a bit angry at yourself, wondering why you couldn’t handle things better. And this might have snowballed further into your day, impacting your ability to focus at work or your relationship with your colleagues…

Of course, this routine will also affect your child for it will determine their emotional state during the transition from home to school. Have you noticed more clinginess at drops offs on the days when you had a particularly rough morning? And when the morning routine goes smoothly, your child happily hugs you goodbye and runs to play with his schoolmates? That’s because you both need to feel connected to each other, and if there’s been a bit of tension, you both want to hang on to each other in order to reestablish that connection.

Child waiving goodbye to her mum at school drop-off

Why getting ready can become such a struggle?

Mornings can be extremely stressful. There’re a number of tasks that need to be achieved in a limited amount of time and any unplanned event or slight delay might throw off the whole routine. The more prepared and structured we are, the easier it will be. However, we also need some flexibility, allow for extra time as things always take longer with kids, and be prepared to modify the routine if something goes wrong.

As parents, we need to be mindful of our child developmental stage. Sometimes we assume our child should know how to get ready by himself because this is what we do every day. But we forget how young he still is! Children might be able to perform one or two tasks by themselves but having them independently realising the whole sequence might not be a realistic expectation. For instance, a 6-year-old will probably need to be reminded that after finishing her breakfast, she has to bring the bowl in the kitchen and go brush her teeth instead of playing with legos.

One of the trickiest aspects of the morning is that, although we do know that our child needs guidance, we might not be available to assist them step by step. We might have other children to take care of, all with different needs. We also need to get the lunchboxes ready, make sure the right outfits are packed for extracurricular activities, that we’re returning the library books, etc. And of course we have to get ready ourselves! Depending on the age of your child, you might want to try visual activity charts or checklist boards to help them move through the whole sequence independently. But you might also have to be prepared to constantly check in and remind your child that “now is not the time to read this book in your undies, you have to put your uniform on”. It could also be easier to set aside some time to go through some of the tasks with your child, so you’re only focused on him.

The mindful versus the unaware parent

Mother buttoning her child's shirt to get ready for school — A study interviewing 10 parents of pre-school children found that all parents experienced some kind of stress due to time constrains of the morning routine. However, the amount of stress differed between two groups of parents, which were categorised as the unaware parents and the mindful parents (Sussman, 2016).

The unaware parents were mostly focused on time and, as a result, they were not attuned to their child. These parents did not take into account the child’s developmental stage in their expectations, and they were not able to use regulation strategies, which led to escalation and disconnection. Put simply, these parents were pushed by the clock, disconnected from both themselves and their child.
By contrast, the mindful parents were attuned to their own emotional state and to their child. These parents were also stressed by the time constraints but they had put strategies in place to regulate themselves and to be present for their child. For them, the parent-child interaction was calm, regulated and interactive.

In my opinion, the main finding of this study is that mindfulness is the key to overcome morning troubles. This means having awareness of your own needs, and your child’s needs so you can attend to both and remain regulated. Of course, being present to your child and patiently supporting her while she refuses to put her socks on is time-demanding, but yelling and threatening to take privileges off is equally taxing and not that effective, don’t you think?

Tips for a Smooth Morning

Assess your night time routine. Your evening routine will inevitably spill over into your morning routine. This is true for preparation, if lunch boxes are ready and clothes are laid out at night, it will be much easier to get ready quickly in the morning. But you also need a relaxing bedtime routine allowing you and your child to get a good night sleep and wake up rested.
Be flexible. Allow enough time to manage meltdowns and refusals, or for the unexpected to happen. Especially if you’re trying to foster your child’s independence, remember that every task is likely to take longer if your child is to achieve it by himself. Also, try to pause before saying “no” to your child: sometimes it’s easier to play with them for 5min so they’re in a great mood to get ready by themselves, than to refuse the playtime and nag them all the steps of the routine…
Be mindful of your child development’s stage. It’s not because you do this every day that your child “should” be able to do it alone. Young children will need to be reminded of the next task, they won’t be able to accomplish the whole routine by themselves. And sometimes it’s easier to help for a while, even if you know that your child would be perfectly able to do the task by himself. Your child might actually be seeking connection when asking for help.
Manage yourself. To be attuned to your child’s emotional state, you need to take care of yourself first. Some mums like to wake up early to make sure they have a bit of time for themselves before waking up their child. This could be tricky if you’re not a morning person, but this self-care ritual could be as short as 5min to make yourself a cup of coffee. Alternatively, make sure you had some relaxing time in the evening.