3 Tips to making school mornings easier.
For parents, weekday mornings seem like they are primed for failure, just by their very nature: There are countless to-dos but not a lot of time to do them. Add little people to the mix, (in my case 4,)and it’s no wonder the experience can leave us feeling weary, defeated and stressed. Mornings are particularly painful when you’re a parent, even if you’re already a morning person. Your goal isn’t just to hustle your children to school or daycare or wherever — it’s to hustle them there on time, with everything they need for the day, looking presentable, wearing the correct uniform, preferably having eaten, so you can get where you’re going on time, too. No wonder so many of us wake up in the morning and dread the pandemonium and pressure to come. Let’s face it, by the time the kids emerge from their beds, they usually have between 30minutes to an hour to cram everything in that they need to do. That may sound like a fair amount of time, but grumbling, moping and dragging their feet takes up ALOT of this time.
So I have included 3 tips that I implement or keep in mind as I am going about the morning. These are not guaranteed and will not stop the tantrums, or necessarily avoid the yelling and frustration that is inevitable some mornings, but I hope they are useful in some way.
1.Be Organised.
This is perhaps the biggest tip I can give and can make an insane amount of difference to your morning. The better prepared and organised that you are, the less stressed (in theory,) you will be come early morning. It just takes some of the pressure off as you do not have to rush about finding things or doing little jobs that could have been done earlier. One of the things that I routinely do is make the lunches for the next day as soon as we walk in the door. We unpack school bags straight away and I make the lunches for the net day at 3pm and pop them in the fridge. This was they are done long before dinner and bath time begins and I have saved myself 15 minutes the next morning. I also make a point of laying out the smaller children’s uniform or clothes in their rooms the night before, so all they need to do is grab them and put them on. They do not need to come and ask where anything is in the morning or worry about having to locate a pair of socks, when we are in a rush. We also attempt to get the teenager to pack his subject books the night before into his folder and have his computer full charged ready to take. In all honesty, some days I do this for him when he has long training sessions for sport in the afternoons.
2.Get Up Early.
Most mornings I drag myself out of bed around 5am. I do this for two reasons. 1. I usually like to walk for an hour, as it is the only time I can get in some exercise uninterrupted. 2. I like to have myself presentable, dressed and ready to face the day before I throw myself into getting the kids sorted. I find that if one person(me) at least is ready, I feel calmer and less stressed, as one of the big to dos is already done. It just takes a little pressure off. But even better is the fact that getting up earlier allows for some “me” or “alone” time. You may not be particularly inclined to exercise so early, and I don’t blame you, but perhaps you may read, meditate, pray or have a cup of coffee in peace. This just helps to get your mind settled and fill you cup a little before you start pouring it out to everyone else. And the big bonus is, it just allows a little more time to do all those things that need to be done in the mornings.
3. Keep Perspective.
This one is tricky, I’m not going to lie. It is so so easy to become flustered, overwhelmed and fed up all by the time you have left home at 8am. I mean we are talking fights over getting dressed, putting shoes one, getting in the car etc etc. But if we can successfully remind ourselves that the morning routine is just one relatively small part of the day, that no matter how challenging it was, it will be over and you will have the rest of the day ahead of you, then is becomes more manageable. Realistically, once that part of the day is over, we are heading home to a quieter house with less children, to work to a new environment, or anywhere else you need to go, it is a chance to reset and restart if you need to. It is a chance to take a minute and change the mood of the day and hopefully make it a less stressful one than it began. We can know that our children are safe and cared for at school or daycare and we can now focus on what it is that we need to do for the rest of the day. Yes, there are some mornings I leave school in tears and go home and have a cry, but then I can reset and try to focus on something else, knowing that at the end of the day my kids will be happy to see me.
Hopefully these tips will go some way to making your mornings a little less stressful and overwhelming. At the end of the day, you are doing the best that you can every single day, you are showing up, giving your all to your family and they love you for it. Not only that, they are thriving because of everything that you are doing for them. It can be so so difficult so see the bigger picture, to see past the mundane of every day and the relentlessness that comes with motherhood, but one day it will all be worth it, when they have flourished into amazing young adults, largely due to your time, effort and care.
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