Morning Routines to Start Your Day Well

We shift from bedtime wins to the next daily challenge: the morning routine. We lay out a practical way to plan, prep, and motivate so your family has less stress and you get out the door on time.

• Making a morning checklist for breakfast, teeth, clothes, backpacks and lunches
• Ordering the steps to match your child’s age and morning energy
• Estimating total time and fixing gaps by adjusting sleep or moving tasks to evening
• Tips to make the morning run smoothly and get everything done
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Transcript

Tempo: 120.0

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Hi, I'm Sheila and I'm here to help you be their parent. In the last episode, we created a workable bedtime routine to get your child in bed on time and hopefully to stay for the night. How's it going? Have you ironed out the challenges? Is everyone getting more efficient with their time? Have you added in things? Have you taken things out? Well, now that you are getting a handle on bedtime, let's tackle the morning routine. Whether you need to get your kids to daycare, school, or your homeschooling family, having a routine to count on in the morning will help your day start smoothly. Just like we did for our bedtime routine, you need to create a list of what needs to happen in the morning before the start of your day, such as breakfast, brushing their teeth, getting dressed for the day, packing backpacks, and packing lunches. But what else do you need to add? Okay, now that you have your list, you're going to put them into an order that makes sense for your family. This is where you will need to use your best judgment on how to help your kids be successful. When my kids were little, they needed their breakfast to be one of the first things they did. As they got older, it changed to one of the last things they did before they left for school. Also consider that if your child isn't a morning person, you're going to want to add to the top of your routine a 10 to 15 minute window for them to become fully awake. It might be that they sit and snuggle with you or that they find a comfy spot and listen to some music. Whatever it takes to help them feel awake so they can get on with their day. Now that you've got your list, you're going to figure out how much time it's going to take to complete your list, and then if that time frame is going to fit into your time from when your child wakes up until your family is walking out the door. If it doesn't, you have some options. One, you can adjust your bedtime and wake up times to give you that perfect window from when they get up to leaving for the day. Or two, you move some things into your evening routine, such as packing their lunch, picking out their clothes, and making sure they have everything they need in their backpacks: homework, library books, and even putting the backpack near the laptop while you charge it overnight if your child has a laptop that they need for school. Also make sure if they are in band that their instrument is also near the backpack. Having everything all set the night before can really help your morning to move along quicker. Now, even within that, there are some things you could do ahead over the weekend to help out even your evening routine. Such as if you say you buy a big bag of chips and you divide it out into a baggie every morning to pack in their lunch, pack that up on Saturday. Divide it up, make five bags so you're set for the week. You could also do the same thing with fruits, veggies, dips. You get the idea. Also make yourself a lunch station that has all the non-perishable things in one spot in a cabinet or in your pantry that you can quickly grab to pack lunches. You could also do the same thing in your fridge for the perishable items. Dedicate a shelf or drawer to have all the packed lunch items in it ready to go so that when Monday rolls around, you are set. And then another thing you could do on the weekends is you could put outfits together and fold them up together and maybe dedicate a drawer in their dresser that has all their outfits for the week all set and ready to go. Or you could consider buying one of those uh hanging shelf closet organizers that um they attach to the closet rod and it gives you between five and seven little shelves. We did this with my kids and we'd pick out outfits for the week and put it in there. When they were really young and they had specific activities on certain days, then we set it up that it went Monday through Friday. But once we didn't have those things or they got a little bit older and they could understand to pick what they needed for that day's activities, then they pick their own. So your job is to make sure it's, you know, the outfits are school appropriate as well as weather appropriate. And then they get some choice in the matter of what they pick for what day. So those are very helpful to do on the weekends. And so if you have all that done, then your evenings can go quick as well as your mornings because you're really setting yourself up for success. Now, one more thing to you may have to attack here. Um, just like our bedtime routine, uh, you will want to create a written or visual schedule to help keep everyone on track. And unlike our bedtime routine, if your child is being really slow pokey, it's going to affect your morning routine and getting out the door on time. Versus at bedtime, if they're being slow pokey, you've got some wiggle room because it's just putting them to bed a little bit later and you can work on that. So to help keep them on time, use timers for each step of the process. If it's one of those random mornings that your child is just in slow gear, always have a reward in mind that you could put out there to help get them moving so they can be on time, like some time to read before heading out of the house, or a treat to go into their lunchbox, or a little more screen time in the evening. However, if it is a chronic issue, use a sticker chart with a bigger reward after they have earned a set amount of stickers to really help them keep the idea that they need to keep moving every morning. Hopefully, these ideas will help you start a process to have a smoother running morning. If you find this podcast helpful, subscribe, share, and come follow along on Instagram. I appreciate you and your efforts to help your children be successful in life.