Getting up in the Morning for School - How Do You Motivate Your Child?

Tell her that she is going to go to bed 15 minutes earlier every night until she can get up on time.

So if bedtime is 8:30, tonight it's 8:15. If she doesn't get up tomorrow, then bedtime that night is 8:00. If she wants to stay up until her regular bedtime, she'll learn to get up in the a.m. I did this with my GD and it only took one night of going to bed early. Now, within 10 minutes of my going in to wake her, she's up, has gone to the bathroom, and has put her clothes on!

I had this issue very briefly with my daughter when she was 6. I told her if she wasn't ready, we were going to leave without her because it wasn't fair of her to make her sister late for school. It only took one day leaving without her (hubby was still home). She was hysterical. She has never been late again. I had to make 2 school runs that day, but it was worth it.

It is interesting how you allow your 10 year old to "make you all late". You sure have given her a lot of power.
Motivation comes from within, you explain what needs to be done period. She either follows through or she does not.
For example, you will be leaving at exactly 8:30 whether she is ready or not. You can leave. She is 10. She will figure it out real fast.
Tell her that if she is not up on time, she will have to go to bed earlier the night before. Like and hour earlier.
Explain that when you are late for work you lose money and she will have to "pay" you the difference. Dishes, clothes, dusting, sweeping. whatever you need done.

Mom, you have seen that you can't force her to do what you want. So the only thing you can do is do what needs to be done and move forward. Trust me, she will catch up.

B.
Family Success Coach

From puberty onward I made my mum's mornings hellish.

I am NOT a morning person. My braincells take awhile (like an hour) to get up the gumption to start firing, and sometimes even longer to rub together to get a spark. ((Unless it's some kind of emergency. I can be fully functional in 1/18th of a second if it's an emergency. Normal mornings just don't count.)).

As an adult, for normal mornings, I have my alarm set an hour and ten minutes early. It plays music, and I just shut it off over and over.

My son UNTIL puberty was Mr Cheerful in the mornings. But now that puberty has made it's appearance, he appears to have caught the curse. So I wake him up the way I prefer to be.

a) I give him a lot of time
b) I do it happy / loving/ silly
c) I bring in biology (OMG...I bet your reeeeeally have to pee! And just keep talking about needing to pee until he's racing for the bathroom. Bwahahaha)

When he's a bit older (he's 9.5 right now, my thought is 9th grade = time to learn how to screw up and fix it) I'll make him responsible for getting himself up. SURE he's going to miss a few days... but I'd rather have him learn that lesson when it doesn't really matter (highschool) than when it does as an adult in college/work/military. This is a conscious decision. My friends in highschool that were 100% responsible for getting themselves up and ready and to school would screw up occasionally (and their parents treated them like a peer... "Oh I HATE when that happens!"... because everyone does oversleep from time to time, so they had a mentor to bounce ideas off of instead of someone to fear)... but within a very short period of time, they were good to go and had ironed the wrinkles out. Myself and my friends whose parents literally drug us out of bed (or threw water on us, etc.) were drug out of bed all 4 years. We were never 'allowed' to make mistakes in our parents' houses... so we didn't learn how to be responsible for getting up until we were on our own. it really doesn't take very long, but it's a MUCH bigger deal when you're military, or paying for college, or can lose a job... then when it's first period.

I used alarm clocks. It is their responsibility to get up and get ready for school. If they are not ready they go to school the way they are. A few good trips to school half dressed would solve that problem.

Yes, alarm clocks are loud but that is their purpose to get you up. And being that the clock is on the other side of the room, you do have to get up to turn it off.

Have her lay out her clothes the night before.

All this is practice for the real world and getting to class and work on time. No one the adult world is going to keep bugging you to get your work done.

A little tough love. No she would not be making us late for school. Or she would be walking to school. You have a schedule and everyone on that schedule has to pitch in to make it work.

The other S.

I had friends with this problem. She just told the boys that she was leaving at x time, and if they weren't ready, they were going to school dressed as they were (i.e, in their pajamas). It only took one day of throwing clothes on in the car for them to be up and ready to go on time.

Part of the difficulty with this approach is that you may be feeling embarrassed if your child shows up at school dressed inappropriately. But try to let go of the feeling that it's your responsibility or reflects badly on you. As others have said, it's a lot better to learn to be responsible for yourself when you're 10, and the consequences are minimal, than when you're 20 or 30 and the consequences have real life impact. And no 10-year-old has the right to make the rest of the family late!

In situations like these, I think natural consequences are best. I assume there are consequences at her school for being tardy - let her be responsible for her own actions. When it got to that point with my son, I would wake him up and then said nothing more. I was fully prepared to explain to the principal what I was doing, and most will back you up. Once he was late a few times and had to explain to his teacher why, with no excuse other than, 'I didn't want to get ready for school', the consequences were enough to motivate him to get moving the next morning.

I think you're doing too much for her.

I would stop laying out her clothes. She is well past the age that she can be responsible for finding and selecting her own clothes. Let her decide if she does this the night before or in the morning.

Stop waking her up. One day I just decided I had had enough of being a human alarm clock, and I bought them for both of my kids. Get her a really loud alarm clock. I bought one for 20.00 at Target for my 12 year old that you can change the color. It is super loud and annoying. Teach her how to set it. And make HER decide what time she needs to get up to be successful in the morning. It will be a trial and error as she learns to figure out the right time for her. Some people are fine with a short amount of getting ready time and more sleep, and other people like my youngest, hate to be rushed, and prefer to get up way early.

If she oversleeps and is late. Take her to school late. Make her take a tardy. Go to the teacher with her and make her tell her teacher honestly why she is late. No excuses. Make sure the teacher knows she has your blessing to enforce any school consequences. Maybe she stays in at recess to do the morning work she missed or something.

OK if you share transportation, this may make you late for work, but you may only have to go through the ordeal once or twice. If it becomes a habit, I would step up some consequences at home for school tardies. Make her be in bed with lights out earlier, and/or remove privileges.

I have a 2nd grader who is sometimes very hard to get up. He eats breakfast at home and HATES eating it at school. So I tell him if he doesn't get up and get ready, then he will have to eat his breakfast at school. Usually gets him going.

I agree with getting an annoying alarm. Turn the lights on when you get her up.

Tell her if she's too tired to get up in the morning then you'll be moving her bedtime earlier.

I've been there. I tried everything. Even telling her for every minute she wouldn't get out of bed that was a minute earlier she'd have to go to bed because she was evidently too tired and needed more sleep. Instead she made such a fuss at bedtime (having to go to bed early) that she worked herself up and wouldn't go to sleep for hours.

Finally I set a timer. She has 5 minutes to wake her body up and get out of bed. Then she has 5 minutes to put her clothes on. Then she has 5 minutes to comb her hair. Etc. In the beginning I had to follow her around with the timer. If she wasn't done by the time the timer went off then she lost a privilege. I had to get kind of big with the punishment because losing little privileges didn't work. She was always making us late! She lost TV and participating in her activities a few times and then it's like she decided it wasn't worth it and she got good with it.

I had to do this for a good 3 months. But now my 10-year old can get out of bed and ready in a short period of time. She's very good with it, and I no longer use the timer or any kind of punishment. It just takes consistency, patience, and a little of knowing what discipline works.

Good Luck!

My children use to have to get up very early do to where we lived. We had a whole house stereo and would play loud up beat music. I also would make things like cinnamon buns that smell good and would tell them if they were ready on time they could have one. In the end though we had the standing rule if you were late more than twice in one week or late by over 7mins you were punished.

Get her an obnoxious alarm clock and set it 15 minutes early so if she does hit snooze, it'll go off at the real time she needs to get up. OR, if you are like me, I like to get obnoxious with my kids when they don't respond, I'll sit on them, pet their hair and sing silly made up songs. It always gets them going cause they begin with the "mom, stop! Stop singing, please!" which always wakes them up and gets them going:) OR, send her to bed earlier, maybe she isn't getting enough sleep. Also, check her diet, is it a bunch of processed junk food? That'll slow her down real fast and leave her sluggish.

Hello, Haha. I have a grown daughter who was just like this. I finally warned her that I would be leaving on time the next day and if she was not ready, she would have to go to school that way. I worked at the school she attended and we walked to and from. When it was time to leave, she was not all the way dressed. I walked out the door and got about half of a block when I heard her feet hitting the pavement. I turned around and she stopped running and started walking. I continued on and everytime I turned around, she would stop running. Eventually, she caught up with me. We didn't have to talk about it. She was on time after that.
My younger sister was the same way. One day (she had spent the night at my house) I told her that I was going to be leaving in 30 minutes. She took her time getting ready. I had two children to get ready and myself. I was ready to leave and went out to the car. I strapped in my two children and started the car. I was prepared to leave without her. Suddenly, she ran out the door and jumped into the car. She said to me, "You were going to leave without me, weren't you." I said, "Yes, I was." When she went home, I shared this with my Dad. He had been late leaving for work many times because of her. I told him to not wait for her and to leave when he was ready. He only had to do it once. She had to walk to school and she called me and said, "You told Dad not to wait for me, didn't you." I said, "Yes, I did." He never had to wait for her again. The thing is that she only had to walk 2-3 blocks to school, so really it didn't hut her and she was in High School.
Good luck with your precious daughter.
K. K.

Our son is 6 and in kindergarten. The morning routine has been tough for us in the past, but we've got it down pretty well now. What's helping:

1) Alarm clock. For Christmas, SO got him an alarm clock shaped like a rocket ship (he's pretty space obsessed). The alarm is set for an hour before we have to leave. It is his job to get up and turn it off, then get dressed and come down to breakfast.You can role over and ignore your parents, but that alarm clock (across the room on the dresser) just gets louder! Also, it makes him feel grown up.

2) Give lots of time. An hour is about double the time he needs to get up, dressed, eat, brush teeth and out the door. He doesn't have to rush, so if he's tired he can take his time. That being said, if he is ready early, he is allowed to watch cartoons before we leave :) It's a decent motivator.

3) He goes to be early. That gives him 11.5 hours before his alarm goes off in the morning (he often wakes up before the alarm).

4) We leave on time. If he hasn't finished eating, he has to leave it (there is breakfast at school so it's not like he'll go hungry).

HTH

I have an 8 year old that does the same thing. We have used these techniques:
1. Asked her how she wants to be awakened. She does not like how her father just tells her to wake up. She appreciates it when I rub her back and gently gets her back into reality from her dreams sometimes. It is also a good way of bonding for her and I even if it's only for a few minutes. I wake up earlier so I can do that with her. She wakes up smiling at times.
2. We create a plan with her the night before. We tell her the time she needs to be up and we negotiate. Since you give her 15 minutes, I would give her incentives if she is up at or before that time. Something small and meaningful for her. We never use monetary rewards with ours. If my daughter is up later than that, we start removing privileges. Nowadays it's time off her electronics which she has a about an hour on schooldays or time on the weekends. We write it down and everyone signs just like a real document. We take it seriously.
3. There are times that I ask her what she wants for breakfast and tell her I will make it (nothing complicated) when she wakes up on time. She looks forward to it and shockingly, she wakes up early. It's giving her something fun she might want to do before she starts the responsibilities of the morning, getting ready and everything else.
These are just a few of the things we do. My husband and I are constantly shaking our heads about the amount of work just getting her up in the mornings. It's nice to know it's not just us. I don't know if it will work but this family has tried it and it's working for us lately. I wish you the best of luck!
We remind her the night before and
3.

My daughter is older now but we had lots of issues of her being late for school because she wouldn't get out of bed. What has worked for us is this new alarm clock. It's a light and about 1/2 hour before it is set to go off it starts to kighten up. So it turns on dim and then gets brighter and brighter. It also has birds chirping and they get louder as well. Anyway, it really has worked well because she is gradually being woken up. Her mood is sooooo much better and she moves much quicker. She is older though, I think we've had it for 2 years and she just turned 16.

Good luck. I've been there and it sucks!!!! Let me know if you want info on the light.

As a mom to an 8 year old little girl and a 5 year old autistic boy I've found that giving them at least an hour to get ready is the key. My children only have to be up by 7:35 so at that time I go in and tell the 8 year old it's time to get up and I already have breakfast cooking. No, I don't make them special breakfasts every morning but I always make sure I take the easy route with waffles, oatmeal, cereal etc. My 5 year old is a different kind of kid to get up in the morning so I just tell him "YAY SCHOOL DAY!! Time to eat and watch cartoons!" I also remind my 8 year old that her room must be clean before she leaves for school lest she not be allowed to play after school. That usually gets both of my kids going for the day. Luckily each of my kids loooooove school so not going or being late is improbable.

Put her to bed earlier at night? If she's that tired, she needs more rest....but it can be earlier at night instead of later in the day when she has obligations. I would put her to bed 30 minutes early, then have the alarm clock wake her up 10 minutes later than necessary (so she can sit there and blink and warm up before getting a move on, OR she can get in the shower and have that wake her up...that's what I do in the mornings still). Have fun! :)

i have a 5 year old and the first thing i do, is take her covers off and wait for her to go to the living room. I lay out her clothes and breakfast there so shes in charge of getting that part done, but if I left it up to her to get put of bed, she'd definietely make M. late...still does sometimes...but she's 5

The night before I'd have her get her backpack ready, homework and whatever else she is taking to school in the morning. In the morning I'd give her a wake up call and set a timer for 15 minutes. If she is not up and dressed, I'd make her go to school in her pajamas. She'll get the message really quick.

I have a two pronged approach... one I start started letting my 6 yr old sleep 30 min longer. after MONTHS of fighting to get him out of bed and him telling me how tired he was... we made a deal. If he stopped arguing I would let him get more sleep. Now I go in at 720 (vs7) to turn on light and take off covers, then 730 back in to say get up. He has rarely argued.
step 2... if we are more than 5 min late leaving the house, (cause he is still a slow poke )he does not get to play after school at all.
I am loving the timer idea... I may try that to tighten up the morning!