How can i get my child to wake up in the morning

How to Wake Up Kids in the Morning

The alarm goes off and the morning battle begins: you knock on your child’s bedroom door to wake him, but you have to go back time and again to make sure he’s actually up, your voice rising with each “wake-up call.” As the minutes tick by and he still hasn’t gotten out of bed, you resort to screaming and yelling in his face, and then tear the blankets off the bed.

In desperation, you pull him out of bed by his feet, though you know you won’t be able to do that for many more years. A screaming match ensues, and now your child has missed the bus, so you have to take him to school. You’ll be late for work again, and you feel your blood pressure rising with every traffic light. Finally, your child slams the door of your car, and you head to work, agitated and upset, sure that your boss will make a comment again today about your lateness.

“As long as you take responsibility for getting your child out of bed, they will let you do it. ”

If you find yourself bending over backwards to get your child going in the morning, you’re not alone. During parent coaching sessions, many parents tell me they set their own alarms an hour or more in advance in order to start the process of waking up their child. In many cases, consequences and punishments seem to have no effect.

According to the National Sleep Foundation, teens need an average of nine hours of sleep per night. Biological sleep patterns during adolescence make it difficult for teens to get to sleep before 11 pm, and nearly impossible to wake up in time to catch the bus or make it to homeroom on time. What that means is that when your child has to get up early to get to school, he or she is working against a biological drive to sleep. But just because a kid’s biology doesn’t match up with the demands of the outside world, it doesn’t mean that you have to surrender to the daily insanity of getting your kids up and out of the house.

The Good News: You Can Stop Working So Hard

The Total Transformation Program tells parents to stop taking responsibility for getting their kids out of bed on time. If you repeatedly bang on your child’s door to get them up, or you drag them out of bed, you are working harder to wake up your child than they are. As James Lehman says, “You are substituting your extra energy and effort for your child’s.” So if you think about it, why should your child get up on their own when you are willing to do it for them? If they know they don’t really have to get up until mom threatens to bring the ice water, why should they get up at the first ring of the alarm? Ten more minutes is ten more minutes, right?

Start by Setting New Ground Rules

In order to get your child to adhere to the morning routine, you need to give them the responsibility for getting up. Sit down with your child and have a discussion about getting up in the morning. You might say, “You and I have a hard time in the morning. I am no longer going to be responsible for getting you up on time. I will give you one wake up call, and then it’s up to you. If you miss the bus, I will not drive you to school. You will need to either find another way to get there, or you will need to call your teachers to get your assignments.”

This solution may not work for all families. Your child may be too young to leave at home while you’re at work; walking to school might not be an option. You’ll need to customize the consequences and expectations to your own family situation. If you do have to drive them to school because they overslept, maybe the consequence is that they have to do an hour of chores to make up for the time you lost.

The important thing to realize is that as long as you take responsibility for getting your child out of bed, they will let you do it. It may take a few days for them to get the hint, but once you stop working so hard, they will realize they have to change their behavior, or face certain consequences. A natural consequence for oversleeping and being late to school is having to make up any schoolwork that was missed. You might also check with your school to see what the policy is for repeated tardiness or missed classes. Don’t protect your child from these consequences by making sure they make that bus on time. In order to create less dramatic mornings, you have to let your child experience the consequences of not getting themselves up and out the door.

Make Sleep a Priority

The Total Transformation also recommends that parents institute an earlier bedtime. You might tell your child: “You seem to have a hard time getting up in the morning, which tells me you aren’t getting enough sleep. You need to be up by 7 am on school days. As of today, we are moving your bedtime back to 10 pm on school nights. Once you have shown us that you can get up on time for five days in a row, we’d be happy to move your bedtime back to 11 pm.” If your child does not get up on time, simply state: “I know you want a later bedtime. You’ll have to figure out how to get yourself up on time in order to have that privilege.”

Because of the biological drives I mentioned earlier, it may be hard for your adolescent to go to sleep before 11 p. m. Going to bed by 10 is going to be a little “uncomfortable” for your child. In time, the discomfort and annoyance of having to get into bed with the lights out and no electronics may motivate him or her to get out of bed on time in the morning. Once your child has gotten up on their own for five days in a row, you can change their bedtime to a later hour. If they begin to oversleep again, change it back to 10 pm until they improve.

Help your Child Problem-Solve their Way to a Better Morning Routine

What if your child doesn’t know how to help themselves get up in the morning? Remember, teens and pre-teens are fighting against a physiological drive that tells them to sleep later than many school start times. In order to change their behavior, they need a plan, not just wishful thinking.

If your child has a hard time getting up, have them come up with a list of things they will do to help themselves get out of bed on time. Changing to an earlier bedtime may help. Putting the alarm clock across the room, instead of next to the bed, may also help. Have your child pack their school lunch, pick out their clothes and organize their backpack the night before so that they don’t have to do it in the morning. Remember to put the responsibility for getting up in the morning on your child. If you do it all for them, they have no reason to do it themselves.

Empowering Parents parent coaching helps with these and other challenges you’re experiencing with your child. Empowering Parents Coaches have helped hundreds of parents customize a plan of action to help your child take responsibility for their morning routine, and we can help you, too. Specialists can also work with you to formulate realistic, appropriate consequences to help enforce the new morning routine. Whatever action you choose, be sure to stick with it. Calmer mornings are within your reach.

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6 Genius Ways to Wake Up Kids For School without Yelling

Back to school means getting kids adjusted to a new schedule. Anything that messes with a routine can be hard, not to mention super stressful. How can we wake up kids for school in a way that makes our mornings easier and less grumpy? Here’s your back to school plan.

It was 6:30 AM on the first day back to school last year. I put my hand on my daughter’s fluffy floral comforter and shook her.

Gently, of course.

OK… OK… it was harder this time. Because this was the fifth time I walked into her room that morning to pull her from bed. This morning was close to becoming a chaotic mess.

What could really happen?

I knew that now, she wouldn’t have enough time to shower before school. I time her for 10 minutes in the shower but after all the 5-minute extensions I give her, her shower time is closer to 30.

She would want me to dig through all the tangles in her long brown hair and then braid it. A task I’d feel like a jerk for refusing because we’d be horribly late. Pull up to the school, running to the classroom kind of late.

She wouldn’t eat a good breakfast. Probably end up grabbing a freezer waffle, popping it in the toaster and devour it on her way out the door.

Then she’d complain to friends about her stomach hurting because she had no time to eat anything that morning on account of how late we ran. I imagined my daughter’s teacher overhearing this, then looking at her tangled hair and thinking to herself, “Wow, poor girl, her parents really aren’t on it.”

A bedtime routine makes mornings WAY easier. Grab our FREE Bedtime Routine Cards here.

This is madness…

The importance of sleep for kids is undeniable. Experts explain it does everything from promote growth, boost learning, increase attention span and even affects weight.

Sara Lappe, MD stresses that “if you set three alarms and still have to drag your child out of bed in the morning, it’s time to work on sleep habits.”

How do we solve this?

I discovered that two specific things prevented my daughter from having enough time in the morning:

Not getting enough sleep the night before
No real incentive to wake up earlier.

By making small changes to my daughter’s sleep routine before school started and by letting her have special privileges the first week of school, waking up for school became less of a hassle and more of a manageable morning.

Start Adjusting Your Child’s Sleep Schedule

It’s 8:30PM and we are only half way through American Ninja Warrior. Jesse Graff – the amazing ninja stuntwoman – is still scheduled to run. What’s the harm in letting my daughter stay up to watch?

Actually, a lot. I announce, “We’ll finish this tomorrow. Time for bed.”

“But, just a few more minutes! I’m not tired!”

“No worries,” I reply, “We can finish this tomorrow.”

I wish I could say that she agrees and delightfully skips off to bed. But, no. She usually gets mad at me and stomps off down the hall.

This parenting gig is far from easy.

A week before school starts, we begin to adjust bedtime back from 9PM. For the first few nights, it’s 8:45PM. Then, we bring it back to 8:30PM, all while explaining that we are making sure she gets enough sleep for school.

Limit Device Use

As adults, we know its hard to fall asleep when you’re not tired – and it’s definitely the same for kids.

When we start making their bedtime earlier, our rule is only to be in bed by a certain time. If my daughter’s not tired, she can always read a book, but no electronics.

Why? According to Scientific American, the screens in our devices have a higher concentration of blue light than any other light. Blue light is known to affect your levels of melatonin -the hormone that causes you to fall asleep – more than any other light source.

If kids (and adults) use devices right before bed, it can negatively impact sleep. Even though my daughter has access to a whole public library of e-books on her tablet, we insist that she choose reading material of the paper variety when she’s laying in bed.

Start a New Morning Routine

The term “getting ready” can be such an abstract term. What does it mean to “be ready” for school? We know what we want from our kids, but do they know?

That’s why we need to plan new morning routines with our children. It helps to sit down before school starts and plan out exactly what your child needs to do every morning. Some items on her list can be:

make her bed
eat breakfast
take a shower
get dressed
pack lunch
pack her school bag
put on shoes

By knowing exactly what needs to get done before she leaves for school, her brain can better plan out the amount of time it will take to get ready.

Get a Few New School Items to Wake Up Kids for School

Do you remember the joy of using a new backpack the first day of school? I remember jumping out of bed because everything I had for school was new and exciting. New school supplies, new undershirts, new clothes…

Our kids feel the exact same way. This school year, my daughter got a new backpack and a few new headbands.

But here’s the parenting ninja part, we don’t allow her to use any of her new items until the first day of school. This creates anticipation and excitement to jump out of bed the first week of school.

Novelty is your friend when trying to get your child back on a decent wake-up schedule.

One word: Breakfast

You can use the same novelty mind trick by letting your child pick out a new breakfast food that she can’t eat until the first week of school. Some ideas:

a new breakfast cereal
frozen breakfast sausage
a different flavor frozen waffle
Instant oatmeal with brown sugar and raisins

Notice all these are super easy that kids can fix themselves. We don’t need to overcomplicate the mornings by adding one more thing for us to do as parents.

Let Natural Consequences Take Over

At some point during the first week of school, or maybe the second, your child may start sleeping in again. That is completely normal. In fact, I hope for it.

We can only do so much for our kids. While we can help them plan and show them the way to be successful, it’s ultimately up to them. After we’ve set the groundwork, we need to step back.

If your son sleeps in and misses his breakfast, he will feel hungry until lunch. If your daughter doesn’t get out of bed and then lacks the time to brush her hair, she will have a tangled mane the entire school day. Maybe, one of her friends will ask her about it, and she’ll probably feel hurt.

Mistakes are the way we grow. According to Morihei Ueshiba, founder of the martial art Aikido, “Failure is the key to success; each mistake teaches us something.” Mark Manson, author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (which I totally recommend, just get it on your e-reader), “A successful person is just someone who has made more mistakes than you.”

We need to let our kids make these mistakes and feel the consequences. That is the only way we stop nagging. By letting them experience the consequences, our kids will be more self-motivated to get out the door in time.

By providing a groundwork of adjusting their bedtime, making kids aware of expectations and giving morning incentives the first week, we are doing our job as parents to make the transition back to school as easy as possible. Now, it’s up to our kids to take it from here with gentle reminders from us.

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Summary

10 rules to teach a child to get up in the morning to school

Komsomolskaya Pravda

If your child delays getting up, look at how much he needs to get ready later and experiment until what time he can still lie in bed for a bit Photo: Shutterstock

After the summer holidays, many parents face difficulties: the child cannot return to the school daily routine. But it's time to say goodbye to a late going to bed, and getting up early is simply necessary. How to be here? The main thing is not to twitch, not to worry, not to scold each other. Together with the Doctor of Psychology, Professor of the Department of Scientific Foundations of Extreme Psychology of the Faculty of Extreme Psychology, MSUPE Marina Rozenova , Komsomolskaya Pravda compiled a set of rules that will help you creatively and joyfully approach the process.

In psychology, there is such a thing as a dynamic stereotype, the expert explains. This is how our body lives in accordance with the change of time of day, how we individually react to a change in the daily routine.

- The trick is that this dynamic stereotype is plastic. Yes, in the summer the child could sleep longer, get up not at 7 in the morning, but at another time. But with the beginning of training sessions, you need to rebuild. It is important to understand that this is a very individual process and restructuring can take from one and a half to three months, says Marina Rozenova. - Therefore, do not worry if your child cannot adjust to the school regime in one day, a week, even a month. Here, parents should be patient and create an individual daily routine for their family, select their own rituals that help all family members live.

THE GOLDEN RULES FOR GETTING UP EARLY

1. To wake up early, you need to get a good night's sleep.

See how easier it is for your child to fall asleep? Get creative. For some, songs are suitable to fall asleep with a sweet dream, for other children, a good choice of fairy tales. Someone "cuts off" after a bath, and someone, on the contrary, excites it. From this and build a ritual of going to bed.

2. It is important when one of the parents puts the child to bed. A child aged 6 to 8 years old, a primary school student, especially needs a parent to accompany him or her at bedtime. The child can go to bed on his own, but then you can cover him, straighten the blanket.

3. If your child is interested in reading, you can read a little before going to bed.

Agree with your child in advance how many pages of the book you will read. In this case, it is better to take a paper book, because electronic screens have an exciting effect on the body. Pay attention to the fact that the story does not greatly excite the imagination, is not frightening. It's good if you pick up stories for evening reading together.

4. You can just talk about calm topics before going to bed.

Discuss how the day went, what was planned. A short conversation about plans for one part of the upcoming day is also suitable. For example, what will you do after school tomorrow.

- Do not take any global plans, large-scale questions for the evening time, this will overexcite the child, - says Marina Rozenova. - Always pay attention to the individuality of your child, and what he likes, what he is interested in, offering different options, observe and notice what goes better, what suits you and your child. This is not difficult. If you start watching your son or daughter, then not for the second - the third time you will notice what is suitable for them as a ritual of going to bed.

5. A good night's sleep is helped by a hug or a kiss at night, it creates a sense of security. In addition, it has been scientifically proven that the absence of physical contact and affection in the family strongly blocks the intellectual, emotional and mental development of the child. Hug your child, hold his hand, sometimes in order to calm the child when he is upset, you can lightly stroke him.

6. Wake up with or without an alarm?

Adjust the very moment of awakening in a way that is convenient for you and your child. Some children ask to set an alarm for them, but the option is also possible when the parent wakes the child himself.

- You can do, for example, like this. You enter the room a little earlier than the scheduled time for the rise, two to three minutes. At this time, you can not even say anything yet, smoothly push the curtains. Then begin to calmly and gently wake the child, say that it is time to get up, turn to the child by name with tenderness. This will give him time to wake up, to realize that a new day has come, the body will also smoothly wake up from sleep, says Marina Rosenova.

6. If you want to lie in bed.

If your child delays getting up, see how much he needs to get ready to wash up, get dressed, have breakfast, leave the house and be in time for school. And experiment until what time he can still lie in bed a little and how in this case to shift the schedule for going to bed and getting up.

7. Parents get up first in the morning, then children.

- It is important for children that the parent wakes up earlier, before the child wakes up. This very fact motivates and mobilizes him to get up and be active. It gives an understanding that getting up early in the morning is a mandatory moment, everyone in the family takes this seriously. And parents act as a role model, - says Marina Rosenova. - The parent prepares breakfast, some things necessary for the exit, he gathers himself. Moreover, such a routine for the morning rise in the family is also mandatory when your child is already a high school student. After all, older teenagers, although they already look like adults, psychologically still remain children.

8. A good life hack is to lure a child out of bed with the smell of some of his favorite food that you cooked for breakfast.

9. Usually, pets like to get involved in important family activities. Cats, dogs - will help you get your child out of bed better than any alarm clock. Often they don't even have to "ask" about it, they themselves come to the little owner in the morning.

10. If all these methods did not help you, then you need to somehow allow the child to face the consequences of his being late. However, it is important to understand what is behind the child's reluctance to get up in the morning and get ready for school.

- Natural negative consequences can be an element of education, - says Marina Rozenova. - If the child ignored all the options for awakening that you offered him, then, yes, this is followed by the corresponding result - being late for school, more homework, worse academic performance. However, this option should definitely be excluded at the stage of adaptation, the entry of the child into the school daily routine. And another important point, if a child sabotages going to school, then you need to look at the reason. Perhaps he is so uncomfortable in an educational institution that going there causes fear. Perhaps there are some problems in relations with classmates, with a teacher, or lessons are difficult. If there are no such global problems, the children still do not refuse to get up in the morning and go to class.

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How to get up early in the morning for school - how to wake up a child if he gets up late

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Cover image: Defaced / Dribbble

Parents

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Despite the fact that biorhythms are determined by heredity and controlled by the body at the chemical level, it is quite possible to “reset” these internal clocks. How to do this, we will tell further.

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How much sleep your child needs

If your child doesn't want to get up in the morning for school, it's likely that he just doesn't get enough sleep. In the table below we present the daily sleep rate for children of different ages.

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^{Sleep norms for children}

However, in practice, not all children are ready to comply with this norm, preferring to go to bed as late as possible. So, before answering the question of how to get the child to school in the morning, you need to understand how to put him to bed in the evening.

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How to teach your child to go to bed on time

As a rule, children go to bed reluctantly. Even if they are tired, they want to spend as much time as possible doing their favorite activities, playing video games or surfing social networks.

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If your child is used to staying up late, don't just get him to bed two or three hours early. Such a sharp change in sleep patterns can lead to insomnia, a decrease in overall tone and an increase in nervous tension. The time of going to bed should be adjusted gradually, ten to fifteen minutes in two or three days.

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Once your child has established a routine, try not to deviate from it. Of course, on the weekends you can allow yourself to stay up late and sleep longer, but make sure that the student does not get too far behind the schedule, otherwise the process of adapting to early awakening will have to start over.

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In addition, you need to create conditions that will allow the child's body to prepare for sleep:0017 . Your student should have a comfortable sleeping place in a room with good light and sound insulation. In the warm season, it is advisable to leave the window open all night so that fresh air enters the room.
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Balance the physical and mental stress during the day. If a child has been sitting at the computer all day with lessons, and then attended two circles, then only his brain is tired, while the body is still full of energy. This can make it difficult to fall asleep. A little physical activity three to four hours before bed will help you relax in the evening.
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Monitor your child's nutrition. A heavy dinner just before bedtime, especially if it is dominated by fatty and spicy foods, can not only prevent the child from sleeping, but also damage the digestive system. It is better to feed your child with dinner two to three hours before bedtime, and treat them to fruit, yogurt or cereal before bedtime.
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Dim the lights an hour and a half before bedtime. Human biological clock largely depends on the level of illumination. A gradual decrease in the brightness of the light will start the mechanism of going to sleep.
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Try to convince your child not to use gadgets before bed. Better spend this time together. Reading or listening to relaxing music together can help your child form a habit that is good for falling asleep.
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Many people get ready for bed warm shower , under its influence the relaxing hormone melatonin is produced.
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Teach your child to prepare everything in the evening. The less you need to do in the morning, the longer you can sleep. Explain to the child that the lessons done in the evening, the collected bag and prepared clothes will save precious minutes of morning sleep and relieve the morning fuss.
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Following these simple rules will help your son or daughter sleep better and gain strength. Now let's talk about how to facilitate the process of awakening.

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How to teach your child to get up early

If the child observes the daily routine and sleeps well, there should be no problems with getting up early. Here are a few more things that will help your child get up for school.

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Motivation

Try to make sure that something pleasant is waiting for the child after waking up. A delicious breakfast or watching your favorite YouTube show in the morning will serve as a good stimulus to wake up and cheer you up.

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Glass of water

Starting your morning with a glass of water at room temperature is a healthy habit. Water immediately after waking up allows you to start many necessary body processes.

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Exercise

Just 5-7 minutes of vigorous movement after waking up will help restore vigor to the body. If the child is bored with the same exercises, offer him to simply move to his favorite music.

Shower

Another healthy habit. Morning shower is a very effective way to relieve drowsiness.

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Sleep trackers

Smart watches and fitness bands support special applications that analyze the phases of a person's sleep and allow you to activate the alarm during the fast phase, when it is most comfortable to wake up.

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What to do if all else fails

Even with all the above steps, waking up in the morning can be problematic. This is especially true for children with a "late" chronotype, whose period of activity falls in the evening and night. But why do you have to get up early for school?

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If you study at home and don't go anywhere in the morning, you may not have problems waking up. At Foxford Home School, classes usually start at 10:00 am and run until about 3:00 pm. You don't need to spend time on the road to get started – just turn on your computer. And the materials can always be viewed in the recording.

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The distribution of human activity during the day is determined by a "biological clock" called circadian rhythms. It depends on them at what time of the day it is able to work effectively. Based on biorhythms, it is customary to divide people into three groups, depending on the time of their activity, into "larks", "doves" and "owls". If your child finds it difficult to get up in the morning, he may belong to the third, latest chronotype.