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How to make morning routines go smoothly Mornings in households with young children can be chaotic! Getting kids up, dressed, fed and out the door is not an easy task. Why are mornings so difficult? First of all, families are in a time crunch. There’s a lot to be accomplished in a relatively short period of time. "Morn-ing is the time in which temperamental differences may be most evident—the child who is slow to get going clashes with the mother or father who is fast paced. Or the child who is crabby clashes with the parent who is also crabby," say authors Ellen Galinsky and Judy David, in The Preschool Years: Family Strategies That Work—from Experts and Parents, (Times Books, 1988). Finally, mornings provide the perfect opportunity for children to assert their individuality. This is prime time for power struggles, when parents often feel "over a barrel." Dressing often becomes an issue between parents and their young children. Sometimes the issue is what the child will wear. Other times it’s how long it takes the child to dress or how willing the child is to dress herself. Some children insist that they dress themselves entirely—often choosing clothes that parents feel are inappropriate— while others lay like limp dishrags, insisting that their parent dress them completely. Whatever the circumstances, all scenarios are challenging for parents. Here are some ideas that have worked to make mornings go smoothly: Be sure that there is enough time for everything that must be accomplished in the morning, including dressing, breakfast, packing up the necessities for school, and some built-in time for unexpected situations (the car won’t start; it’s raining, etc.). This may mean getting up several minutes earlier, but, although that means a little less sleep, those extra minutes often make the difference between a frantic and a peaceful morning.
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