Morning Routines

I have been meaning to do an update on our mornings for awhile, but I keep forgetting. This morning before I got out of bed I looked at my plan for today and remembered that lastnight before going to sleep I had put “write blog about mornings” into the schedule for the day. What perfect timing, because today was a doozy!

I want to begin by saying that our general routine for the morning has gotten a lot better since the last time I wrote about it. A few months ago things were completely chaotic, and I had lots of anxiety about how stressful and unmanageable it was. I felt like I was yelling ALL.THE.TIME. Every morning was the same…I would get frustrated because the kids weren’t doing the things they needed to do to get ready (even though expectations were the exact same every single day), I would gently remind them, until eventually my “gentle” became pretty ferocious. Many mornings would end with at least one of them in tears, and a few times I was right there with them: flopping down in the driver’s seat after everyone was finally buckled in and just feeling like I needed to cry.

One morning as I was yelling at them to “JUST PUT YOUR SNOWPANTS ON!!!!! WE ARE GOING TO BE LATE!!!!” – Miles (my sensitive boy), with tears in his eyes said “Stop yelling at me mommy! I don’t like it when you yell, it hurts my feelings!” His sensitivity can be a bit frustrating at times as everything big and small seems to affect him in a major way, but he has an amazing ability to tell us exactly how he is feeling, and why he is feeling that way. It’s truly a gift in a world where people generally just go about their days miscommunicating and keeping their feelings to themselves.  His outburst of honesty was like a slap in the face and I realized how toxic our mornings were, and I decided that I needed to do SOMETHING to make it better. ASAP.

I had been struggling with what to do. I didn’t want to use a reward system because I worried that if I did do something like that once I removed the reward they would no longer be interested in completing the task. I was desperate to have them become independent with their morning routines mostly because …well, let’s be honest, we have 4 kids now, and since Ian is out the door long before we get ready I can’t be chasing them all around barking orders. It may be unfair (they didn’t ask for 3 siblings), but I need them to be more self-sufficient because I just can’t do it all by myself. I truly think that in the long run they will be better because of their forced independence/added responsibilities, but it can be a bit of a challenge in the meantime!

I finally decided to go with something that I thought might work because even though they weren’t being rewarded extrinsically with stickers or prizes, the action of flipping the “done” flap over is kind of like me checking an item off of my “to do list”, and I find that super rewarding! Here is what we did:

I had planned to make one for Maisie as well, but she crumpled up her name and I figured that was a sign that she wasn’t quite ready for something like this. I also thought that she pretty much does whatever the big kids do anyways, so if I could just get THEM to do what they needed to do, she would follow along (I was right).

We sat down after school on that horrible day and had a “family meeting”. We talked about how our mornings were going, and I asked them if they liked mornings, and if they thought things were going well. I told them that I really didn’t like yelling at them, and I didn’t want to feel frustrated anymore. They agreed. Together, we made lists of the things they needed to do in the morning (and also in the afternoon). We then went around the house and acted out doing those jobs so I could take a picture. It was kind of fun, they enjoyed it…and I was excited about the change that I was hoping would come with our new tool.

Thankfully, the next day was Saturday and I had time to create. It took a long time, but I am 100% satisfied with the outcome, and it was totally worth the effort! Each kid has their own “jobs”, and once they are finished each job, they flip the flap over to show the “done” sign.  I hadn’t planned on doing an afternoon section, but I thought it might be helpful with the little things like putting their stuff where it belongs, and having the initiative to do their homework. It has been a few months now, and they are still motivated by this tool. They love that their pictures are in it, and they love “beating” the other person in having all of their jobs done.

In my intro I mentioned that today was an exciting morning. This morning when it was time to head out the door, not only did the two little ones poop at the exact same time,  requiring a double diaper change..Sully also puked all over my last pair of clean “wear in public appropriate” pants, and this is what we saw when it was time to put on boots:

Those are Harleigh’s rainboots. Inside? That’s murky water left in the boots from YESTERDAY, when they were splashing in the giant puddles of rainwater, mud and sand. WHY?! WHY?!?! WHY!?!?!?!??! Luckily, I don’t trust that Spring is actually here to stay quite yet, so her winter boots weren’t packed away. In the grand scheme of things, this isn’t a huge deal, it just added to our morning and I thought it was worth mentioning. It will be interesting to see if the smell will ever come out, but I did think the fact that all of that water stayed inside the boot without leaking meant the boots were good quality, leak-proof rainboots (silver linings!)

The greatest part of all was that even with these bumps in our morning we still managed to do it with no yelling and no tears. We all just went about our day, independently doing our jobs, and getting into the van happily- where we all get to sing our hearts out to the Trolls soundtrack (which is another part of our morning routine). I didn’t even have to cheer anyone up! Total mom-win in my books!

 

---

How to make routine charts:

Materials required:

• bristol board
• printer
• packing tape (or laminator) 
• sticky velcro tabs
• camera (not totally necessary)

Steps:

1. Choose your tasks as a family.
2. Take pictures of the kids doing their jobs (not totally necessary, but my kids loved this part).
3. Print off thumbnails of those pictures.
4. Type up short titles for each job (example: brush teeth).
5. Type “done” the same amount of times as jobs you will have on your chart.
6. Cut out printed off titles and pictures.
7. Cut slits in coloured bristol board (making enough flaps for each task).
8. Glue on job titles/pictures and “done”
9. Cover the entire thing ( you could laminate it, but I am cheap, so I just used packing tape). I thought this was important because I spent a lot of time making them, and I didn’t want them to get wrecked/ripped.
10. Use sticky velcro tabs on the inside of the flaps to keep them closed.
11. Hang the charts in a central location (ours are on the dishwasher).