Need Help with Morning Routine? Try this!
We’ve all been there; scrambling to find shoes, yelling about getting lunches made or breakfast consumed. I thought this article brought up some great suggestions, but the fundamental thing the author changed to have success in the morning was to ignore the morning routine completely. Say What? The author, Jenny Anderson, basically left the mornings up to her kids.
The idea behind this is an economic one, called a moral hazard—the idea being that people with insurance against a bad outcome will behave differently, perhaps taking greater risks, than those without protection.
“Without repercussions, without consequences, without the right incentives to behave responsibly—we’re all liable to take unwise risks.” Pack the bag for the kid, and the kid will never take the initiative to track down their textbooks themselves.
“Jessica Lahey, a middle-school teacher and author, writes in The Gift of Failure that we sometimes seem to be more worried about raising happy children than competent or autonomous ones. “We think, ‘I have plenty of time to teach them,’” Lahey writes. “And then they are 17.” Don’t rescue your kids, she advises. Play the long game—raising the competent kid—not the short one, attempting to fix every problem. If they own their mistakes, they are more likely to learn from them.”
Here are some ideas to help get you started:
- Lay out clothes the night before
- Don’t overthink breakfast
- Settle, as a group, on when you need to leave the house
- Don’t correct your kids mistakes
- Adapt to the needs of your family