Good-bye, slower pace of summer, and hello to school bells and taking attendance! Welcome back to tightly scheduled mornings with the goal of getting kids to school on time and with the necessary supplies.
I am the designated morning driver, typically getting up first, taking a shower, and getting dressed. While I shower, my wife wakes our kid up to get her going, then begins to make her lunch and snack for the day. Once dressed, I check in on my daughter, and I likely find her doing one of the following:
• Still in bed, saying that she is just “so cozy.”
• In pajamas futzing with a toy.
• Half-dressed, moving at the pace of an anesthetized sloth while listening to the same audiobook she’s heard twenty times before.
I then have to begin the countdown of how much time she has left for breakfast and brushing her teeth. Often, this is met with a loud and snotty, “ I know, Dad.”
I pack my lunch and wolf down my breakfast while my wife prepares for the day. As my daughter strolls into the kitchen, she eats breakfast, reading or listening to the same audiobook, now in the kitchen, and moving at the pace of a slightly less anesthetized sloth. I ask her if she has all the necessary papers, folders, water bottle, sweatshirt, and so on that she needs for the day and am barely acknowledged. She is reminded to brush her teeth and do something to get her hair out of her face.
As I put my stuff together for a day of work I often hear my daughter singing or talking to herself as she finishes up, carefree and oblivious to the time constraints.
I know that I am responsible for getting her to school on time. Nowadays, with traffic, we have a short window of time to get on the freeway to make it through the stop-and-go of the morning commute on time. When we are late, I suspect my daughter likes the drama of going to the office at school, receiving a brightly colored tardy slip, and presenting it to her teacher with a flourish. Sigh. In the meantime, I am trying to embed lessons on preparedness, being responsible in gathering what you need, planning, and developing punctuality, among other lessons in the morning routine.
For parents of older children, a new law has been enacted for this fall, limiting the start time of middle schools to no earlier than 8:00 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. for high schools. The intent of the law is in recognition of longstanding science that teens have a later sleep phase (awake later in the night and cognitively and physiologically wake up later in the morning) and need more time for sleep. Schools that have experimented before the law found that academic performance increases with later start times and that disciplinary problems are reduced. I want to think that, as kids get older, they become more responsible for themselves. But, I know plenty of parents of middle and high schoolers who would disagree. With the new law and the need for parents to get to work, it may be up to teens to get themselves ready and to school on time (or face the consequences). I am working on preparing my 8-year-old daughter for that inevitable reality in the future.
There are occasions when my daughter has an exciting activity the next day and, given her poor sense of time, will set the alarm on the smart speaker at an ungodly hour. After waking up the household, she will cheerily get herself moving and dressed because she has to get to her anticipated activity on time and reverse the cajoling her mom and me. Clearly, she can get herself up and moving, shedding her slothful ways when she wants to!
As a parent, it is hard to balance the drive to raise a kid who recognizes that punctuality is an indicator of caring about the event or activity with the reality that sometimes circumstances beyond our control make us late. As a result, like many parents, I will continue the dance of the morning routine and see you in the drop-off line at school, more or less on time.
Robert (Rob) S. Weisskirch, MSW, Ph.D., CFLE is a Professor of Human Development at California State University, Monterey Bay and is a Certified Family Life Educator. He and his wife are parents to a chatty, elementary school-aged daughter and reside in Marina.
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