Most mornings I get up late. Later than my alarm would suggest I get up. I press snooze two or three times. I roll out of bed twenty minutes later and bump and bumble my way into the shower. If I’m organized, I put oatmeal in the microwave before I jump in the shower so that when I’m done my daughter’s breakfast is ready. Once clean and maybe half dressed, I go into my daughter’s room, open the curtains and turn off her noise machine. At this point she has approximately half and hour to eat breakfast, dress, brush teeth, have her hair braided and get the frog out the door. While she is slowly waking up, I go out and plate her oatmeal and pour her milk. I head back into her room and start pulling outfit choices. I have tried to plan the night before, but an outfit that was perfect then was inevitably rejected the following morning. I gave up on that organizational strategy. So here I stand with four options in hand and sleepily she says, “can I have more options, other options.” I try to choose a few closer to what I know she wants (long, twirly) while sticking with what I want (short, casual). She settles on a short but twirly dress with tights (because leggings make her look too much like a boy, apparently.) Somewhere around this time I go Chief Inspector, the eye starts to twitch, I start to feel as if everyone and everything is conspiring against me. She sails half dressed out of the room, suddenly fully awake, because she has some sort of paper doll emergency. The oatmeal congeals on the table. I follow her trailing a pair of tights and a tube of athlete’s foot cream (because being a parent means a continuous battle against various rashes). I apply said cream and yank on tights while she contorts her body to enable her to still color her paper dolls. Then finally she is at the breakfast table. She has ten minutes to eat, get teeth and hair brushed, hair braided, shoes on and, oh yeah, I’m still in my underwear. While she eats I go stand in my closet and try to find my coolest, most nonchalant outfit, the one that says, “this is how I dress all the time, effortless casual chic.” I end up in jeans and a button down that I later realize has a stain on the boob. I come back to find she has not eat a single bite of her breakfast and instead in flipping through a NYC Ballet calendar. This is when the yelling begins. I can no longer modulate my tone. Jokes are off the table. I toss together her lunch, snapping that she may not have a Baby Bell when she has untouched oatmeal directly in front of her. I put a waffle in the toaster knowing that now we are at negative 5 minutes and she will have to eat breakfast as I haul her down the sidewalk toward the subway, swimming up stream against all the kids going to our local school. And she will ask between bites, “why does everyone go to that school.” And I think to myself, because their parents are smarter than your mother who has decided that a rush hour commute with a five year old is a great idea. This is my morning routine. Sometimes, but not always, I even brush my teeth.
I realized that in order to help my girl cope with her general stress over starting a new school and all the changes that kindergarten can bring, I need to make her life at home as calm as possible. This is particularly important in the morning when together we are setting the tone for the rest of our day. We (and by that I mean me, I am the one actually in charge here, even if it doesn’t feel that way) need to slow down, to stop rushing, to practice mindfulness and gratitude. How great that I get to bring her to school every morning! How wonderful is it to watch her giggling and running toward her school each day? It’s pretty freaking wonderful. So I need to change. She is not the one yelling, she is not the one making us late. She is five and doing exactly what five year olds do. Doddling, getting distracted, playing. So I need to build in time for this into our routine. Here are the tricks that I’m testing out:
1. Be honest. How long does it really take me to get ready in the morning? Admitting that I can’t pull everything together in 45 minutes is the first step. Too often we just give ourselves an arbitrary amount of time to get ready, like an hour. But in fact we have to do some real assessing of our habits, timing them and doing the math. Accepting that dressing, feeding, and prepping us both for the day takes me an hour and a half is the next step. That means up at 6:15. AM.
2. Slow down. That means I have to stop clenching my core like I’m getting ready for a punch in gut. I have to stop trying to do three things at once (this always results in a burnt waffle smoking in the toaster). With enough time, I can start doing one thing at a time, efficiently. It also means I can make my girl dress herself (instead of yanking her clothes on her while she is still half asleep).
3. Take three minutes to practice mindfulness. I know what your thinking, something like “yeah, right” or “frog you.” But if I can take three minutes to do some slow breathing or some simple stretches I am fostering an appreciation for my body and all it does for me., I’m setting my intention for the day, and I’m acting with purpose not just reacting to my situation. My favorite breathing exercise is the alternate nostril breath, which helps with anxiety and stress. Or just hop I can just hop on my handy foam roller and work out some kinks, stretch that fascia.
4. Say goodbye to the snooze button. This small act feels impossible, but it is one of the simplest things you can do to improve your morning routine. Right now you are wasting time snoozing. You don’t get any quality rest and can even dip back into a deeper sleep cycle so that you wake up even more tired and groggy. The snooze button is an addiction, it feels good in the moment, but actually makes you unhealthy in the long run. Got dark circles under your eyes, nodding off in meetings, trying to sneak a quick nap in anywhere you can. You’re a snooze junkie (and by you, I mean me). Kick it.
5. Set a morning prep reminder. There is a lot of stuff that I do in the morning that I can probably do the night before, but I forget. So set I’m going to a reminder on my phone, something that will tell me exactly what I need to do to have things ready for a calm, smooth start to my day. Lay out my outfit (since I hopefully won’t reject it in the morning), pack the lunch if I can, set backpacks and purses packed and ready to go by the door, put a hair tie in my bag in case I have to do her hair on the fly, aka a “subway ponytail,” fill water bottles, sign forms, add snacks. Planning the night before means you don’t have to do the inevitable ballet shoe or gym shirt scramble the next morning.
Mornings are tough, but maybe if I can make it easy on myself (like Dionne Warwick keeps telling), if I can use some of these tool, maybe I can find a way to yell a bit less and give my girl the gift of a mellow morning. Of course, there may be a day or two when she shows up to school in her jammies with bedhead and an unopened fruit leather. Hey, it’s made of fruit.