The Working Parent's Survival Guide by Anita Cleare

Author:Anita Cleare [Cleare, Anita]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781538152447
Google: Db8lEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Published: 2021-07-25T23:00:00+00:00

HAND OVER CONTROL

Once you’ve reduced the tasks and thought through the sequence and location for your morning routine, put together a morning checklist or activity schedule for your child so they know what is expected from them. For younger children, this could be in pictures—a picture of a toothbrush, a picture of breakfast, a picture of some clothes, and a picture of shoes, all in the right order. You can get them to draw the pictures themselves. For a really young child, you might need to break that down into even smaller steps and focus on just one bit of the routine first—a picture of pants, a picture of socks, and a picture of a T-shirt. An older child’s checklist would be more abstract—they might not need reminding to brush their teeth but they do have to check their timetable to see if they need their violin or gym clothes that day.

Set some ground rules about what is allowed (and not allowed) in the mornings. Lots of parents have a “no screens” rule in the mornings because TV and digital devices can distract children from the things they need to do. Screens might be handy for keeping a child occupied while you shower, but is the fight to get them off the device afterward worth it? Is there another way they could be occupied, or could you reorder the sequence?

Rather than nagging or bullying children through their routine, what we want is to motivate them to take responsibility for their own routine—a pull rather than push system. Rather than relying on discipline responses when things go wrong, the essence of a stress-free morning is to use motivation instead.

Remember your superpower? Use your attention to encourage your child to follow their routine. When the morning routine is going wrong, it’s often because children are getting attention for exactly the behavior we don’t want—for refusing to get dressed, for going slowly, or for sabotaging the routine in some other way. We nag, bully, or shout at exactly those times when they are not doing what we want. And although that is negative attention, it’s still attention, and that negative attention can accidentally encourage children to repeat that behavior the next day. On the flipside, we often ignore children in the mornings when they are getting along and doing what we want them to do. We sneak off to get dressed while they put their clothes on nicely or check emails while they are eating their breakfast. The only way they get our attention is to misbehave or not cooperate.

The aim is to turn that around and give children attention for successfully completing the tasks on their morning list. To reward the right behavior with our attention rather than rewarding the behavior we don’t want. That means giving them attention as a result of following their routine rather than as a response to sabotaging it. So try to catch your children following their routine and tell them exactly how much you like it.

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