How to Raise a Child to School or Kindergarten Without Screaming and Panic: 7 Tips
The child overslept again and is late for school, and dissatisfied parents cannot stop “nag” him. A morning like this will ruin anyone’s day. To avoid such situations, follow seven tips from teen psychologist Nikita Karpov
School has begun, which means that deadlines have appeared not only for adults, but also for children. And as if the parents got the moral right to push and demand from them to meet the timing. Of course, it is important to come to school or kindergarten on time. But the ways to achieve this goal can take unpleasant forms. We begin to raise our voices, threaten, criticize and punish. Let’s try to figure out how to organize the morning so as not to kill each other and come to work, school or kindergarten in a good mood.
To begin with, I’ll abandon this idea: parents need to be on time more than children. Especially if we are talking about preschoolers: they generally exist at the moment, without plans for the future. It is adults with their nerves, twitchiness and haste that turn the morning into hostilities.
Seven tips to make your morning training go smoothly
1. Remember that children are different. There are those who need more time than others. Also, a child usually gets ready for longer than any adult, because he is more often distracted, and he simply does not yet have such a skill. And the fact that there is not enough time in the morning is a planning mistake of parents. So lay more time for children’s camps.
2. If the child is already able to cope with the consequences of falling off the schedule, let him figure it out on his own. Let him run to the bus stop, ride the bus, talk to teachers, not have breakfast, etc. Do not take on the responsibility for which the child is already ready. Otherwise, you will have to deal with control instead of enjoying communication with the child and your life. But don’t overestimate its capabilities. This approach is suitable for teenagers from 6th to 8th grade, no younger. Of course, there are exceptions: be guided by the speed of development of your child.
3. Review morning activities, their order and priorities. Decide what is important to do and what can be sacrificed. For example, brushing your teeth is critical, and instead of breakfast, you can give your son or daughter a sandwich to go. Or you definitely need to eat in the morning, and checking the backpack is on the child’s conscience - he has to deal with educational problems if he forgets something, and not you.
Another tip: try not to make your schedule based on the plans of the children for the day. For example, do not schedule business meetings and calls, thinking that the child will leave on time and you will be in time everywhere. By doing this, you create an eternal field for conflict.
4. Remember that getting up and getting ready is easy when you are looking forward to something pleasant. Usually, if a child does not wake up on an alarm clock, during brushing his teeth, breakfast and fees, nothing but the removal of the brain awaits him. Who wants to get up knowing this?
Try to be positive and relaxed, focus yourself and focus your child’s attention on what’s cool ahead of him. If you find it difficult to wake up immediately in a good mood, lay a few minutes in the morning to put your condition in order. I, for example, get up before the children for 20 minutes. I need this time to start smiling at them instead of growling at them.
5. In almost all children, the leading type of activity is a game. Add its elements to the morning preparations according to the age of the child so that he wants to get up as soon as possible. Here are some options. Putting on racing pants. Small surprises at every stage of the collection: it can be a candy found in a pile of clean clothes, or a breakfast in the form of an animal. Or, for example, cool wake-up music.
Another way to add a game to the collection process is to visualize each stage. For example, draw what and in what order you do in the morning: a smile, a toothbrush, a made bed, a plate of food, a dressed child. Any routine action can be made more interesting by turning it into a game - just show your imagination.
6. Create morning rituals. Unlike the entertainments described above, they occur regularly at the same time, and their content is always the same. Rituals can range from kissing on the heels to exchanging sarcastic witticisms with a teenager, from favorite breakfast treats to family hugs before leaving the house. It’s great to create them together.
7. Before arranging morning breaks or rushing a child, ask yourself the question: “What do I want as a result?” Is it true that the main thing is to keep within five minutes? Or to keep cool memories in the child’s memory? For example, I stopped being angry that my youngest son stops twenty times on his way to kindergarten, when I decided that it was important for me that he could be interested in the surrounding reality and enjoy life. Now we go out early and look at the daisies and passing buses together. By the way, try to calculate how many mornings you have left before the child leaves you? It’s not an infinite number at all.
May your mornings be beautiful, because deadlines will end, but your relationship with children will remain.