Morning Hassles

The following is a selection from the book Raising Children Who Think For Themselves by Dr. Eisa Medhus. From the chapter titled "Specific Child Rearing Challenges - How to Handle Them to Encourage Self-Direction", the following introduction is offered.

"The best way to make children good is to make them happy." - Oscar Wilde

Here are some inner-directed suggestions that will help with some of the most trying child-rearing difficulties we may stumble upon. All of these approaches are designed to preserve your children's ability to rely on internal dialogue instead of external influences to assess and correct their behavior. Using this section as a ready reference will help you raise a self-directed child, even if it means carrying the book, tattered and tear-stained, to the market, in the car, or at home. There are some challenges that, I hope you will never have to face, but others will be as inevitable as a pimple on prom night.

To get to self-direction, there are a few universal caveats for every one of the situations that follow. First, our children need to understand and agree with both the need for the furl and the consequence for breaking it. Only when they come to agree with our rules, through their own internal dialogue, will they become self-directed. Second, look to your own parenting strategy as the possible source of some of the problem. Are you over-controlling or over-protective? Either trait can elicit an externally directed response, as your children react to an unhealthy situation. Third, remember for all these parenting challenges how important it is for you as parents, to model the right behavior. If you're expecting your children to act one way and you act another, the double standard will throw a monkey wrench into their whole internal dialogue machinery.

And lastly, don't forget to laugh.

Why they do it

Sometimes those Monday mornings are just way too early. Like us, children have trouble getting out of their warm and cozy beds to get ready for the day.

Logical consequences

If your children habitually oversleep and are old enough to manage an alarm clock, let them be late for school. Arrange for their teachers to make an issue of it when they finally do get there.

If your children have trouble getting ready for school, either let them get to school late or leave without them to take the other siblings or go to work. If they're late for the bus, make them walk to school or ride their bikes, safety, age, and proximity permitting. If you can't wait around for your kids to get their act together, because doing so will make you late to work, have them reimburse you for the extra time it takes you to drive them to school.

Solutions toward self-direction

When my kids turn off their annoying alarm clocks and roll over to go back to sleep, I usually tell them, "It's late, but that's okay. I guess skipping breakfast from time to time won't kill anybody."

Never nag or yell. It just creates fodder for an externally directed power struggle between you and your children.

Never let on that their problems getting up and ready in the morning are more important to you than to them. Let them know that it's no skin off your back if they go to school late, in their pajamas, starving, moss growing on their teeth, and with hair making them look like the Wild Man from Borneo.

Use observations when they do all of their morning routine in a timely manner: "I see you've already eaten, gotten dressed, and brushed your teeth. Wow, now you have an extra ten minutes to watch cartoons!" If they forgot one part of their routine, you can say something like "Look at you, Annika. You're dressed, you made yourself a great breakfast, and you brushed your hair beautifully. Now all that's left is brushing your teeth!"

Give information: "The bus comes in fifteen minutes."

Use impartial descriptions: "We leave in ten minutes, and you haven't eaten breakfast yet. I hope you have enough time. Lunch isn't until 1:00."

Use questioning: It's 7:15. What time does the bus come?" "What do you still need to do to get ready for school?" "You're running behind. If you two keep fighting, what will happen?"