‘I stopped whining in the morning and that changed everything’
No matter how relaxed you intend to start the day, with children who have to get ready, things don’t always go smoothly. Sara Neufeld, mother of two sons aged six and eight, knows this too. “I decided I had to try something different and stopped whining.”
Although Sara often begins her day by meditating, the chaos of the next hour makes that period of rest short-lived. Her sons are often very busy in the morning, which means that Sara herself has lost all peace in one fell swoop. For years she threatened with everything: no pocket money, less screen time, no desserts and to bed earlier. But nothing helped. “I decided I had to try something completely different. So I stopped whining in the morning and saw what happened.”
Consequences
“I did that by just letting my sons have their way. If that meant leaving for school late, so be it. They had to learn the consequences for themselves. Although many teachers are still quite understanding.” Fortunately, Sara has two sons who actually want to be at school on time. “I noticed that not whining went pretty well for me too. Except on days when I felt I had slept little. But even then I tried to remain calm.”
Alarm
For the next two weeks, Sara and her children were always between five and 25 minutes late for school. Until Sara’s friends came up with an idea: why don’t you let the boys set timers? “My oldest son picked it up right away. He set an alarm every ten minutes, starting an hour before we had to leave. We agreed that he himself was responsible for turning off the alarm, which meant he had to keep an eye on the clock. And guess what, it still worked. The last two days before spring break, we were no more than three minutes late for school. Even after the holidays, this routine still worked.”
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“Earlier, if there were clothes on the floor, I would have said, ‘Pick up your dirty pants and underpants’. Now I say: ‘I see that there are clothes on the floor’. That is handled much better.” For Sara it sometimes still takes some effort to deal with it so consciously, especially at night. And unfortunately she has not yet found a solution for when your child gets cranky out of bed or throws a tantrum. “But overall it’s definitely a success. And my kids got five minutes of screen time in the morning once, because we were just on time.”
Source: Scary Mommy
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