Earlier Mornings

For the summer, we are trying to switch schedules to wake up a bit earlier in the mornings. This is in preparation for my 5 year old daughter and her impending first day of kindergarten. We don’t currently have to wake up earlier for her daycare, but it only makes sense to shift things up to prepare ahead of time. The goal is to get to daycare about 30 minutes earlier than we usually do. After the first week, it has been roughly unsuccessful.

What has been successful is them getting to bed earlier. Since the weather is warmer nowadays, we try to spend the time after daycare outside doing something. The go-to is spending an afternoon at a part and playing until dinner. This has gotten them exhausted for the evening and they both fall asleep relatively quickly. Huge win in my book. What’s hard is waking them up on time to get ready. It’s still a whole process since they are waking up at least 30 minutes earlier than they used to. My 5 year old daughter is like me - night owl and hates mornings. It’s hard to wake her up. My 3 year old son is like my wife - loves the mornings…but now he overshoots it and has woken up either super early or super late.

With any change in the routine, it’s an adjustment period that comes with different interventions. Some things that I have done to adjust for the lateness is eating breakfast in the car (100% of the days this week vs. 5% of days in a month usually). I have also stayed in their room until they fall asleep so they do not fight, which leads to them falling asleep earlier. Can’t switch on variable with kids without switching some others usually (at least for us) and understanding the give and take should (hopefully) lead to a successful transition.