Why Are Morning Routines Important for Your Family?
Are you scrambling to get your child to school on time? Do they forget assignments at home or wait until the last minute to tell you about projects? Or maybe you’ve noticed that your morning routine leaves you exhausted before your work day even begins?
All of this is completely normal and expected, especially if your child has ADHD or struggles with executive functioning skills. One of the best ways to tackle the morning mess is to create a morning routine that you and your child can consistently follow.
Routines foster a sense of safety, independence, and predictability for both you and your kids. Because kids spend the entire school day taking in new information, one of the best things you can do as their parent is help them regulate their nervous system with a predictable structure. Simple morning routines also have long-term benefits, helping your child develop responsibility and accountability skills imperative to their success in school and beyond. Most importantly, morning routines help set the expectation that everyone is responsible for helping the family function.
How to Implement an Easy Morning Routine
So how do you get started? This is what we suggest:
- Make a list of everything that needs to be completed to have a ‘successful’ morning. Don’t worry about the order right now, just ensure you’ve written down all the tasks, even trivial things. Here’s an example-
- Group the items in your list based on family member. Older kids may have more responsibilities while younger kids might need more help. If a kid needs help with a task, list this task under their section and under the section of the parent who will help them
- Call a family meeting and discuss the tasks you’ve come up with and ask everyone for their feedback. Did you forget anything? Is there something extra you want to start doing, such as a family affirmation or morning stretches?
- Once everyone has agreed to their tasks, discuss morning expectations. What time is everyone expected to be out of bed? What time does everyone need to be out the door and on their way? What do your kids need from you and what do you need from them to have a successful morning?
- OPTIONAL (but highly recommended!): After discussing expectations and responsibilities, this would be a good time to introduce a visual task reminder such as the one we’ve created below!
- Instructions for use: For best results, we recommend printing out and laminating this checklist so kids can cross off tasks as they go. You can place this in your child’s bedroom, on the front door, in the living room, or wherever works best for your family; just make sure this list is ALWAYS visible for your child! Ensuring your child constantly sees this list will reinforce its use and help them clearly understand what they are expected to do in the mornings. Most importantly, keep a copy on hand, even when your family has the routine down. What quickly becomes a habit for you as the parent might not stick for your child, so a visual reminder is key to success.
Link to download FREE printout: Morning Routine Weekly & Daily