School Mornings
Without the Stress
By Beth Arky
D
uring the school year, a cry is heard from parents
across the land: Getting kids out the door Monday
through Friday is a killer.
What makes school mornings so hard? “They’re kind of
like a perfect storm,” says David Anderson, PhD, senior
director of the ADHD and Disruptive Behavior Disorders
Center at the Child Mind Institute.
“You have a number of things that have to get done,”
he explains, “and there’s also a time limit.” Add to this
the fact that parents sometimes feel their kids don’t
appreciate the ticking clock while they’re trying to get
everyone to school and work and you’ve got a pressure
cooker that can, at its worst, lead to yelling, tears, and
forgotten lunches.
Dr. Anderson says one colleague calls times like school
mornings—along with homework, transitioning from
dinner and shower time to bedtime, and then actually
getting kids to sleep—”frequent flyer situations,” when
stress levels regularly reach their peak. He says mornings
6 | F L A G L E R parent M A G A Z I N E
are “definitely tough for most families we talk to.”
Also, many kids have difficulty with transitions, whether
they have diagnoses like ADHD and autism or not, and
the morning is all about transitions done under a hard
and fast deadline.
While parents can be more flexible about things like
bedtime—perhaps they’ll let a child stay up reading
until he falls asleep—morning doesn’t afford the same
luxury.
If a child leaves the house in the morning without the
right shoes, or sports gear, or homework, or without
eating breakfast, it can contribute to problems during
school.
And if a child ends up being late to school, the parent is
often late to work, too.
So what’s a parent to do to both get out the door on
time and with as little conflict as possible? Dr. Anderson
recommends several things.