Enhance Your Morning Routine with Positive Parenting
Written by: Kristina Valdez, MSW & Nick Barbella
Moms, are your mornings getting the kids ready for school hectic? Maybe someone woke up late, took too long to get ready, or can't find a piece of their uniform. Does that sound like you? I’m sure you wish you had enough time to have breakfast with your family and enjoy your morning coffee in peace before tackling the day ahead.
With kids going back to in-person learning, families across America are trying to figure out how to get their children back into the swing of things. On this week’s blog, we’re talking about the one way to make sure everything gets done in the morning so everyone is out of the house on time, without power struggles and frustration!
Creating a morning routine is key. A great way to approach creating and maintaining a morning routine is with a positive parenting lens.
What is positive parenting?
According to Seay, Freysteinson, and McFarlane (2014), positive parenting is the continual relationship of a parent(s) and a child or children that includes caring, teaching, leading, communicating, and providing for the needs of a child consistently and unconditionally. (p. 207). If you’re like me, you may have read that definition and thought, isn’t that just parenting?! Well, in an ideal world, yes! However, every parent knows that parenting can easily devolve into yelling, threatening punishment, and near-constant power struggles with the little beings you love so much-ugh!
This negative dynamic between parent and child can happen when parents don’t have enough practice using the tools in their toolbox that effectively address childrens’ developmentally appropriate inclination to test our limits, over and over again. Without knowing about such tools and how to use them, we often reach for the first tool we can find -- yelling & punishment.
So what are the tools? For that, we will look at some concrete examples from Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), an evidence-based family therapy that WORKS!
STEP 1- Make sure that you consistently fill your child’s “love bucket” -- the need for emotional connection with you. Click here for a great children’s book you can read to introduce the concept to your family.
The goal is to catch them doing good as much as possible using PRIDE Skills!
Praise - “Nice job sitting in your seat while you eat breakfast!”
Reflect - Child: “Mom, I’m tired. I want to sleep more.” Parent: “I’m tired too and I like sleeping just like you.” :)
Imitate - “I’m going to put my shoes on too just like Grace just did.”
Describe - “Grace is putting on her shoes.”
Enthusiasm - “Wow, what a great morning!”
Now, how does that relate to creating a morning routine you might ask? Well, everything; to understand how this connects, just ask yourself who you’d be more likely to listen to -- the boss that only criticizes when you could do better OR the boss that consistently catches you doing well and acknowledges it, then provides constructive feedback when necessary!
STEP 2 - Include your children in the process, with limits
We all love autonomy, and children are no exception! When you start making your morning routine, it is important to include your child in the process; one way to do this is to frame the scenario with two acceptable choices from which they can choose.
“Mom, I want to watch cartoons while I finish waking up before getting ready for school.”
→ “Before fun time, you need to be ready for school.”
“Come on, pleeeease. Can’t I just watch cartoons first for 5 minutes?”
→ “Our rule is you need to be ready before playtime in the morning. You can choose to eat, get dressed & brush your teeth quickly or slowly? If you choose quickly, you’ll have time to watch tv. If you choose slowly, you will not have time to relax before school. It’s up to you.
You also get to decide the order you do things to get ready. You can eat first, then get dressed or get dressed first, then eat. That part of the schedule is up to you!”
By including them, you are teaching them skills that are essential for growth and development. For example, teaching children how to make a schedule will help them in many different aspects of their life, from at home, school, and eventually when they enter the workforce. It’s important that the parent sets the parameters because children are not developmentally mature enough to do it for themselves; in this case, the parameter was before fun time, the kids needed to be ready for school. Setting a parameter is important because though they won’t verbally say it, giving children too much freedom to choose can be stressful and child stress often shows up as bad behavior & not listening!
STEP 3- Clear communication
You also want to ensure there is clear and calm communication - always. This is where things can really get tough. Parents are human and when kids aren’t listening, it can be difficult to stay calm but it’s essential because they are watching your every move. If you want to teach them to be respectful, you need to model respect, even when you feel like steam is coming out of your ears because it’s taken 10 minutes to put one shoe on! Communication also needs to be clear so they know exactly what you are asking. If you need help knowing how to stay calm, check out our recent blog post for some essential emotional regulation skills!
STEP 4 - Discuss Consequences
It’s not realistic to expect toddlers and school-aged children to adhere to the established morning routine without reminders. The goal should not be to have small kids do the entire morning routine on their own, but rather that they listen promptly when you remind them about the next step of the established routine. According to PCIT, it’s fair to give ONE warning, but then parents need to be consistent with the consequence if children don’t listen after their warning. And of course, in Parent-Child Interaction Therapy, this compliance training is gradual and done with the help of a professional who is *literally* in your ear (through headphones) giving you step by step instructions to help parents build their skills and know what to do when their children test their limits or misbehave. If you’re looking for a PCIT therapist & live in PA, look no further; Priscilla Riley, MS, NCC, LPC offers virtual sessions and is a true expert; one of her clients has this to say,
“Priscilla helped our family immensely and my kids loved her from the very first day! She connected with every member of our family and provided the practical instruction that took my children from listening around 25% of the time to 75-80% of the time after zero or 1 warning. I didn’t think it was possible. Thank you so much!”
There is no one proper way that a morning routine should be set up; it should be unique to your family and your family’s needs.
If you are still finding it difficult to get out the door on time in the morning, you can also create a nighttime routine. Nighttime routines can help make mornings less stressful by ensuring not all tasks are left to be handled in the morning.
Check out some helpful charts and checklists to implement into your morning routine!
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Seay, A., Freysteinson, W. M., & McFarlane, J. (2014). Positive parenting. Nursing Forum (Hillsdale), 49(3), 200-208. https://doi.org/10.1111/nuf.12093