How do you get them up and ready in the am?

[mistymama]

This is a new area for me, my son has always been a super early riser, so getting up and ready was never a problem for us.

Well, in the past month or so, he has started sleeping in. Which is fine, in fact, on weekends, it's HEAVEN!!

But this week he's enrolled in a science camp that starts at 9am, and the past two days I had the hardest time getting him up and ready! He loves the camp, is excited to go, but wants to wake up around 8 and lounge in bed for 30+ mins .. and we need to be out the door by 8:30am. This has me very worried for Kindy in August where he has to be there by 7:45am! Yikes!

So what tips do you guys have for blasting your children out of bed in a gentle way?

I've considered letting him pick out and set his own alarm clock. Beyond that, I'm just clueless. He gets plenty of sleep, he's usually in bed by 8:30 at the latest, last night he was asleep by 8pm. I tried joking/playing with him, making a game out of getting up .. nope, no interest. I had to get him out of bed, dress him, make him go pee really quick and eat his breakfast in the car. I would really rather we have a calmer, smoother morning routine, maybe even one where he will put his own clothes on without 100 reminders?

Any tips or suggestions? I'm open!

[LilyGrace]

My mom used to bake for our lunches in the morning. There's nothing better than waking up to the smell of brownies, cookies, doughnuts..knowing that they'd be our snack later in the day.

I'm not a morning person like my mom was. We do music here. Presently it's Here Comes The Sun, followed by peppy tunes to keep the tempo up. I find we all do things quicker when music is on - it's like we're trying to match the beat.

[ChetMC]

Early Mornings for Slow Wakers

Our oldest is very slow to wake up in the morning. She also likes to relax in bed for a half an hour. We had this issue when she was in preschool this year. In the end, we just ended up shortening the process of getting ready as much as we could so she could stay in bed as long as possible.

Thirty minutes before she had to get up we turned on lights and music, and gave her a gentle poke, letting her know that she'd be getting up soon. She could dress herself, but somebody had the clothes ready and put them on her since she wasn't able to do it quickly at that time of the day. She sometimes ate breakfast in the car or at the bus stop. We gave her the option of peeing at home or peeing as soon as she got to preschool, and she often picked at preschool.

It wasn't the traditional way to start to the day, but it worked. By the time she got to preschool she was awake and ready to start her day. Besides, we hadn't reached the absolute extreme. I once read a post from a mom who put her four kids to bed in their clothes so she wouldn't need to worry about getting four kids dressed in the morning when things were hectic.

[mamaduck]

My younger son is impossible to wake up in the morning. We literally pull him out of bed, stand him on his feet, walk him into the bathroom and point him in the direction of the toilet. I felt kind of bad about the whole routine so one morning I just woke him gently and asked him to get up. As I was leaving the room I heard him muttering, "Mom, Mom?" I asked him what he needed. "Can you please come back and pull me out of bed like you usually do? I just can't do it myself."

I'm kind of scared anticipating the day when he eventually grows to be bigger than I am!

[Kessed]

I was hard to wake up... Once I was up - I was really a morning person. But I was hard to get out of bed.

My dad played a game with me where I was a sloth and he was the tree... He would come in and wake me up. I would grab onto his arm with my arms and legs... Then he would deposit me on the bathmat in the bathroom.

[mistymama]

Such cute stories!

My son loves explosions and since we just had the 4th of July I tried to get him to explode out of bed like a firework. He looked at me like I was nuts and he was a little boy, not a firework.

I'm reading, please feel free to leave more suggestions and insight!