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tiffanyherndon

Let's talk mornings with teenagers...

Updated: Oct 21, 2020


I spent years enduring battles in the morning. As a single parent, working full time, trying to get the kids, as well as myself, up and out the door on time was a challenge, to say the least. A solid morning routine for the kids (with morning routine schedules and reminders posted around the house, teacher mom 🤪) helped, but we still often spiraled into yelling, threats, and tears of frustration. More mornings than not I arrived at work already agitated, out of patience, and in a shame spiral, thinking, “if something happened to me or the kids today, and the last thing they ever heard from me were angry words, would I be able to live with myself?”

Something had to change. Spoiler alert; it wasn’t them that needed to change, it was me.

Our children reflect our energy back to us, when we are agitated and chaotic, so are they. I learned that the key to a peaceful morning, was a peaceful me! There are some steps you can follow to make your mornings more peaceful, which I have detailed in my handout "Peaceful Mornings with Kids and Teens". A schedule, and predetermined reinforcements and consequences are pretty straightforward. The last two; patience and perspective, can be a little more challenging. Because these two are about us as parents doing the work. I am not naturally a patient person (surprise, surprise!) but I have learned to cultivate patience, and I have established practices in my life that keep me on track with this. And perspective is the ability to step outside the immediate moment, and see how this fits into the big picture. We want to have a peaceful productive day, and so do our children. We want to have a loving relationship. Implementing these changes in our daily routine had a major affect. There was an unforeseen result as well. As our mornings were generally more peaceful, I was able to identify when something more serious was wrong, such as discovering that my sons newly developed resistance to getting up was actually the result of anxiety, and not just morning battles. I think about those years past, as I sit on my sons bed this morning, gently waking up his brain without him really knowing it, by talking to him, asking him random questions, getting him thinking. Enticing him with the promise of a bowl of cereal. Some days it works, some days it doesn’t, and I have to wake him up repeatedly, but I always remind myself, this isn’t something he’s doing on purpose to be difficult, he really can’t wake up. The days that I lose my patience we ALL start the day off on a negative note, and it hasn’t actually changed the outcome. As I stare out the window at the blue October sky, and nearly bare trees, I acknowledge what an unusual time this is, to live and parent during a pandemic, and have this time at home together. And how fleeting this time is. In a few years he will leave home, and whether or not he was a few minutes late to his zoom class because he forgot to charge his iPad won’t really matter, but his memories of home will, and our relationship will. Coming up next; Equally important is YOUR morning routine parents! It sets the tone for your whole day, and allows you center and ground yourself, BEFORE engaging with the world.



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