My kids are still in elementary school and I don't know when I'll stop getting up with them but for now I still do. They are 5,5 and 8. When they get home in the afternoons all homework is done and backpacks and coats are hung up ready to leave in the am.
I set out their clothes the night before (uniform school now so they don't have too many options anyhow). They do baths at night still so that is one less thing to do in the morning.
I wake them up and lay out their clothes. The older one gets dressed while I get the younger two through the bathroom- potty, teeth, face washed, and then dressed. They go downstairs and put on shoes and coats while I do older DD's hair and then she does her bathroom stuff while I go downstairs and help tie shoes if need be, and set out morning meds (my kids all need their allergy meds or I will be called to school because they're "sick").
After they're all downstairs we go out to the car and wait in the car at the end of the driveway for the bus. It's still pitch black out when they leave and it's been so cold that it's pretty much necessary to sit in the car with the heat on.
I guess mine aren't really self reliant at all but our routine runs pretty smoothly and everyone gets as much sleep as possible, that's more important for now with their crazy schedule (leave at 6:20, get home around 5:00)
My oldest, DS, is a freshman in HS now and his school is 23 mis. from our house. His bus stop is almost 4 miles away.
That seems crazy to me that the bus stop is so far away. Wow!
I am up with my girls every morning. I get the 16 year old up first at 5:30 (we have yet to find an alarm that will wake that girl ~ and we've tried a LOT of them
).
DH is bad with alarms- he wakes up just enough to hit the snooze button and roll over. For some reason, the alarm on his phone wakes him up more, you may want to try that.
I have a 10 month old, so I can't contribute to the thread, but after reading a few replies I have a question. Why do kids have to get up so early to go to school? 5:30!!
Is this normal?
We're up at 5:40 for school- my kids attend a magnet school and there is one bus from our town that goes to the magnet school (only about 15 minutes away in light traffic and using the HOV lane but the bus has a bunch of stops all across town). My kids are actually one of the last stops at approximately 6:20 am.
Since the school they attend is in a poor area, breakfast and lunch are included for all students. I think there may be some sort of rule that the bus has to get there in time for that, so they are at the school around 7:00-7:10 in order to have time to have breakfast and be in their classrooms before school starts at 7:45.
As much as I hate getting up at 5:40 and putting them on a bus at 6:20, the nice thing about breakfast at school is that they've actually woken up enough to eat it by the time they get there. I could of course feed them at home (tried to at first) but they were still too sleepy (had to get up even earlier to have time) and didn't really do much more than pick at their food. Then when they get to school they have nothing to do but sit in the caf and watch everyone else eat.
I'm NOT a morning person, this is going to be hard. I better get all the sleep I can NOW.
Trust me, I hate it. I'm awful in the morning, I admit it. I hate being woken up. DH has a part time job that has him getting home after I've gone to bed a few times a week and he said that I'm terrible when I get woken up (I don't deny it!) He's even started getting undressed downstairs because apparently I yelled at him about how much his belt jingles.
I do go back to bed for a bit after they leave, otherwise I couldn't function.
Those of you with younger kids haven't experienced yet what I'm talking about. Even if your kids get themselves completely up and out the door, someone in your house will have the joy of early morning alarms when your kids get to high school.
My kids are younger but I know exactly what you're talking about. I'm a SAHM, DH works. In the summer, over vacations, etc... when I am finally excited about sleeping in a bit, DH's alarm for work goes off and wakes me up and lots of times, wakes the kids up too. DH is also bad about hitting the snooze a bunch of times so I wake up once with the alarm and then every 8 minutes with the snooze. By the time he does that a couple of times (he builds in snooze button time into his morning schedule
) it's often kind of hard to get back to sleep.
What are they going to do in college when Mommy isn't there to holler 20 times for them to get up? My mom didn't wake us up in high school and if we didn't hear our alarm we suffered the consequences of being late.
