My 7 year old REFUSES to wake up in the mornings, how can I light a fire under her butt?

Question

We lay out clothes the night before, she goes to bed early, but I am SOOO tired of the struggle in the mornings to get her ready. I have to dress her to ensure that we're not late, and there's always the statement "I'm not going to school today", and lately a lot of kicking and screaming on her part. (Pretty soon, it's going to be on my part too, if I don't get this under control) I work, I can't be late, what should I do?

Answer 1

Take some marbles, put them in the freezer. Throw them in bed with her. No matter where she rolls, they will follow her.

Or just threaten to leave her at home.

Answer 2

OK here is what I have to do, because I have a son just like your daughter in this manner.

Get up a little early and take some mommy time, get yourself ready, take deep breaths, eat breakfast if you can that early. have your coffee what ever.

Now before hand you have written out a list of things that need to be done, and you have a pen handy and your child will mark them off as they are done. You have a reward ready, small reward ready for when this is done.

You will then proceed the to get her out of bed and help her check things off on the list. Something that might help is having a pretty pin on pretty paper. As you do this, you will encourage her to do the dressing herself, get up a bit early because the first couple of mornings is going to take a while. When everything is checked off the list then give the reward. There will be another surprise reward for going to school rather than hollaring I am not going.

Tips. Ignore the I am not going statement. Block yourself from being kicked, and give timeout for any pain inflicted but then make her get right back to what she was doing. If she is late for school make her pay the consiquences of having been late a couple times this will not hurt her. Now if you have a special needs child that is different, because she may not have a concept of time or what has to be done, in this case all rules apply accept the one about being late.

This is not an easy task and it is going to take you a while to get it undercontrol, when she does do something she is suppose to praise her and keep on going. Eventually you will get it undercontrol. Do not try to reason with her, and do not shout, a child who has these issues will be looking for your week point. Be firm consistant and matter of fact about the whole thing.

Also something I found that helps with my son is that I actually let him help prepare breakfast as a reward. He thinks it is fun. If your child has breakfast at school, other rewards may be tv with the agreement to turn it off, or a little play time with mommy before you have to take her to school or the bus stop.

Also I said something about tardies and I just realized that you cannot be late for work, again the getting up earlier helps, and she really does need to learn to dress herself. I know this is hard I am rooting you on. If you lay down the rules and help her learn you will gain control over this.

Good luck.

Answer 3

Some kids are just like that. I have one of each. My 8 year old jumps right out of bed ready to start the day but my 12 year old has ALWAYS been a problem. I give a time when she has to be ready by. If she is not ready by that time, I take away a privilege for that night (in her case, it's the computer)

I give her two chances. I dont go back every 5-10 minutes! That is ridiculous. I open her door and turn on the light and radio and say it is time to get up. 10 minutes later I yell upstairs and give the time warning.

Answer 4

Make her go to bed at 6pm. Tell her that is she gets up without the struggle you will move her bedtime up one hour each day, until you have reaches a suitable bedtime (I would say no later than 8 or 9 pm). Do not let her have friends over during this time, do not allow her computer usage, or television. My 6 1/2 year old daughter can be cranky in the morning but it's generally only when she didn't get to bed on time.

Answer 5

Well how early does she go to bed. When my teenagers don't get up I make them go to bed at a ridiculously early hour. It seems to help. I have also punished them by taking away certain items if they dont' get up for school in the morning. Cell phones, tvs, whatever the case may be. It's a hard call to know what to do, but eventually she will get better. Maybe make a game out of it and give her or him a treat in the morning if they wake up on time??? Haven't tried it, but it may work. Good luck!!

Answer 6

How early is early for you? My grand-kids USED to be allowed to go to bed around 10 or so (3 and 6 yrs. old) then they came to live with me and we have been experimenting with bed time. We tried from 7:00-9:00 and it was a toss up. I found that they did best with 10 or more hours of sleep. So, it is now 7:30 or 8:00 and we no longer have any difficulty getting up and going at 7 a.m. I still let them stay up until 10 on Friday night and they tend to sleep in until 9 or so on Saturday mornings.

Answer 7

There are some people that just aren't morning people no matter what. I have that problem. It always has been and still remains a struggle for me to get out of bed in the a.m. no matter how much sleep I had the previous night. I used to give my mother fits because I just couldn't drag my butt out of bed. Some people's clocks are just off (one of my professors at school has this problem. He is actually up all night and sleeps all day and this works for him). Is she actually sleeping when she goes to bed? You may want to remove any extra stimuli from her room. Is there something going on at school that you may not know about? Perhaps you need to talk to her teachers and do a little sleuthing to find out.

Answer 8

Start some sort of discipline and reward system with her.
Get her up half hour earlier in the morning then your already doing.
Make sure she is actually falling asleep early when shes going to bed.
See what is going on at school, if anything is making her not want to be there.
Call a truancy officer to get her out of bed if she is threatening you.
Seek counseling from the school or a professional if problems continue.

Answer 9

Make sure it doesn't have to do with school avoidance issues. (Somebody picking on her, the work is too confusing, ... That sort of thing)

Make sure she is going to bed early (eight is a good time for school kids.) Make it a routine where she starts getting ready about 7:30 and eight o'clock she is in bed. This would be for weekends too.

Also try letting light into her room before you wake her up.

Play perky music in the room before you try to stir her up. I have a "twangy" country CD for kids that really works well (I really don't like country, but she does) Disney music would be good too. Crank it up a bit. This helps wake the whole house.

If your child takes any regular meds - talk with the doctor about whether it making them groggy.

A snack before bed time (and toothbrushing), such as a turkey sandwich, may help her get deeper sleep.

I also had to resort to taking my oldest to school in her pjs - she wouldn't get up, fought getting ready so I told her she had to get ready in the next five minutes or we left as is.

I ended up scooping up her clothes in a grocery bag, tossed them in the car, then scooped her up fussing and kicking all the way. I even had to get a teachers aide to help get her out of the car. I gave her clothes to the teacher and told her to let her change when she was calm enough.

Things went a bit better after that. My daughter knew I really meant we had to go.

I also have to tell you that my daughter has aspergers - which lent a lot to the situation.

It wouldn't hurt to have her checked out for anyting that might be making her so groggy in the morning.

Answer 10

For every minute that she's late, take away a minute of T.V. or whatever at night. For example, if you have to be out the door by 7:30 in the morning and she causes you to be 5 minutes late then that's 5 minutes less of T.V. or activities at night and 5 minutes earlier she has to go to bed. I only had to do this twice with my 5 year old and now she moves pretty fast in the mornings.

Answer 11

For my 7 yr old, when this was a problem I started putting her to bed and hour earlier at 7pm. I also wake her up 1/2 earlier then I need to so she can snooze a little after I wake her up. This helped with me getting her out of bed without a fight, I also put countrymusicvideos TV on loud to help her get going.

To help her WANT to go to school I now carpool with one of my neighbors that has a daughter her age. She didn't like going by herself. Since I've made these changes morning's are not hard, (but they used to be!!)Good Luck!