What to do if your child doesn’t want to go to school in the morning

It’s rare to meet an adult who likes to get up early and read 7th grade math book, especially in winter, let alone children.

If your child does not want to go to kindergarten or school in the morning, it is not necessarily a problem in kindergarten or school. Especially if you see that after he got in place, the child feels great and is in no hurry to go home after class. Do you yourself always want to get up in the morning and go somewhere, looking at the darkness outside the window? You are often driven by a sense of duty and a nurtured will, but for a child, these are still only words. The mere realization that you have to get out of a warm bed, pull on a whole mountain of clothes and go out in the cold, puts many under stress. That is, the problem may not be at home or at school, but in the transition from one space to another, in the experience of change.

Our brain is wary of change and 4th grade science , change denotes danger. It is necessary to actively mobilize resources, but in the morning, before you are fully awake, the adaptive mechanisms are not yet working, it is easier for the brain to put the brakes on changes, not the changes themselves. No, I’ll go back to sleep, no, I’ll sit up. How many parents have told me stories about morning girls sitting for 20 minutes with their pantyhose on one leg. How many parents have told me stories of boys buttoning one button on their shirt for half an hour.

My mother used to tell me when I was a kid: “Grandpa Lenin always got out of bed fast to do things and lean https://argoprep.com/store/product/5th-grade-common-core-math-workbook-free-response/!” And I pictured Grandpa Lenin as a little curly-haired angel like the one on the October star. And young Grandpa Lenin would quickly get out of his warm crib and go and learn how to make revolutions. It even motivated me somehow, and I, sighing heavily, went to brush my teeth. Since teleportation has not yet been invented, and Grandpa Lenin can no longer serve as a sufficient reason for a quick morning rise, let’s think about how to ease the difficulties of the transition.

It is very important that the same ritual be followed to help you and your child make the transition from sleeping to going out of the house. For me, for example, a mug of hot tea is important, for someone – an ear massage, for someone – the noise of dishes from the kitchen, sounds and actions without which the transition is slower. For the little ones, you can draw your own book or glue pictures: how the morning works. We wake up, go to wash up, brush our teeth, get dressed, and so on. The rule of sequence: “when this – then that”. It is important for the child to know how the day will be arranged further. With those who are very badly turned on in the morning, it is necessary to talk in the evening about what kind of classes and lessons he has, what kind of tutor and teacher is waiting for him, what to do with those who throw sand or call him names.

Erich Neumann said that people who do not like to get up in the morning are those who have not woken up to their own lives. That is, those who do not choose what they want to do at any given time. Children don’t usually choose whether or not to go to school, study, or work. Their lives are still determined by their parents. Is it possible to make it possible for a child to choose something after he or she is out of the house, if only in his or her imagination? Who is the first person you want to see at school? What do you want to do in kindergarten today? For adults, the wording would be: is there something interesting at my job today that I want to do first? Then going to the place where something understandable and interesting is waiting for you will be much easier.

Try not to overdo the momentary choices. “Wear what you want!” – puts many at a disadvantage. “The closet is big and there’s nothing to wear!” – is a serious problem. Clothes for kindergarten, school or work are better kept separate. It’s easier and faster to choose from three dresses than from twenty. Don’t ask questions in the morning that you don’t want to hear an unsatisfying answer. For example: “Do you want to go to school?” Mornings are not the time for provocation and figuring things out.

Lifehack: our brain perceives the movement from one room to another as a transition, activates the mechanisms of search for danger and adaptation. Happens to you like this: you decided to do something, went to the place and forgot what you wanted. Popular wisdom advises: go back to the place where you made the decision – and you will remember everything at once. A simpler and more scientifically confirmed variant: it is enough to return not to the place where you were, but to go only part of the way. To return through the first doorway along the way. For children to activate adaptation mechanisms, it is important that they go through the doorway, that is, they leave their room and gather in another part of the space.

I think that someday one very lazy and anxious person will come up with a teleportation mechanism after all, and we will be spared the adaptation to transitions. But the need to wash and dress will certainly not be abolished.