education
easy-breezy MORNINGS words by Tanni Haas, Ph.D.
August is National Wellness Month, a great occasion to consider how you can make school-day mornings as stress-free as possible. In my family, school-day mornings used to be really stressful, with everyone running around like chickens with their heads cut off as we rushed to get ready and out the door. However, things have changed. Through trial and error, and conversations with other parents, we’ve come up with six things to ensure stress-free mornings.
Have a Morning Chore Chart The best way to start the morning stress-free, is to plan as much as possible the night before. To help us, we have a Morning Chore Chart which specifies all the tasks that need to be done each morning and who’s responsible for doing them. The chart spells out everything from making the bed (something teenagers really hate doing) to who’s making what at breakfast. We rotate our tasks every week to be fair. At the bottom of the chart, we list the tasks that need to be done on a specific day, such as leaving money for an overnight school trip. The chart lists daily chores and unique tasks for specific events.
A Place for Everything Everything in its Place The second key to a stressfree morning is organization and preparation. If it were up to my 15-year-old son, his stuff would be dumped where he last needed them, or tossed on the floor. We’ve agreed on exactly where to put our morning 10
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essentials: school bags, coats, foot wear, etc. This makes mornings run much smoother. No one is running around looking for things – we can just grab and go. It’s also helpful to do as many morning tasks as you can the night before - what clothes to wear, packing school bags and lunches, and finishing all homework. No more last-minute homework in the car!
Get a Good Night’s Sleep
It may sound like a cliché, but getting a good night’s sleep is extremely important to reducing morning stress. As we all know, one person’s sleep deprivation can have
