Yesterday I had a major parenting breakthrough! At least I think I did (I’m starting to rethink my use of that last exclamation point)
Once upon a time getting Lyd to get ready for school was an exhausting exercise that resulted in barely avoiding the futility train on a daily basis. It was maddening! Telling her to speed up caused her tempo to drop by 60%. I’m amazed her voice didn’t deepen along with the slow-down.
Sometimes I really do wonder if she took a hit to the head. I say, “Pick up your backpack so we can go”, she (apparently) hears, “Stand perfectly still and stare blankly in my general direction. Continue doing this until I speak again”. Maybe I’m actually the world’s greatest hypnotist and I have not yet discovered this talent. One morning, after braiding her hair I sent her off to eat her breakfast and I opened up my phone to look over my handy dandy checklist app.
“Checklist…” I thought. “That’s it! She needs a checklist!” Later that day, I scribbled out her morning routine. When she got Home, we set out on a project. She wrote out each step on a separate sheet of paper, and illustrated each step (the step, “sit on the potty” is a hilarious drawing!). I three-hole-punched it and put it into a binder.
There. Now she has a checklist, something of hers, something she owns. This is something she can take a look at while I’m busy changing a diaper. This is a way for her to take responsibility of her mornings. This deserves mentioning as well: My former self, a Stage Manager, now just one of my muses, was also pretty happy. Checklists = Awesome Sexy Cool (well, at least for Stage Managers it’s Awesome Sexy Cool. You know? Never mind. Moving on.)
Life was good! She was kicking her morning routine in the rear, often getting ahead of her checklist. For the last half of Kindergarten and for the first three months of First Grade, that three-ring binder was practically a bible. We had refined it to the point where pretty much any question could be answered by that thing.
And then…I don’t know. Did she get bored? Tired? Maybe this is a first-grade version of the kind of attitude I see displayed by teenagers.
Whatever it was, she was back to being slow-mo again and I was driven even more insane than before. I mean…What??? The Binder! It’s right there! Like it always has! Come On!
What to do? What to do? Come on brain…think!
For a few very irritating weeks I was dragging her along just like we were for most of last year.
Then yesterday, it hit me. I made a chart of what she needs to do every morning. I began working on it the minute I thought of it, which nearly made Lyd late for school (oops). Each task was given a time limit, a penny represented five minutes. Breakfast gets twenty-five minutes or five pennies, her Free-Time (if things are on time) gets thirty minutes or six pennies. The mission of every morning is two-fold, first if she does a good job of getting ready, she gets to choose a necklace to wear. Second, and this is the more important one, is to get as much free-time as possible. Free time ends at the same time every morning no matter what, so the earlier you start free time, the more free time you get.
I told her that if she takes ten extra minutes goofing off (I’m sorry, I meant “eating”) her breakfast, then the ten minutes has to be taken off of her Free Time. Now her Free Time is down to twenty minutes. That means she needs to rush with those crayons or her toy microphone or whatever it is that she wishes to do with that time.
I then told her that if she eats her breakfast quickly and finishes ten minutes early then two pennies get taken off of Breakfast and added to Free Time.
Hallelujah!
She understood this concept! She got it! Internally I’m fist pumping, if this were on film there would have been a stunt double of me wearing a disheveled dark blonde wig with grey streaks and enough padding to give him a dad bod who would be doing flips and somersaults in the air.
Let’s just see if she gets it again tomorrow morning.
It’s really just so cool that I figured this out two days before Christmas Vacation breaks out. I can’t wait to re-teach her this after ten days of her sleeping in.