Tag: teenagers

"This Morning Routine Needs a Reboot" by Barb Szyszkiewicz (CatholicMom.com)

This Morning Routine Needs a Reboot

franciscanmom1 Comment

Every morning it’s the same.

  • Wake up sometime between 4:30 and 5:15 (the latter if I somehow manage to sleep until the alarm goes off, which is cause for great rejoicing)
  • Take a shower
  • Make a cup of tea
  • Morning prayers

After that, it’s time to wake up the teenager. And that’s where it all goes bad. He sleeps through any alarm his phone has to offer.

  • Wake up TheKid
  • Preheat oven for bacon, line pan with foil, set out bacon, place in oven
  • Start the music–loud music that I love but he hates; wake TheKid again
  • Make a cup of coffee
  • Wake TheKid again. Sing loudly with the music, especially the nonsense syllables in “Good Morning Starshine”
  • Repeat as necessary (and it’s almost always necessary)

TheKid finally stumbles out of his room, hands me his insulin pump to put on the charger while he showers, and heads upstairs. Forward progress, you’d think.

You’d think wrong.

  • Finish shower, reattach insulin pump, go back to bed
  • Bacon is ready
  • Walk into kitchen, put bagel in toaster, go back to bed
  • Bagel is ready
  • Stall for 5 more minutes while bagel cools off, get up and commence mad scramble to make the bus

This process begins at 6 AM. The bus arrives at 7:40.

It’s inefficient and annoying and never ends well. I wind up yelling and nobody’s happy, because yelling cancels out the endorphins gained from belting out “Good Morning Starshine” in harmony and holding all the long notes.

After TheKid gets on the school bus today, I’m going to start googling alarm-clock solutions. Maybe a drone I can fly from the kitchen to his room, one strong enough to steal his blanket. He can give it to me for Christmas. Because this just isn’t working out for me, and I’m tired of spending an hour and a half every morning fighting.

"This Morning Routine Needs a Reboot" by Barb Szyszkiewicz (CatholicMom.com)
Via Pixabay (2016), CC0 Public Domain

Small Success: Musical Wake-up Call

franciscanmom1 Comment

Small Success dark blue outline 800x800Thursdays at CatholicMom.com begin with a look at the past week’s Small Successes!

First things first. You need to go over and read Sherry Antonetti’s post that explains why Small Success is such an important thing. There’s not always a lot of participation, but it’s good to do the writing, to reflect on what goes right, to be grateful.

I’ve made my mornings a little easier by coming up with a way to get TheKid out of bed that involves a lot less yelling. His alarm goes off; he ignores it. I call for him 5 minutes later; he ignores me. 5 minutes after that, I head in with my Secret Weapon: my tablet with a Spotify playlist I’ve titled “Teenage Musical Torture.” Here it is, for your listening…um…pleasure.

My friends on Facebook helped me craft the playlist. My criteria specified that I had to be able to put up with the song, so some suggestions were denied because of that.

It’s good, though. He’s laughing, not grumpy, when he gets out of bed.

I find that anything by the Brady Bunch works particularly well. “Disco Duck” is also quite effective.

In other news, both the Big Kids have come home for dinner this week. Not on the same night, but they both came home for dinner. That’s a family success.

And I remembered to buy a set of Advent candles. Let this serve as your reminder, moms: Advent begins in 10 days! Go get some candles!

Share your Small Successes at CatholicMom.com by joining the linkup in the bottom of today’s post. No blog? List yours in the comments box!

 

Wake Up, You Sleepyhead

franciscanmomLeave a comment

Any parent of a teenager knows how difficult it is to get that teenager out of bed on a school day.

zits 011512
ZITS comic, January 15, 2012

 

The ZITS comic has this topic as a recurring, and always hilarious, theme.

Normally I find myself increasingly annoyed by my role as the Human Snooze Alarm for TheKid. But today something different happened.

Me: “Come on, it’s time to wake up. You have to get up for school.”

Kid: “Mmmmm…who’s going to be the president after Abe Lincoln?”

Me: “Ulysses S. Grant.”

Kid: (smiles widely, nods hugely, rolls over and continues sleeping.)