Mornings with little kids aren’t about perfect time management, they’re about forgetting half your list anyway
I used to be obsessed with the idea of a perfect morning routine. Back before kids, I’d wake up at 6:30, go for a run, make a fancy matcha, map out my entire day before most people even checked their phones. When I had my first, I thought I’d just adjust that routine, fit it in around the baby. Then the second one came, all 35 pounds of stubborn toddler energy who thinks 6 AM is the best time of day to start a drum solo on the bedroom wall with a wooden spoon, and that whole perfect routine thing went out the window faster than a sippy cup thrown from a high chair.
Six months ago I tried that viral 5 AM wake up trick everyone was talking about. You know the one: wake up two hours before your kids, get all your self care and work done, set the tone for the day. I set my alarm, charged my phone outside the bedroom, everything. I hit snooze once, then dragged myself up at 5:01, stepped straight on my oldest’s giant stuffed penguin that she’d left by the door when she climbed into our bed at 2 AM, and stubbed my little toe so hard I saw stars. I bit my tongue to keep from yelling loud enough to wake the whole house, hopped into the kitchen, and realized my husband had forgotten to refill the coffee maker after he got home late from work the night before. I was standing there, fumbling with the coffee bag, toe throbbing, when I heard the little voice from the hallway: “Mama? I had a bad dream. A duck ate my rabbit.” That was that. My 5 AM routine lasted 12 minutes. I never tried it again.
I’ve tried all the other tricks too. Prep everything the night before, lay out all the kids’ clothes, pack their lunches, set out breakfast bowls. It sounds great on paper. In practice? My three year old will take one look at the gray dinosaur socks I laid out and announce he needs the blue ones. The blue ones, of course, are at the bottom of the dirty laundry hamper, covered in last night’s ketchup. Then my five year old will decide she doesn’t want the peanut butter toast we prepped, she wants oatmeal with rainbow sprinkles, and suddenly I’m digging through the pantry for the sprinkles and finding a half-eaten granola bar from October behind the sugar canister. By the time I’ve got the oatmeal done, we’re already 15 minutes behind where I planned to be, and my chest is tight with that stupid stress that I’m failing at this whole morning thing.
Last month I had a big client call at 9 AM, the kind that could get me a nice big project if it went well. I prepped everything the night before. Laid out my own work clothes, packed the kids’ bags, set my laptop up on the dining room table, even got the kids up 10 minutes early. Everything was going great, right up until my three year old decided he needed to “help” me pour my coffee. He grabbed the whole mug, tipped it, and poured 12 ounces of hot black coffee directly onto my open laptop. I stood there for a full 10 seconds just staring, coffee dripping off the table onto my rug, before I started moving. I dug out the old slow laptop from the closet, mopped up the desk, threw a different shirt on because mine was soaked, and joined the call three minutes late with a coffee stain spread across the front of my chest and my three year old standing behind me waving a dinosaur sticker at the whole screen. It was a disaster. But you know what? The client thought it was funny. We still got the project. That’s when I started realizing all the time management rules I’d learned were made for people who don’t have tiny humans pulling on every part of them before 8 AM.
I keep a giant ziplock bag of extra clean mismatched socks by the front door now. It’s just all the socks that lost their pair over the last year, all washed. If someone can’t find the exact socks they want, we just grab a pair out of the bag. No digging through laundry, no 15 minute meltdown, done. I stopped making the bed every morning, too. The kids climb right back in it as soon as I’m done if I get up early, and half the time someone leaves a stuffed animal or a half-eaten cracker in it anyway. Now I just yank the covers up a little, that’s it. I also stopped trying to answer emails or get work done while the kids eat breakfast. I used to do that, think I was being productive, but it always ended with someone spilling juice on my phone or drawing on the table with permanent marker. Now I just sit with them, eat my cold toast, and listen to them argue about whether the cloud outside looks like a garbage truck or a T-Rex. It’s not “productive” by the old rules, but it means they get all their clingy chat out of the way early, and most days they play by themselves for 10 minutes after that while I drink a second cup of coffee in peace. Well, most days. Some days they still climb all over me while I’m drinking it.
I still catch myself falling into the trap, though. I’ll see another mom online talking about how she gets eight things done before her kids wake up, and I’ll feel that little twinge of failure. Then I remember that half those moms don’t have two under five, or they have a nanny that comes at 7 AM, or they’re just posting the good days and hiding the 10 minutes of screaming that happened before the camera turned on.
This morning, for the record, was a mess. My three year old peed through his diaper all over his sheets, we had to strip the bed before we left, we were 12 minutes late to daycare, I forgot my lunch on the counter, and I only brushed half my hair. I sat in the car after dropping them off and breathed for five minutes, because I was that tense. I still haven’t figured out the perfect system. Some days I cry a little in the car because everything went wrong and I feel like I’m bad at this whole adult mom thing. Some days we’re 10 minutes early and we sit in the car eating lollipops and watching the squirrels fight over a peanut, and it feels like magic.
No one tells you that time management with little kids in the morning isn’t about managing time. It’s about letting go of all the expectations you got from people who don’t have two little kids dragging you in 10 different directions before 7 AM. I don’t have a neat little takeaway for you. I have a bag of mismatched socks by the front door, I remember to fill the coffee maker most nights, and that’s about as good as it gets right now. I’m fine with that. Most days, anyway. (Word count: 1182)
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » Mornings with little kids aren’t about perfect time management, they’re about forgetting half your list anyway