The other morning, Charlie was late for school and as usual, he wasn’t listening to anything we said. I was growing increasingly exasperated but trying to hold it together and get out the door.

“Charlie, put your shorts on! We’re gonna be late for school!!”

“Ok, ok!” he said back to me in the exact same tone of voice, while doing nothing. After watching him dawdle for 10 more seconds, I felt I had to repeat myself.

“Charlie, did you hear me?? You have to get dressed for school right now!! We’re late!”

He disappeared into his room and didn’t come back for a few minutes. We peeked in there and he was looking for his stuffed animals. He wanted to bring them with him on the way to school. I could feel all the patience leaving my body. If I was Bruce Banner, I probably would have turned into the Hulk right then and there. Instead I did what I had been doing way too much lately: I raised my voice.

“Charlie, get dressed right now!!!  We’re late!!!”

He was finally moved into action, but not nearly fast enough. So I grabbed his shorts and started helping him get dressed.  We finally made it out the door, and started running to school.  It’s an 11 minute walk, but we can make it in half the time if we run.

As we ran, I thought to myself: there has to be a better way.  This isn’t the way I want to parent my kids.  I wasn’t at the point yet where I was yelling at the kids, but I was raising my voice and getting exasperated far too often.

So when I got home, I sat down and made a plan… and since then, things have gotten so much better!  Here’s what been working:

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1) Start an exasperation journal

I figured the first step was to just become more aware of when I was raising my voice.  And even more than that, become aware earlier in that process, back when I first started to feel exasperated.

So I started making a note of when I felt my patience slipping, and to my surprise I realized that just a few situations were causing the vast majority of my exasperation:

  • Getting to school on time in the morning
  • Making sure the kids don’t get up from the dinner table
  • Getting dressed and ready for bed at night

I was incredibly surprised! I had thought that I needed to develop more patience and to be more zen when the kids didn’t listen (a tall order!). But in actuality, what I needed to do was to re-engineer these 3 situations so that they went more smoothly. That felt a lot more attainable and realistic. I decided to focus first on getting to school on time in the mornings.

2) Explain the situation to the kids

The next time we were running late, I told Charlie that there was a good chance that we would be tardy that day. He didn’t know what a tardy was, so I explained to him that the principal’s office has a sheet of paper with his name on it and every time we are late, they write down the date. (They use computers, but this is pretty much how it works.) I guess he had just never realized that being late was a bad thing, because we usually get to school at the last possible minute before class officially starts.

He told me, “I don’t want them to write anything down on my sheet of paper!”

I told him that if we ran, I thought we could still be on time. But that we would have to change our approach to the mornings if we wanted to make it on time every day. He seemed to get it.  It couldn’t be this simple, could it?

We got to school on time that day. I took it to be a good omen.  Maybe there was hope for us after all!

3) Break down the situation into something the kids can relate to

Now that Charlie wanted to get to school on time, I figured we’d break down exactly what he needed to do for us to achieve that.

So the next morning, I pointed to the analog clock on the wall. I explained that if we finished breakfast by the time the big hand hit 3, that we would have five minutes to get dressed and then another five minutes to brush his teeth. Then we could leave by the time the big hand on the clock hit 5.

He finally understood exactly what we needed to do in order to be on time. Before, being late had been this abstract thing that he couldn’t really understand or relate to. But now that we had broken down exactly what needed to get done by what time, he finally got it. He kept checking the clock on the wall, and making sure that we stayed on schedule. Even Olive talked about the clock all morning (gotta teach her to read the clock soon!).

When the big hand hit three, I got down to Charlie’s eye level and asked him for his help. I said that I would be really happy if he could get dressed and brush his teeth by the time the big hand on the clock hit 5. He looked at the clock and nodded. He went to his room and put on his shorts and socks, went to the bathroom and brushed his teeth, and came out to the living room to put on his shoes. He was ready to go, ahead of schedule. I was amazed!

I gave him a high five and we walked to school. There was no running, no jogging… just a nice leisurely morning walk, holding hands the whole way. We got to school on time and Charlie gave me a huge smile. I told him I was proud of him, and sent him on his way. I could get used to this!

4) Be careful with bribes

Ordinarily, I’m a huge fan of routine charts and rewards/bribes. But we’ve tried both of those before in the morning, and had only limited success. I’m not opposed to bribes at this point, but I like to save them up for emergencies.

So when we talked in the morning about what he needed to do, I was careful not to offer a bribe in exchange for getting his todos done. And what we’ve discovered (the hard way!) is that if we rely too heavily on bribes, that any changes to the kids’ behavior that we achieve seem to be temporary (the exception to the rule has been potty training).

If we can change their behavior without bribes though, then it seems to become more permanent. That seems to be the case here: he wants to make me happy, and also doesn’t want to be late.  Those are powerful motivators, and seem to provide more lasting motivation than bribes.

We had tried everything before this: packing lunches at night, waking up earlier, dressing the kids in their clothes at night. But the biggest time killer had been all the lollygagging in the morning. Now that’s gone, we can even let the kids sleep in a bit more and still get to school on time! And at no point is our patience tested… and I haven’t raised my voice at all in a while now!

Do you ever get exasperated when your kids don’t listen?  What’s worked for you?