 can you adapt your morning routine to give yourself the best possible chance of success when you are supporting a child at home who is really struggling to go to school? That is the topic of today's podcast. I hope it's helpful. Let's dive straight in. Okay, so first off a massive caveat here. A lot of the ideas that I share when it comes to emotionally based school avoidance or school anxiety or school non-attendance or have we want to frame it and the language is really tricky and I don't think we've got it right yet but you know what I'm talking about. Kids who are really struggling to go to school, who can't go to school, where this is difficult. This is something I've been living, breathing, managing in my own home so I've had a real deep interest in it personally as well as professionally for a really long time but my children are no longer attending school, we are now home educating them. So these ideas that I share, they did work, they did enable me to get my children to school. What I couldn't control was what happened once they got there and this isn't going to fix that bit but these ideas, these ideas that I'll share today and there are loads more ideas you might add to it and I can certainly do more if you'd like another day but these ideas to help get from that bit where your child is in bed, absolutely doesn't want to get out of bed, absolutely doesn't want to go to school, can't go to school, it's just to know to being able to get to the point where they will willingly walk through the school doors. I can't, I was going to say I can't fix the bit after that. I teach on that loads and loads and loads but that's not the topic for today. Today is about that morning routine at home, what happens at home and the other thing just to bear in mind is that I'm literally looking at the morning once your child's woken up what that all looks like but really this starts the day before so in an ideal world we think about the evening routine too and I'd be really happy to do another podcast about that because what's happening in terms of your child's sleep and how they feel when they go to bed and what we've done in the evening before in terms of preparation, all those things also do make a really big difference here but we're thinking now quite specifically about the morning we've got up it's tricky it's another tricky day they all tend to be when you're in this situation what are we going to do. So number one is about trying to create calm when your child is very anxious and possibly quite angry upset distressed all the big feelings about the idea of going to school and then that can be kind of catching for us as parents and carers as well and what we need is instead for them to catch our calm so we need to try to create as calm a situation as we can and to try to get ourselves to a point where we are as calm as we can be that's challenging a couple of things that I found really helped me with that were one for me to get up before my children that becomes less and less challenging as they get older and they love their beds so I'd get up before them and give myself time and space to do whatever I needed to do for me in order to feel relatively calm in control centered all those things so I'd think about myself first because they need me to be that cool calm in control adults so I'd get out nice and early and then I think about really simple things around like the environment so I will still do this often actually if we need to calm things down whack on some classical music a bit of classic FM something that's just nice and relaxing or other music that we all agree on that we all like so we love a bit of kings and convenience in our house we might pop that one in the background also make sure that the environment feels calm so on a really basic level it's kind of tidy everything's put away there's not kind of cluttering chaos everywhere I never know how much that bothers my kids but it really bothers me when things are chaotic so I like to make sure it's all kind of tidy and put away and I do think that a calm clean clear environment just generally feels a little bit more calm and soothing so trying to create calm and we can also be using things like our voice to convey that so my old favorite slow low low we might think about speaking in our slow low low voice where we slow down the speed lower the volume and lower the pitch speak a bit more deeply because when we're angry or anxious we speak loud and shrill and fast and we want to do the opposite of that to convey calm so but whatever works for you in your family in your home to convey calm and that's the first thing is just trying to create this atmosphere this ethos this culture of calm doing whatever you need to do to create that so your children or child when they wake up are entering into a relatively calm surrounding calm people calm environment next in terms of morning routine is thinking about time giving yourself much more time than you need everything takes longer when you have a child who is struggling who is resistant who might get angry and what will make that more stressful is if you've got a really hard limit on when you need to be leaving the house when they need to be getting into school etc and you feel that time kind of pushing in and in and in on you that tends to make you stressed you lose the calm which negates point one and just things can get snappy and tricky if instead we can just give ourselves really loads more time than we actually need then we're able to approach things in a much more calm and measured manner and yeah it does mean that you end up having to get up earlier and build more time in and it just takes up more of your time and perhaps you're really time poor but I would have to say having kind of dealt with this for a long time that it's definitely a case of as my grandmother said a stitch in time saves nine so we invest a little bit more time here now every day but then we have much greater chance of success things actually following through and us successfully leaving the house or our child successfully leaving the house and going to school and also more likely that things will be okay during the day because the kind of the mindset and attitude that they arrive at school with will make a bit of a difference to how likely that is to go well so just building in really bundles of time way more than you think you can always narrow down that routine but yeah have a really clear idea about when you get up and when each thing sort of needs to happen and just building a really good buffer for how much time you allow for each of those things because any part of your morning routine can get derailed by anxiety stress worries etc and you just any time that happens just need to allow time to calm things back down to get yourselves back on track and you don't want to then be worried that you're behind and the third idea to share is around food so we often as parents and carers can worry a lot about what our children are eating and we might want to make sure I certainly fell foul of this wanting to make sure they have a really nice nutritious breakfast and lunch every day and spend ages thinking about what those different things might be and trying to create variety what I learned over time was actually much better to keep it really really simple and possibly really really repetitive but know exactly what we're doing everybody knows what's going on it's easy it's quick so actually having exactly the same breakfast every day works really well in our home so we would often have a breakfast smoothie and that was just what we did every day I made sure I had the right things in so it was nutritious enough and keep the kids going but it was easy it didn't involve too much thought on their part there were no worries around sensory issues and so on with eating so my kids are autistic but that made it simple and then in terms of their lunches we had a little plan for their lunches they did take impact lunches because it was easier for them to find somewhere quiet to eat them not easy but easy are and they would have the same lunches each week so Monday was always the same thing Tuesday was always the same thing Wednesday was always the same thing so they had five different things through the week but it was the same week and they were easy easy lunches at better times in an ideal world my children would be involved in making those lunches but again it was just about taking the stress off it was really quick and easy for me to put these things together and we had other concerns when my children were so stressed about going to school so I was not actually at the points when things were most difficult getting them to do that just wanted to make it easy wanted to take away as many stresses as I could for myself and my children so really repetitive food schedule kept it really simple didn't worry about how my lunches might have compared to other yummy mummies doing amazing things getting their lunch ideas off Pinterest or wherever you do that these days just put the basic stuff together that my kids needed in order for it to function and you know there's whole other considerations there in terms of lunchboxes for autistic kids and stuff like that which again I'd be really happy to share another day but keep it really really simple essentially and do not fear about repetition if need be you've got to do what you need to do to get through the morning bit without food becoming yet another stressor. Number four is about like prepreparing so thinking about what can be done the night before or before your kids get up in order that there's not kind of surprises I suppose and having a little bit of a checklist for the night before can be really helpful so I'd always have my kids getting their uniform out make sure we know where their shoes are I don't know very very often the thing that would prevent us getting out the door and going to school would be that somebody didn't know where a shoe was that one shoe would be missing and would be mysteriously found somewhere very far away and very inconvenient a long way in the future so we need to know where our shoes are we need to know where all our clothes are we need to know is there homework that's going to need to be handed in any of those like morning stresses that might leave us like running around the house trying to find things trying to sort things out just get them if we can sort it out the night before it's interesting those things the night before can take like five minutes but in the morning when everyone's a bit stressed and hurried we haven't got our best thinking brains together because we're all very anxious those things can take a lot longer and they cause a lot more stress the only thing just to be a little bit aware of with that when you're doing that pre-prepare the evening before if you're getting your children to do it for themselves make sure you do it plenty before bedtime because otherwise it can be that those preparatory activities thinking about school the next day can then cause worry just before sleep so we would tend to think about this much earlier in the evening so that yeah it wasn't causing those disruptions to sleep but anything you can prepare ahead do essentially and again like going back to the whole food and lunch thing we had various things that I would pre-prepare and freeze ahead for lunches so my children there was a particular pasta meal they would like me to make for them which involved a homemade pasta sauce which wasn't complicated but not really a thing I wanted to start doing in the morning so I would tend to make it in batches once a month and then freeze three lots ahead which made life much much easier though now saying it sounds very organized and like the sort of thing that only really organized people do but it works and it made life easier so we planned ahead number five of six is small circuses so in that morning as we're trying to get ready to go to school zooming in where we can on anything anything no matter how tiny that is going right so zooming in on and highlighting the good things so saying well done to our children saying thank you to our children praising our children trying to keep it really light and positive because it can be super easy to find the things that aren't going right or to get kind of snippy and snappy and angry and anxious um because there will be all sorts that's falling by the wayside and maybe your child hasn't got dressed yet and they haven't got their shoes on yet but they've eaten their breakfast ah well done for eating your breakfast that's fantastic you're going to have enough energy now um to get yourself through the morning it's just zooming in on what has gone well rather than when we're zooming on the negatives all the time that kind of flips that narrative and makes it feel quite negative and accusatory and just bad so wherever we can find positive trying to find them rather than pestering and nagging which we'll see all the things that are still yet to be done but in my experience anxious worried a quick anger children will tend to respond poorly to being told what they haven't done yet and what they've got done wrong whereas they will respond better or neutrally and neutrally is great to kind of gentle encouragement and praise and positivity and then the final tip for the mornings is to defer big conversations so sometimes as you go about this morning routine then suddenly one of your children will pipe up with something really big a deep scary conversation that does need to be had but not now so for example um or Lyra's favorite would always be you know just as we're eating breakfast say why can't I be electively home educated mum and that was a conversation that needed to be had it wasn't the right conversation when we were just trying to get through the morning routine and uh get hurt through the doors at school and so this would be something which we would agree a time when we would talk about it so those conversations for me should not be happening in the morning in that morning routine which for us at that time is all about function and getting through it we actually have some great conversations over breakfast now but we don't have to go to school um but when we did then no it's a no then and it was also a no just before bed so again there can be times in the evening that you can build in for good conversations but if they're deep ones that are going to trigger worry or anxiety then just before bed isn't ideal because that can leave stuff swirling around and around in one's head um and it can leave things unresolved and mean that they sleep less well so we need to find a time in the day which is good so well maybe um you know this is a really important conversation and I do think we need to talk about it and explore it together but can we talk about it at dinner tonight say or in the car on the way home from school might be a good time for us to talk about this or or whatever works for your family um but with those big conversations if they genuinely need to be had making an appointment with that worry and when you're going to discuss it will mean that your child knows so long as you do always follow up on these things that you're not just batting it away saying this matters we'll deal with it then and if you get in a habit of doing that of deferring those conversations but giving a place a time an idea about when they might be discussed then your child will trust you that you will return to those issues and that it's okay to let them go just for now and I think it's okay to be honest with your children about why we're doing that like this is a really important conversation but it's a really big one and right now we just need to keep our focus on getting ourselves ready this morning and doing all the jobs that we need to do right now because there's lots to do and we don't have loads and loads of time something as simple as that um can make the difference and it's not just the big conversations about school it might also be that your child wants to have some deep conversation about something that they're learning about and they've got big questions and actually you just need to keep your mind clear and focused on the task in hand and don't want things to get massively derailed in terms of timings or they might want to do sort of big big emotional stuff about friendships or a loss or anything really that's really big like that if you haven't got the headspace or the time to do it justice it's always okay to say this really matters let's talk about it then in order to keep yourself on track in the morning okay I hope there were some ideas in there that you feel that you can take away they won't make this situation perfect it's bigger and more complicated than that but but hopefully they will make a bit of a difference day to day the other thing that will make a big difference is actually making a little bit of time to look after yourself if you don't look after yourself and exercise good self-care there's no way that you can continue to be the adult that your child needs right now I will podcast with you again next week do let me know if there are particular topics you would like or if you want me to dive deeper into any parts of this topic if you would like to support my work you can do so by sharing what I do share it on your social medias or if your emails or by word of mouth you can support my work by following me on patreon for a pound a month where you get access to a little bit of extra stuff and input from me and you can share my work also if you would like to invite me to speak at your setting or your next event until next time over and out