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Wendie Sanders and I have a lot in common. We have the same view, for one thing, because we live next door to each other. Our four-year-olds are practically brothers, constantly bouncing from one house to the other. We both love to read and talk about big ideas. But I’m a morning lark and Wendie keeps company with the night owl that she often spots, perched on my roof.
Wendie says, “I’m definitely a night person. I’ve always been that way. I enjoy when my kids go to bed and my husband and I have a few hours to do what we want. So that’s when I do my reading, and surfing the Internet and cleaning my house and making lunches, is in the evening, usually after 9:00.”
Wendie also uses her nocturnal streak of productivity to prepare for the next day, so she can make her morning routine as simple and quick as possible. Then she and her kids wake up a half hour before they have to go to school, get ready, and get out the door.
But for me, the thought of making lunches at night sounds terrible, because my quarter has definitely run out by then. I try to make my nightly routine as simple and quick as possible. I wake up early enough that I just get everything ready in the morning. Wendie and I take totally different approaches to our morning routines, but neither routine is better than the other.
Thanks in large part to Benjamin Franklin and all his talk about “early to bed” and “early to rise” we often associate health, wealth, wisdom and all sorts of other virtues with rising early. But it turns out, Benjamin was wrong. Early risers don’t have a monopoly on productivity. The poor night owls among us have been getting a bad rap for years.
In this post, we’ll talk about many different ways to approach mornings, from moms in all sorts of different situations, moms with little kids and moms with teenagers, moms who home school and moms who send their kids to school, moms with different work situations, moms who love mornings and moms who hate them.
Larks and Owls
Before we go any further, let’s talk more about this weird tension between larks and owls. When I asked the How She Moms Facebook Group about their morning routines, I hesitated about whether I was going to share mine, because for some reason it felt like bragging. I wake up at 5:00 most mornings, unless I had a particularly late or wakeful night the night before.
On the other hand, my friend Molly was embarrassed to admit that her six kids, who range from 14 to 3, basically get themselves ready for school—they help each other get breakfast and they get dressed and ready for school. Then she wakes up right before her kids leave for school, to say goodbye. If you ask me, that’s something to brag about! What independent, self-sufficient children she’s raised. Really, the idea of assigning virtue to any specific sleeping pattern is quite strange.
Kendra Adachi talks about this in episode 58 of her podcast The Lazy Genius—one of the best-named podcasts ever. And the content is just as good. If you haven’t listened to her podcast, you should definitely add it to your list. On her episode about Morning Routines, which is full of great ideas, she talks about how, for some reason, we feel embarrassed about sleeping in, but we also feel embarrassed or apologetic when we’re good at getting things done in the morning because we don’t want to look like an overachiever. She says, “Regularly living out a life-giving morning routine doesn’t make you better or worse than someone who hits the snooze button five times….There’s no arbitrary value in these choices.”
In fact, we have less control over our hours of productivity than we think. We all have our own regular circadian rhythm—the cycle that determines when we are most alert and productive, when we get tired, and when we wake up. Matthew Walker, a neuroscientist and sleep researcher, explains in his book “Why We Sleep” that about 40% of the population are morning types, 30% are evening types, and the remaining 30% of people are somewhere in between. These genetically determined preferences are called chronotypes.
Walker says, “Sadly, society treats night owls rather unfairly on two counts: first is the label of being lazy. Others, usually morning larks, will chastise night owls on the erroneous assumption that such preferences are a choice and, if they were not so slovenly, they could easily wake up early. However, night owls are not owls by choice. They are bound to a delayed schedule by unavoidable DNA hardwiring. It is not their conscious fault, but rather their genetic fate. Second is the ingrained, unlevel playing field of society’s work scheduling, which is strongly biased toward early start times that punish owls and favor larks. Although the situation is improving, standard employment schedules force owls into an unnatural sleep/wake rhythm. Consequently, job performance of owls as a whole is far less optimal in the mornings, and they are further prevented from expressing their true performance potential in the late afternoon and evening as standard work hours end prior to its arrival.”
Add to this social pressure all the books and articles written about the productive early morning habits of successful people, including two books I’ll be talking about later in this episode, and it’s no wonder owls sometimes feel like second-class citizens.
However, I also found many articles about the virtue of natural night owls—from creativity to sociability to intelligence and even baseball skills–and whose ranks include such successful people as Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg. I’ll link to one of my favorite articles on the topic from Fast Company Magazine. There’s even an advocacy group called Society B, on a mission to break free from the 9-5 society and embrace different work hours for the evening types.
Ultimately, it’s a good thing we all have unique chronotypes. At any given time, someone is being productive.
All the chronotype research is so interesting, I could write a whole post about it. But it’s time to start talking about the morning routines of actual moms.
And, honestly, in some stages of motherhood, especially with babies and young children, chronotype is irrelevant. Our sleep cycle is more like a yo-yo than any type of bird. And most young children are naturally larks, which can prove difficult for owlish moms and dads. And then we have our spouse’s chronotype to deal with, plus work and school schedules.
Maegan Nelson actually has two different morning schedules, because she works 24-hour shifts as a nurse. When she’s home, she gets the kids to school. When she’s working, she and her husband work out together at 4:30 and then she leaves for work and her husband gets the kids to school.
There are so many forces outside of our control!
Planning Ahead
A morning schedule is directly affected by your nightly routine and vice versa. So especially if you’re a night owl, anything you can do to get ready for the next day will really help your morning go more smoothly.
Crystal Paine, founder of Money Saving Mom, calls this serving your tomorrow self. In her interview on episode 64 of the 3 in 30 Podcast, she suggests doing anything you can the night before to “help you feel more prepared, more organized, more calm.” She says, “Maybe that means making a list of to-do’s for tomorrow, so you have a plan of action, or getting your breakfast or lunches ready for the next morning, or planning what you’ll have for dinner tomorrow evening, or running a quick errand to save you time tomorrow, or finishing a project that’s due tomorrow so you don’t have to wait until the last minute, or going to bed 30 minutes earlier, or laying your clothes out tomorrow.”
This was such a great episode–another one that I really suggest you listen to if you’re serious about improving your mornings.
Kristin Steele is a nurse, and is often on call overnight. She never knows if she’ll get a good night’s sleep or called in, so for her it’s especially important to get as much as possible done the night before. With such an unpredictable schedule, it’s hard to create a consistent morning routine.
Juliana Hall is not a morning person, so she does everything humanly possible to get ready for the morning the night before: making lunches, prepping backpacks, and laying out clothes for the next day, including her own. Then she can sleep a little longer. She tries to get up by 6:30, to help her junior high schooler, but sometimes she doesn’t get out of bed until 7, to say goodbye to her and then help the elementary kids get ready.
Diana Visser, a school teacher and mom of three, not only packs lunches the night before but preps dinner the night before as well.
Stacy Robbins plans a week of clothes at a time with her kids. She bought each of them hanging organizers with five shelves for their closets, and at the beginning of the week, they put an outfit on each shelf, one for each school day. That way they know everything is clean and ready, and there’s no thinking required to get dressed in the morning.
Hillary Hess does a similar thing to prep clothes for the week. She has fashion dates with the kids who need help with this on Sunday night. The name alone turns it into fun one-on-one time instead of just another chore. They check the week’s weather report and the school schedule and create a lineup of outfits for the whole week.
Most moms I talked to at least try to have their kids lay out their clothes and shoes for the next day before they go to bed. This gives enough time to start an emergency load of laundry or hunt for that one missing shoe.
These prep tactics are a great example of how night and morning people need different strategies. The only thing I do at night to prep for the next day is try to get to bed at a reasonable time. I’m too tired at night to make lunches or find shoes, and we’ll have plenty of time in the morning. Even if we have an emergency and realize that someone has no clean clothes to wear, we wake up early enough that we have time to run a load of laundry.
Alone Time
This brings me to my next point. As moms, often the only time we have for ourselves, and the only time we have control over our own schedules is either after our kids go to bed or before they wake up. This is our time to take care of ourselves, whether that means getting stuff done; reading, studying or writing; planning the next day; relaxing in front of the TV; spending time with our spouses; exercising; meditating—whatever we need to do to recharge. We’re going to talk specifically about alone time in the morning, since that’s what this episode is about, but a lot of these ideas can be shifted to nighttime—whichever time best fits your chronotype.
For me, rising early is not a badge of honor and productivity. It actually feels like more of an indulgence than a sacrifice—a form of self-care. I’m excited to wake up because it’s my time. No one is asking me to do anything. I set the agenda for that hour. I always start by reading scriptures or inspirational sermons, or I know I’ll never fit that into my day. Then, I often spend the time making plans for my day, week, or month, and think about big picture ideas for my family and for How She Moms. Other times I spend the time writing or reading or catching up on any online courses I’m taking until it’s time to start waking the kids.
I’m very protective of this time. I try to do only things that I can’t do when kids are around. So I don’t shower or get ready during this time, because that’s easy enough to do either while my kids are getting ready or after the older ones are at school, while my four-year-old entertains himself. I don’t clean the house, because that’s something I can do while kids are around (ideally with their help). I don’t exercise, because I like to either exercise with my kids or bring my little guy to the kid’s club at the gym while I do classes.
Laura Vanderkam, an author, productivity expert, podcaster, and mother of five is firmly in the early morning camp. In fact, she wrote a whole book about it, called, “What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast.” In it, she says, “Seizing your mornings is the equivalent of that sound financial advice to pay yourself before you pay your bills. If you wait until the end of the month to save what you have left, there will be nothing left over. Likewise, if you wait until the end of the day to do meaningful but not urgent things like exercise, pray, read, ponder how to advance your career or grow your organization or truly give your family your best, it probably won’t happen.”
This is your time to focus on your biggest priorities. She divides ideal early morning priorities into three categories:
1. “Nurturing Careers: Strategizing and focused work.
2. Nurturing their relationships: Giving families and friends their best.
3. Nurturing themselves: exercise, spiritual, and creative practices.”
Joyce Hanchett uses her mornings to nurture her relationship with her husband. She has four boys ranging from 17 to 9. Now that her sons stay up later at night, she has found that she has less alone time with her husband at night. They decided to start waking up before their kids so they could start their day with a morning walk together.
Likewise, Diana Visser spends about 15 minutes eating breakfast with her husband each morning before the kids wake up.
Stephanie and her husband wake up at 4:50 and work out together for an hour, then she showers and gets her kids up to do family scripture study at 6 am. Then her husband showers and reads scriptures while she makes breakfast and her kids make their lunches. They eat together at 6:50 and then they all finish getting ready for the day, and leave for work and school around 7:30. Stephanie gets back home from school drop-off by eight with her almost three-year-old, and then does her own personal scripture study, tidies her house, and runs errands.
I talked to several moms who structure their mornings based on the book the Miracle Morning, which recommends using the acronym SAVERS to structure your morning:
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Silence (mediation, prayer)
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Affirmations
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Visualization (picturing your upcoming day)
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Exercise (even if it’s just 5 minutes)
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Reading ( a personal development book or scripture)
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Scribing (writing in a journal)
Waking Kids
Now we’ve come to the part of the morning where the larks and night owls converge—when the kids are up, we’re usually up—although many moms I’ve talked to have come up with ways to postpone this time as long as possible. Rachel Beckstead uses an “OK to Wake” clock that stays red until it’s time to wake up, when it turns green. Her kids know that they’re not supposed to wake mom and dad up until their clock is green.
Lisa Hutchings is a big believer in kids having their own alarm clocks from middle school on. She teaches them how to use them, and then expects them to wake themselves up and start getting ready. If they don’t wake up to their alarm clocks, she does not go in to wake them up, she just lets them experience the natural consequences of waking up late. Sometimes that means missing breakfast, sometimes it means being late for school or going with messy hair.
My mom used to always wake us by singing loudly through the hallways, usually Irving Berlin’s “Oh How I Hate to Get Up In the Morning.” Some moms blast music from a stereo.
Inger Hiller prefers a gentler, gradual approach to waking her two children. About 30 minutes before they have to wake up, she shuts the windows, turns off the fans, turns on the lights, and lets her kids gradually wake up. At 7:00, she comes back in to make sure they’re actually getting up and ready for the day.
I wake my kids a little earlier than I really need to so I can snuggle them awake and talk to them briefly about the day ahead. This started about three years ago when I realized I dreaded snuggling my kids at bedtime, because it just dragged it out and I was so tired already. Also, my kids aren’t very nice when they’re tired, and neither am I. So I moved it to the morning, and now it’s one of my very favorite parts of the day. I start with the three kids who like to wake up early and end with my night owls. I love starting the day with one-on-one time, and it also feels nice and cozy to get back in a bed.
After I wake them up, the kids shower, get dressed, make their lunches, practice piano, get their backpacks ready, and do their chores. If they finish before school, I let them play on the computer, so that’s a pretty big motivator for them.
During this time, to be honest, I’m usually do the dishes that didn’t get done the night before. Could it be that I now have a valid excuse for not cleaning the kitchen before I go to bed? It’s just not in my chronotype. Once or twice a week I make muffins, pancakes, eggs, or some other breakfast at this time, but only if the kitchen is clean when I wake up. That’s my rule. This gives the kids at least some motivation to help with dishes at night.
Getting Dressed and Ready
Choosing when your kids should get dressed depends a lot on the kids. Some kids (including a few of my own) are really grumpy until they have some food in their bellies, so breakfast comes first. Others can handle getting dressed and ready before they eat. Kallista Hart’s son takes so long to get dressed that she has to make sure he does it before he leaves his room in the morning, or it will never happen. And some kids need to wait until after they eat because they make such a mess.
Julie Cornwell uses breakfast and subsequent free time as an incentive for her kids to get ready quickly. They know that they can’t even come downstairs until they’re dressed, have their beds made, their teeth and hair are brushed, and their clothes are all put away. Then they come downstairs to pack their lunches and backpacks. Only after they’re completely ready do they get breakfast.
Lunch Prep
Then there’s lunch to think about. Some families buy school lunches and avoid this problem altogether. Or they homeschool and eat lunch at home. The rest of us have to figure out when to pack lunches, who will pack them, and what to pack.
Jennifer has six kids, so for her simplicity is king. No themed bento boxes or animal-shaped snacks for her kids. Each night before they go to bed, the kids make their own lunches for the day: peanut butter and jelly or turkey sandwiches, fruit, and a healthy snack or two. The older ones take turns packing a lunch for their preschool brother too, which he can eat at home. Once the lunches are made, they clean up the mess, put their lunches in the refrigerator and grab them the next morning.
For some moms, it’s easier just to make the kids’ lunches themselves. It’s not as messy, for one. Some like to spice it up by having a repeating schedule for the week, at least for the main dish. For example: Monday: crackers, cheese, and pepperoni; Tuesday: turkey sandwich; Wednesday: leftovers in a thermos; Thursday: meat and cheese kebabs; Friday: peanut butter sandwich.
Rachel made a four-quadrant list to help her daughter pack her own balanced lunch, with ideas for each category. This way she still has a choice of what to pack, but she has to make sure she has one thing from each quadrant: a drink; a main dish, such as a sandwich or quesadilla; a fruit or vegetable; and a snack.
Jordan Page of funcheaporfree.com keeps bins of lunch food in her pantry and refrigerator (at kid height) so the kids know where to find their options. She makes a week’s worth of sandwiches (peanut butter and jelly and meat and cheese) and stores them in the freezer, so even the sandwiches are ready to grab and go! She also sneaks love notes in their lunch boxes every now and then.
I would totally be a hot-lunch mom, but my kids are all gluten free, so for years, I made my kids lunches in the morning while they got ready. It was always a frantic scramble. Last year, I finally realized that I should be making them do it. Now I basically follow Jordan Page’s system. I’ve had a few people ask what I keep in my bins, so here’s my main list:
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bars
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popcorn
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rice cakes
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tuna packets
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nut thins
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GF pretzels
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beef jerky or Slim Jims
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carrots, bell peppers, celery
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grapes, apples, clementines, oranges
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frozen Gogurts
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applesauce
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mandarin orange cups
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pepperoni
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lunch meat
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peanut butter and jelly
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laughing cow, baby bell, or string cheese
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hummus single-serve cups
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pudding
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GF bread
Jobs
Even if your morning routine is fairly simple, it can be helpful to post a list or chart of what your kids need to do in the morning, so they have a clear process to follow. For littles who can’t read, picture charts work great. You can make your own, or find a ready-made printable online.
For her school-age kids, Audra Schwenkler simply writes checklists. They know to look for their checklist on the kitchen table when they wake up and they get it done.
Saren Loosli enlisted the help of her children to create a morning chart. They had a meeting to discuss what they needed to do each morning, and then she asked her 12-year-old to type up a morning routine for the rest of the kids. I’ll link to her post about it from powerofmoms.com.
Juliana used to have a long list of expectations for her kids before they left for school at 9:00. She wanted them to get their chores done and piano practiced, get ready for school and clean up after breakfast. But every day her three school-age kids would leave the house in chaos, they’d all be frustrated as they walked to school, and she’d come home with my other two kids, look at the breakfast dishes still on the table and think: “Everyone gets to go out and have fun and I’m the one left to clean up the house. Tomorrow everyone better get their act together.” And then they’d do it all again the next day.
One particularly frustrating day, she called her mom after she got home and told her what she’d been dealing with. Instead of commiserating with Juliana about how rotten her children were being, and how sad it was that she had to pick up the slack, she asked her, “Why are you telling yourself that story? You like being a mom.”
Juliana says, “It was true. I choose to stay home with my kids. I really love it and don’t want to do anything else right now. So why was I letting myself feel this way? I decided I needed to rewrite my story.”
She decided that not everything had to get done before school. She relaxed about morning chores—they could finish after school—and decided to focus on more meaningful things like a family prayer, hugs and kisses before the kids leave the house, and a good breakfast. And she dropped the expectation of having the kids clean up after breakfast altogether. It wasn’t happening anyway. Instead, she decided to just plan on coming home and cleaning the kitchen after school drop-off, instead of being resentful of the mess. She changed that story to: “It’s nice to be able to clean the kitchen when it’s so calm and quiet.” You can read more of Juliana’s story here.
The Departure
Sometimes the craziest part of a morning is the departure. Getting the kids out the door to school. Several moms suggested setting an alarm for 10 minutes before the kids need to leave the house, to give them fair warning. For a while last year, I set my phone to play the Holiday Flight song from home alone instead of a regular alarm. I dare you not to move more quickly when that song comes on. Plus, it’s much funnier than me screaming: Get in the car!
Another strategy I’ve used to get the kids to the car on time is to let them play on the iPad once they’re all ready and in the car. This gives them an incentive to get into the car, and draws the others into the car as well, to watch. Then they’re all ready and in the car when it’s time to leave.
If your kids don’t walk or ride a bus, the last obstacle to getting to school on time is piling into the car. Kids (read: my kids) have been known to come to blows over where they sit in the car. To avoid the fighting, Molly Liggett assigns seats by month. She has two rows of three seats each and six children, three boys and three girls. So one month the girls get the middle seat and the next month the boys get it.
My car has two coveted seats, so the even numbered children get to sit there on even calendar days and the odd ones sit there on odd days.
My friend Lori used to pick up my kindergartner for school every day and he’d come home singing all the other songs they blasted in the car on the way to school. Such a great alternative to the lectures I usually gave on our way to school! We now do the same, either rocking out or listening to a fun podcast on the way to school. The kids take turns being DJ.
Emerald Austin is another mom who uses that time in the car as a bonding experience with her kids. On the way to school and daycare, she and her kids recite the Lord’s prayer together. Then they go around the car and share their purpose for the day (i.e. “My purpose today is to make a good friend/ do well on my math test/ stay on task”). This helps them start the day deliberately and builds relationships in the process. You can read more about Emerald’s meaningful routines here.
Home School
Many mothers solve the chaos of getting their kids out the door to school by avoiding it altogether. That’s one of the main reasons Sharolyn Lindsay started to home school. When her kids went to public school, she found that their mornings were frantic, and she’d spend most of the morning yelling at her kids to get ready. Then she’d drop them off at school and say, “I love you!” She wondered which of those two messages was getting through to her kids.
Now her morning routine looks much different. She wakes up at 5:00 to go running and then get ready for the day and wakes her kids up at 6:30 to start getting their chores done. They take care of the dogs, cats, and chickens, keep their own bedrooms clean, and help with other household chores like dishes and vacuuming. They also practice piano and voice during this time. Then they start school at 9:00. To read more about Sharolyn’s daily routine, check out her profile here.
In a more extreme escape from the rat race, Josie Lauducci and her family did “boat school” on their sailboat as they sailed from California to New Zealand over several years. She and her husband woke up before the kids and had coffee together. Then they took turns, with one getting the kids up and fed, while the other one exercised. You can read more about their daily routines here.
Whether you’re on a boat or on land, mornings can be an opportunity to build relationships and actually enjoy your family. At the very least, they can be a little less crazy if you focus on finding solutions to some of your persistent problem spots. Good luck and good morning!
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