Waking up for school at seven in the morning isn’t always easy, especially when you are a teen. They are so busy with academics, homework, standardized testing, sports, extracurriculars, volunteering—and time to spend with friends. So where do they find the nine hours that is recommended for sleep? And I totally get that they are also fighting biology: Their bodies want to stay up later at night, and to wake up later in the morning.
Waking Up for School Is A Pain (For Parents)
But that doesn’t make my job any easier: I still have a tired, resistant teen to get up and off to school early every school day. And waking up that teenager is not easy. Some mornings I’ve wondered if there is some special kind of wake up call for teens that everyone else knows but me to get them up in the morning and out to school.
When my oldest son was a younger teen, he often struggled to get out of bed in the morning. Nothing seemed to work—setting multiple alarms, nagging, consequences, more nagging.
Wake Up Call for Teens
One day, I was so frustrated. I decided to try to catch him off guard with something completely different and unexpected.
I sat on the edge of his bed, started bouncing up and down and began to sing the Barney song at the top of my lungs. Did I mention that I can’t sing very well? “I love you, you love me” is already incredibly irritating. You should hear what it sounds like when I sing it with gusto at seven in the morning.
He grumbled and pulled the covers over his head as I sang about our “happy family.” Finally he threw the covers off, jumped out of bed, stormed into the bathroom and slammed the door.
Mission accomplished!
