How do you wake you your teenage girl in the mornings?

My daughter has not been able to attend school since January; she found the transition to comprehensive school extremely difficult particularly the social side. We are now having a break and reset from school, potentially looking at an alternative way of learning. A major difficulty at the moment is waking her in the mornings (as well as helping her to settle at a reasonable time). We have tried lots of different strategies to helping her settle earlier at night but i think becoming a teenager along with having a very busy brain makes it difficult. This obviously impacts waking in the mornings. I'm trying to encourage a daily routine of waking and sleeping times but have a battle in the morning when waking her before she feels ready to leave her bed. If I let her come round when she is ready with repeated gentle reminders of the time she will eventually wake and is calm (around 10.30am). If I push her with any demands like, its time to get up, and persist with the request, she becomes dysregulated which can then turn into a long meltdown which she finds difficulty calming from. We are trying to keep demands low as I believe she is in a process of recovering from the trauma of starting comprehensive school (and masking for many years). Any advice would be much appreciated? What are your morning routines?

Parents
  • My girl is a bit younger so not hit that teen phase yet, and I know it can be different. But one of the things that helps wake her up on a school day is having some time to read before she needs to get up proper (on a weekend, it's playing games). I've found she just needs something to be a buffer between the waking up and the getting up, where she is awake doing something she wants to do. I find if she does this, the getting up bit is then much quicker. If she's tired and hasn't had the reading time, everything is slower and it's harder to get her in on time. Oh course this can back fire if she reads too much. But then she also gets to watch something over breakfast if she's down in time (the tablet is set to lock at a certain time so if she's late she'll get less). She also has an app to brush her teeth with, and if my husband gets annoyed and says there isn't time for it, she tends to meltdown and it takes longer. So all these steps help her get up without a meltdown. Building the morning into something to look forward to helps a lot, so it's something they want to do. 

    This may not work when she hits those teenage years, but thought I'd share in case it helps any.

    I forgot to mention, her alarm is her Alexa playing her chosen song (currently Linkin Park), so it helps set her in a good mood I hope, to have something she likes waking her up.

Reply
  • My girl is a bit younger so not hit that teen phase yet, and I know it can be different. But one of the things that helps wake her up on a school day is having some time to read before she needs to get up proper (on a weekend, it's playing games). I've found she just needs something to be a buffer between the waking up and the getting up, where she is awake doing something she wants to do. I find if she does this, the getting up bit is then much quicker. If she's tired and hasn't had the reading time, everything is slower and it's harder to get her in on time. Oh course this can back fire if she reads too much. But then she also gets to watch something over breakfast if she's down in time (the tablet is set to lock at a certain time so if she's late she'll get less). She also has an app to brush her teeth with, and if my husband gets annoyed and says there isn't time for it, she tends to meltdown and it takes longer. So all these steps help her get up without a meltdown. Building the morning into something to look forward to helps a lot, so it's something they want to do. 

    This may not work when she hits those teenage years, but thought I'd share in case it helps any.

    I forgot to mention, her alarm is her Alexa playing her chosen song (currently Linkin Park), so it helps set her in a good mood I hope, to have something she likes waking her up.

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