How to wake kids up in the morning?

[trotsky]

ARGH it's become such a struggle to get them out of bed. No, putting them to bed earlier is not an option. As it is now, we put them to bed around 7:30pm EVERY night. Very consistent. We need to have them up by 6:00 or 6:15am in order to be ready to go on time. This used to be fine, especially for our 3-year-old. She would be sitting up and smiling when we opened her door. But now both she and our 5-y.o. son are just IMPOSSIBLE to wake up. And if you force the issue, they of course get super grouchy and get EVERYONE's morning off to a lousy start.

Who has some ideas?

[mopinko]

1. get a dawn simulator.

mine are older than that now, but i have a son that was just the worst to get out of bed. we got this one.

he still needs to be jabbed a little, but it is a lot better. this one is the most reasonably priced one i found. it is stupid that they are so much. they should cost about $10-20. maybe if you dig you can find a cheaper one.
http://www.sadlight.com/aj-main-dawn-sims.htm

it wakes them up very gently, and naturally. saved everyone's sanity.

[trotsky]

4. Hmm, I had wanted to get one of those for myself!

Thing is, I put dimmer switches on their bedroom ceiling lights. When I wake up, I'll turn on the light at a low level. Then when I get out of the shower I'll crank it up to a middle level. A few minutes later, I'll turn it up all the way. I am their manual dawn simulator.

But, our daughter sleeps right through it, and our son just ducks under his blankets. Grrr.

[mopinko]

8. i used to do the same

for the kid that has the alarm, and this still works better.

[mrgorth]

2. Yeah,

I turn on the kids lights a good 15 minutes before I wake them up. Makes their brains think the sun is up. Shaking is still necessary, however.

[Zing Zing Zingbah]

3. Right now, my two year old is the one who wakes me up

in the morning. I supposed that will change once he starts attending school.

[amandae]

5. We'll be in this boat next Fall

Our 7-year-old is SO easy to get out of bed and get ready in the morning. I can count on one hand the number of times I've had problems getting her to get up for school. Our 4-year-old will be in Kindergarten next year and she doesn't wake up so easily. I'm anticipating problems already and will definitely have to wake up earlier than I do now to make sure that my younger one gets up and ready in time for school.

[Debbi801]

6. No suggestions with the waking, but one thing that helped me...

when my older kids were that age was dressing them in their sweats/leggings/shorts/etc. that they'd be wearing the next day when I put them to bed at night. Basically, after their bath, I'd dress them in the next day's clothes (I kept it to sweats or other comfy pants). That cut out a nice chunk of time in the morning which allowed me to let them sleep a little longer.

HTH!
Debbi

[mopinko]

7. you are a woman after my own heart

that is just the kind of approach i try to take to problems.
it reminds me of a situtation i had here. i was a stay at home mom, and we have a 2 flat. our tenant in those days were very good friends who had a child about the same age as the older of my (then) 2 kids- a toddler.
i babysat for her for a while. the really big perk of the deal as far as she and her mom were concerned was that she could come to the sitter naked.

[Debbi801]

9. When you go with the flow, everyone is happier...

It worked for us. :-)

Your situation sounds ideal.

Debbi