s/o quick morning routines

[Anonymous]

We are in our first year of eating breakfast at home with our kids. They both used to eat at day care and we'd bring breakfast to the office so we used to wake up, brush teeth, get dressed and jump in the car. They now eat breakfast at home and need a big, hearty breakfast or complain that they get hungry before snack/lunch at school. We've whittled it down to just over an hour if both parents are home and helping, but it still seems long. How can we make this quicker?

6:15 Parent 1 is up and showers/gets dressed

6:30 Parent 1 is making lunches for kids and breakfast and Parent 2 is getting kids up, dressed, hair done, etc...

7:00 Everybody sits down to breakfast

7:30 Brush teeth and put on shoes

7:40-7:45 out the door

[Anonymous]

It sounds good to me, but you could streamline by packing lunches the night before and having the clothes picked out so kids dress themselves (age?)

[Anonymous]

A half hour to eat seems luxurious if you're trying to streamline. How old are your kids?

[Anonymous]

I love this except in my house (7 and 4 year old) you'd have to add:

6:35-7:05 Kids engage in fighting/discussion/crying, either with each other or Parent 2, over a) whether today is a weekend or not; b) whether Parent 1 is actually in the shower, has already taken a shower and just has not come out of the bathroom yet, or has yet to take a shower - in which case "I want Parent 1 to show me how to solve a Rubik's cube;" or c) whether bagels are a breakfast food, a lunch food, or a brunch food, followed by a discussion of potential names for hybrid animals.

So that pushes our time out the door back quite significantly.

[Anonymous]

Shower and make lunches at night.

[Anonymous]

We skip the whole Everyone sits down to eat breakfast piece because 30 extra minutes to sleep is more precious to all of us at this point. So we are getting ready in about 30-40 minutes and it sounds like you do the same thing, plus 30 minutes to eat. The only thing you can do is for Parent 1 to shower the night before (I don't like doing that but some people do) and pack lunches/bookbags the night before.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We skip the whole Everyone sits down to eat breakfast piece because 30 extra minutes to sleep is more precious to all of us at this point. So we are getting ready in about 30-40 minutes and it sounds like you do the same thing, plus 30 minutes to eat. The only thing you can do is for Parent 1 to shower the night before (I don't like doing that but some people do) and pack lunches/bookbags the night before.

OP here:
Parent 1 is willing to wake up 15 minutes earlier to shower. (I'm Parent 2 so I don't care!)

As for the lunches, we do leftovers in a thermos, so there's at least a bit of lunch prep in the morning.

What do you do for breakfast to make things quicker?

[Anonymous]

What is there to make quicker?

My kids get about 30 min to eat but they usually eat for 10. Other time is playing and fighting. I put out food and they eat. You can make lunch night before.

[Anonymous]

We eat first and then get dressed in our house.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A half hour to eat seems luxurious if you're trying to streamline. How old are your kids?

Kids are 4 and 7. They mostly get ready on their own with some encouragement. I still need to do the 4 year old's hair. Possible we could streamline the breakfast/lunch prep by having both parents working on that while the kids are getting themselves ready.

The 30 minutes to eat does seem awfully long, but even with that, it seems like we're always rushing the kids to finish up and get out the door. I guess the bright side is that our kids like to sit at the table and chat...

[Anonymous]

How far is the drive to daycare? We drink coffee in the car, and kids eat in the car on the way to daycare.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A half hour to eat seems luxurious if you're trying to streamline. How old are your kids?

Kids are 4 and 7. They mostly get ready on their own with some encouragement. I still need to do the 4 year old's hair. Possible we could streamline the breakfast/lunch prep by having both parents working on that while the kids are getting themselves ready.

The 30 minutes to eat does seem awfully long, but even with that, it seems like we're always rushing the kids to finish up and get out the door. I guess the bright side is that our kids like to sit at the table and chat...

I think you either need to shorten breakfast (it takes <10 minutes to eat some scrambled eggs and toast) OR just appreciate the chatty, long breakfasts and enjoy them. Maybe wake everyone up 10 minutes sooner if you're feeling crunched.

Your kids are older than mine so maybe this doesn't work anymore but sometimes we have our 4 and 2 year old sleep in their clothes. Especially in the summer when it's just t shirts and running shorts half the time anyway.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How far is the drive to daycare? We drink coffee in the car, and kids eat in the car on the way to daycare.

They now bike to school, so that doesn't work for us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A half hour to eat seems luxurious if you're trying to streamline. How old are your kids?

Kids are 4 and 7. They mostly get ready on their own with some encouragement. I still need to do the 4 year old's hair. Possible we could streamline the breakfast/lunch prep by having both parents working on that while the kids are getting themselves ready.

The 30 minutes to eat does seem awfully long, but even with that, it seems like we're always rushing the kids to finish up and get out the door. I guess the bright side is that our kids like to sit at the table and chat...

I think you either need to shorten breakfast (it takes <10 minutes to eat some scrambled eggs and toast) OR just appreciate the chatty, long breakfasts and enjoy them. Maybe wake everyone up 10 minutes sooner if you're feeling crunched.

Your kids are older than mine so maybe this doesn't work anymore but sometimes we have our 4 and 2 year old sleep in their clothes. Especially in the summer when it's just t shirts and running shorts half the time anyway.

yeah, I guess it is what it is. I was just reading on another post about 30-40 minute morning routines and thinking wistfully of sleeping until 7!

[Anonymous]

Lunches the night before. Precut veggies as they keep for a few days. Also, pre make breakfast - pancakes and waffles can easily be heated while finishing lunches or put cereal stuff out the night before.