Every single morning in my house, it's like it's the first morning my two kids have ever had to get ready for school. If I am not standing over them directing them, they will seriously just sit around reading, or playing or petting the dogs. Like, completely in la-la land.
They are terrible about getting ready every morning! I have to stick my head out every 5 minutes while I'm getting ready to tell them "get dressed" "eat your breakfast" "leave the dog alone and put your bowl up" "where are your socks? please go get them" "did you put your folder in your backpack?" "Why don't you have clean pants on? Please go get CLEAN pants" etc, etc, etc. It's starting to feel like herding cats!
Are you in my house? Seriously.
I herd those cats every morning! Well, we do have some of that done the night before, to avoid as much as possible, but it's still crazy. DS sleeps in his clothes so I don't have to fight him into them in the morning, although it's been dicey lately because he was wearing shorts but now it's too cold, so he goes to bed in shorts still and needs pants in the morning. Today he decided to change his pants just as we were going out the door, and he already had his shoes on, so it was difficult. I actually put his shoes on him while he is staring in the direction of the TV and not eating his breakfast -- DH gets frustrated that I put an 11-year-old's shoes on for him, but he's not the one who has to keep saying "put your shoes on" every thirty seconds for half an hour!
I do make most of the lunches the night before, so all I have to do is make two PBJ sandwiches in the morning. And get them into the right backpacks, which is 50-50 lately.
DD usually bounces out of bed, but then it's a battle to keep her focused long enough to get dressed, brush her hair, don't let the dog get her breakfast, brush her teeth, stop playing with the dog, put her shoes on, stop playing with the dog, put her coat and not her hoodie on because it's below freezing, keep her from stuffing her backpack with toys, and so on. And every two minutes, yelling, "DS EAT" and then getting him to do all of the above.
I do second the advice above, that you may be allowing too much time. When I was a kid, the only times I ever missed the bus were when I had too much time to get ready. If I woke up with just enough time to do everything and run out the door, I was fine, but if I got up early for some reason, it was all over. I would invariably think I had time to do this extra and that extra thing, and I would run out of time and miss the bus. I'm still that way, really, just no bus. Too much time is deadly.
