You Might Also Like: Raising Families with Dr. Jerry Weichman

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**SPEAKER_2** (0:37)
Welcome to Raising Families, the podcast for proactive parents on the go. No fluff, no empty advice, just practical tools and strategies to strengthen your family's mental health and stability.
Parenting is hard, but it doesn't have to be overwhelming. And it's the most important job you'll ever have.

**Jerry Weichman** (1:01)
Hello and welcome back. Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy life to be here with me today. We're coming off a great week. If you didn't catch my solo as well as the discussion Christina and I had, please make sure to go back and listen to them because there was a lot of good information there for you. We're moving on and this week, we're discussing Mornings With Your Teen.
So it's early in the morning on a school day. You're up. You hear your teen's alarm go on and then off. You're hoping that they're just getting up and moving, but you probably know the reality. They just snoozed it.
It goes off another time or two, and then you know you have to go in. You go into the room and yep, they're lifeless in their bed. You call their name and tell them it's time to get up, and the response is you're like ugh, or they mumble something at you.
They get out of bed like a 95-year-old. Their eyes are barely open. They stumble to find clothes. Now, you know they're up, but you're also aware of the time. You guys are behind.
You might have younger kids that actually need your help getting ready for the day. Plus, you still have breakfast, lunches, packing up for school, and making sure everybody brushes their teeth. Your teen stumbles out complaining about how tired they are. You ask them what they want for breakfast. They say they're not hungry. You know they need to eat. The time keeps ticking away. Either you settle on something to eat or you throw them a protein shake or you just give up trying to force feed them in the interest of time, and yet the clock ticks. You send them to brush their teeth and pack up. You're getting close to being behind and the stress mounts. So does your tone. The stress of staying on time for everyone starts getting to you, and it's because of your teen.
Now you're at the set time to leave, and your teen still isn't ready. You start nagging them. They get surly with you. The younger kids start complaining to you and your teen that they're going to be late. Your frustration and stress climb, and it's just the first 60 to 90 minutes of the day.
Sound familiar at all? For many families, the hardest part of the day is the first 60 to 90 minutes. It's an awful first step into a long day for everyone, and it can often set the tone for at least the first half of the day. But it doesn't have to be this way. Today, we're going to talk about why mornings become battlegrounds for so many families, what's actually happening inside the teenage brain, and practical strategies that can help you transform your mornings from chaotic and stressful into calmer and more energetic while also staying on time. Stay tuned because the answers you seek are coming.
Okay. So why are weekday mornings so regularly challenging and chaotic for us with our kids, especially with teenagers? A lot of the problems honestly stem from where our kids are in development. When they were little kids, they would be early birds usually. They'd be up before we were. They'd be jumping in our bed, waking us up. But once they start to embark down the puberty line and development continuum, there's a shift in a lot of areas of their mind, their body, their personality, as well as their sleep patterns. Because development is in hyperdrive, preteens and teens are wired for staying up later and sleeping much later.
To compound things, schools don't start at the time that they should for our kids, for where they are in brain development. They need to start later for middle schools and high schoolers. With where our kids are in this process, getting kids up to school on time would be the equivalent of you or I having to wake up at 3 a.m. and then move quickly, eat food and try to have a good attitude. It's not going to happen. If it does, it's forced and it's a heavy cross to bear. So what do you actually do? The first thing we can do here is forgive and have grace with our kids, weekday grumpiness. It's 3 a.m. to them. Some of the most successful strategies in getting everyone moving for me have come from what I do before my kids actually wake up. The secret ingredient here is stimulation. I wake up before my kids get up and I do the following. I crank the heat to make it so much easier for them to get out of bed. When it's cold, they just want to snuggle up. They don't want to get out. I want them to be warm to the point that it's uncomfortable to be under the covers.