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How to get teens out of bed for school?

QuiltyMom

QuiltyMom

I'll never run out of things to do!
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Feb 3, 2012
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We're having a serious problem getting my DD out of bed in the mornings. 3x a week she gets up at 4:45 a for skating practice, 6:45 the other two days. The problem is that I can't get her out of bed. This morning she got up, shut her door (which is the sign she's up and moving) and went back to bed. I got her up just in time to catch the bus.

Any tips or advice? I'm completely out of ideas.
 
Make them get themselves up... maybe if she knows that she's the one responsible for getting herself up, she won't go back to bed thinking you'll just wake her up again... and maybe let her miss school for sleeping in once. :giggle

Seriously I don't know, I know I had to get myself up as a teen because my Mom wasn't a morning person and my Dad was already out of the house and off to work.

But WOW! That is early on skating days. Makes me cringe. What time does she go to bed at night?
 
Ugh. Sorry Jan... my kids are currently up before me. I anticipate this being a problem with my youngest son. My oldest already has a phone, and occasionally sets his alarm.
 
i started making my kids set their own alarms and get up themselves too (its 5:30 am 5 days a week) just this year. they do it all - including monitoring when to leave to catch the bus own their own. i only intervene if it is raining or really horrible out - in which case i will drive them up to the bus stop. this sounds lazy on my part - but i also wake up at 5:30 am with an alarm every morning - i just don't get up up. i make them text me when they are up so i know they are up and moving along. i can when my son gets in the shower and my daughter always goes downstairs to use that bathroom and get water/grab a yogurt. even though i'm listening and checking the news on my phone i stay in bed bc i really want them to just learn to be self sufficient. it took a little work (me getting up and waking them a bit) in the beginning but now it is pretty much a well oiled machine. i notice when there is a problem with oversleeping - its rare but does happen it is bc they were up way too late. so putting stricter lights out demands on them at night helps. to tell the truth they were worse about waking and then sneaking back into bed when it was my responsibility - now that it is on them ... they hardly ever go back to bed once the alarm sounds. i think maybe 1 or 2x each the whole year so far.

maybe making your child miss a coveted skating lesson and not only having to deal with you, but the coach too would work? can you speak to the coach to see if this is something she/he could partner with you on?

good luck it is tough! hang in there!
 
Karen said:
Make them get themselves up... maybe if she knows that she's the one responsible for getting herself up, she won't go back to bed thinking you'll just wake her up again... and maybe let her miss school for sleeping in once.
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This is what we do, but the consequence is monetary vs. missing school.

Alex is two floors away (he has the basement bedroom) and likes to get to school an hour early (he's an odd one), so he's on his own to get up. He takes public transit, so there's more than one option for getting to school. I have, on rare occasions, had to wake him up, but he has a built in hour cushion already, so he's good.

Clara's room is right down the hall, so it's easier to check on her in the morning. If I don't see the light on in her bathroom, I'll check on her, but just the once. She takes a private bus service run by the school so they're a little more lax about the timing of pick ups.

Here's the money part... both kids know that if they oversleep and are unable to take their regular transportation method, they will uber to school and I immediately deduct the amount from their debit cards. Since we've put them in charge of their own spending about a year ago, they are super aware of what happens to their money and avoid extra charges at all costs... especially when they've been hit with surge pricing a couple times!
 
All good advice. When they go off to college, they have to wake themselves up, so good to get in the habit while at home.

That said, my kids most favorite thing about homeschool - sleeping in almost every day.
 
You joke, @carrie1977 , but my Daddy threatened me one time to do that and I ignored him. Guess what happened? He about died laughing. Um me, I was not so happy. It's a fun memory now though. I was about 13 then.

I take Daniel to school, so I usually wake him up when I get up. He has to sit up in bed before I'll leave the room. We have a small house, so I can talk to him from the kitchen where I'm making breakfast.

I love all these suggestions. I think next school year, things are going to change for Daniel in the morning! Ha!
 
Well...he sure showed you, Cheryl! LOL! @gonewiththewind

I don't know how my mom did it. She had six of her own to wake up and she ran her own in-home daycare. Lucky for her we lived right across the street from our elementary and junior high schools but some days I struggle waking up two.
 
Karen said:
Make them get themselves up... maybe if she knows that she's the one responsible for getting herself up, she won't go back to bed thinking you'll just wake her up again... and maybe let her miss school for sleeping in once. :giggle

But WOW! That is early on skating days. Makes me cringe. What time does she go to bed at night?
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She's supposed to be in bed by 10. I go to bed at 9:00ish so I'm not awake to make sure she does. If DH isn't on travel he'll remind her, but hes usually in his own zone and forgets to do so. She's taking almost a full load of IB level classes at school, so with that, skating, her job & looking at colleges she's swamped. We've already cut down a lot of her activities. The problem is that her school friends stay up until the wee hours doing homework, so she believes this is "normal". Even if she does go to bed at 10, it doesn't mean she's going to go to sleep. She'd just hide under the covers with a flashlight...

She sets three alarms, but she sleeps through them all. I'm tempted to get an air horn, but since we live in an townhouse I don't think my neighbors would appreciate hearing that at 0-dark-hundred!

jenn mccabe said:
maybe making your child miss a coveted skating lesson and not only having to deal with you, but the coach too would work? can you speak to the coach to see if this is something she/he could partner with you on?
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I've talked with her main coach about doing this, but I think were going to have to implement it. Maybe we'll have to set the plan in motion. She has a great coach, by the way.

carrie1977 said:
Throw cold water on her?
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you don't know how tempted I am to do this. I did it to my son ... once. He wasn't happy. I barely escaped unharmed.
 
carrie1977 said:
Throw cold water on her?
Kidding...of course. :giggle
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Man... that reminds me of my Grandfather. He stood at the bottom of the stairway (my bedroom, or what I dubbed as my bedroom, in their Virginia house was off the kitchen on it's own level with a tiny staircase to a beautiful room) with pots and pans and would bang them for 5 minutes or so, until my grandmother could run in and stop him.

At 6 am.... on any given day off I had if I was staying at their house.

I would grumble and get up.

Not the nicest wake up, but I was up and getting ready.
Ugh... but :giggle at the same time.
 
oh gosh Jan.. that is a hard one.. I would never hear the alarm.. my father would scream from the end of the hall to wake up... 38 years later I dream I hear him yelling.. LOL when I lived on my own I would wake up when I was supposed to be at work.. my boss was great as he knew I was good for the time. My radio alarm was as loud as it could go.. my landlord was not happy with me.. LOL


THEN>>>> I married.. My husband was in the military and would get up at "0 dark 30" so now for the past 25 years even on the weekends my body is used to waking at 4:30am... 2 years ago I saw my old boss when I went back to NY for a visit and he was suprised that for almost 25 years I was an early bird...


it will happen when she is more responsible.

[PS Dad always said I never had a problem answering the phone.. he wanted to make an alarm clock of a ringing telephone, but figured I would get used to that too!!]
 
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I kick my husband on the bottoms of his feet to wake up. He has a bad back & likes to sleep on the floor. He does not hear alarms at all! So, I kick the bottoms of his feet just enough to wake him up. Is it still passive aggressive if you're semi-aggressive? :giggle

I'm usually the 1st up. When it's time to wake everyone else up, I turn on lights and say "Time to get up boys". If the little ones don't respond, I touch their faces and smooth their hair until they wake up. If it's still taking too long, I remind them they'll have less time to eat breakfast and that they really don't want hungry tummies at school. I'm sure this doesn't help with teens though, unless you want to kick her feet.
 
QuiltyMom said:
We're having a serious problem getting my DD out of bed in the mornings. 3x a week she gets up at 4:45 a for skating practice, 6:45 the other two days. The problem is that I can't get her out of bed. This morning she got up, shut her door (which is the sign she's up and moving) and went back to bed. I got her up just in time to catch the bus.

Any tips or advice? I'm completely out of ideas.
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Anytime I needed them to do anything and they were being unresponsive, I told them I would put a freeze on their mobile phone lines (such as when you lose your phone). Somehow the idea of the loss of their phone always lit a fire under my daughters. :firey:yup
 
I would also have said that she needs to take responsibility for her own wake-ups and bed times.
Sleeping through her alarm makes you the horrible parent. I would hate to begin the day fighting to get a child up and out of the house. Good luck and much strength to you.
 
I was a horrid child about getting up. As long as I knew my mom or grandma would keep checking on me every 10 minutes or so begging me to get up and dressed I would just keep rolling over and going back to sleep. My situation only changed when they let me start getting my own self up and ready or like some already mentioned I would start losing stuff like having friends over or video games or tv privileges (LOL - now it would probably be computer or cell phones) if I was late for school or missed the bus.
 
I've been making Aspen get up on her own this year and wish I would have done it years ago! All those years of early cheer practice about killed me. I would wake her up so we wouldn't be late for the others in the carpool. Now that Aspen drives herself, I can sleep in until I have to take Megan to school. Megan is 6 years younger, but rarely needs me to wake her up.

Aspen is 17 and was late for school one day last week, and had to take the tardy. I wouldn't write a note excusing her, because she had stayed up late face-timing friends. She paid the price the next day with her tardy and she also lost phone privileges because her phone is supposed to stay in the kitchen charging at night, not down in her room.
 
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