The Work at Home, Special Needs Mom's Survival Guide to School Days

Me, about thirty minutes into "Why aren't you dressed yet!?"

First of all, my kids are morning people.

I know. I'm sorry for me, too.

Every morning, no matter what time they finally fell asleep, my kids are bright-eyed and bushy-tailed by 7 a.m. 

Taryn is usually up by 5:30 and ready to go for the day. 

I am not a functional human being until at least 8:30. 

Normally, that combination alone would be enough to drive a mom mad. But then you add in one child with severe ADHD/ODD and a splash of ASD, a two year old with tyrannical tendencies, and don't forget the unpredictable temperament of the five year old, and you get chaos. Pure chaos. 

Your average morning in the LWK household goes like this:

• 5:30 a.m: Taryn wakes up, and comes up the stairs from his room to the living room, turning on the TV. 
• 6:00 a.m: The King wakes up and screams his head off until either a) he's managed to get out of his room and down the stairs or b) someone comes to get him, because his doorknob sticks from time to time. 
• 6:30 a.m: Despite multiple "Please quiet down, it's still dark outside, guys, c'mon!" from me, I now have all three children awake and already fighting. 
• 7:00 a.m: Mom has finally made a cup of coffee. Don't get too excited - I probably won't get to drink it yet. 
• 7:30 a.m: The children are given breakfast. (This may seem odd given how long they've been up, but just wait until you see what time they start school. It'll all make sense then.) I spend several minutes getting the hungry yet resistant King to sit in his chair and eat.
• 7:45 a.m: I remind the children they need to start getting dressed and ready for school while wrestling the King back into his chair after he's thrown all his food and climbed out. (His chair is a booster seat on the floor. He knows how to unbuckle himself, so safety first.)
• 7:50 a.m: I remind the children again that they need to finish eating while cleaning up the second attempt to feed the King his breakfast.
• 7:52 a.m: Taryn is done eating. He goes to get dressed. The King is finally eating.
• 7:57 a.m: Kyle is done and now he and Taryn are screaming at each other in the bathroom. I wrestle the King back into his chair, because he thought he had to check out his brothers fight.
• 8:00 a.m: I've finally gotten the King to sit still long enough to finish his breakfast. Taryn has come down the stairs crying because "Kyle won't let me brush my teeth!"
• 8:01 a.m: Kyle comes into the kitchen to defend himself. "I'm trying to brush my teeth!"
• 8:02 a.m: Kyle is now slamming his way down the stairs to his room to get dressed, screaming that I'm mean when I told him to let Taryn, who was in the bathroom getting dressed and ready before him, finish what he was doing before he starts.
• 8:05 a.m: Taryn is ready for school and now sitting on the couch watching Disney Jr. Kyle is throwing things in his room.
• 8:07 a.m: Kyle comes up in mismatched clothes that I'm pretty sure he dug out of the dirty laundry.
• 8:08 a.m: Kyle cries that he has no clean clothes.
• 8:09 a.m: I give Kyle the clean and folded clothing from his dresser that he refused to open.
• 8:10 a.m.: Kyle can't remember how to put on his shirt.
• 8:12 a.m: Kyle has his pants on backwards and cries that he can't remember how to fix them when I send him back to do so.
• 8:15 a.m: Kyle finally has his pants on right, but now claims he can't remember how to use his belt.
• 8:16 a.m: Kyle is now trying to put his socks on over his shoes.
• 8:20 a.m: Kyle has now put his shoes and socks on correctly. Taryn begins the same process. He puts his shoes on the wrong feet. Twice.
• 8:22 a.m: Kyle can't find his lunchbox. Mom finds it in his backpack.
• 8:23 a.m: Kyle just remembered he didn't finish the homework he told me he didn't have. Mom tells him too bad and emails his teacher. Now Kyle is screaming again.
• 8:29 a.m: Taryn can't find his jacket. Kyle puts his on over his backpack then cries because he can't zip it.
• 8:32 a.m: Jackets are on correctly. Children walk out the door for school.
• 8:34 a.m: Taryn comes back in because he forgot his backpack. 
• 8:36 a.m: Taryn proceeds out the door again.
• 8:47 a.m: I get an email from Kyle's teacher that he was late for class. We live in front of the school. It takes Kyle approximately five to seven minutes to get to class from our house. I have no idea why he's late. School started at 8:45.

Chaos. Utter and complete chaos.

Or it was. 

Until Mom decided she'd had enough of the antics. 

So how, exactly, do you even make a dent into fixing this insanity? 

Some of you will probably sit there and wonder how in the world it got this chaotic in the first place. Others will nod along, having their own version of chaotic school mornings. 

I have no idea why my children act this way in the morning. They've had the same routines and expectations since they started school when they were each 4 years old. At nearly eight and nearly six, I don't know why they persist in this insanity. 

I do know, though, that about three weeks ago, I implemented some changes. And wouldn't you know it, the chaos, though not gone, has alleviated somewhat. 

How did I do it? With a few organizational techniques, and lots of continued discussion:

1. I bought a plastic tower of drawers. Currently, we have one with three drawers. In the bottom drawer, the boys put their school shoes. In the middle drawer, Taryn lays out his clothes for the next day, which have been preapproved by me. Kyle does the same in the top drawer. This alleviates Kyle's penchant for trying to wear dirty or non-school clothes to school, and makes sure that I, a night owl and non-morning person, am still awake enough to approve their clothing so they don't pull one over on me. 
2. Every evening when they get home, they empty out their backpacks, placing their lunchboxes on the counter and any papers they have in the drawers their clothes will go in later. While I go through their papers, they do their homework at the coffee table (we don't have a kitchen table). 
3. On Sundays, I pack up gallon sized Ziploc bags full of snacks for school, complete with juice box or water bottle. (I go every other day with those.) This way, all I have to do at night (or in the morning - let's face it, I work from home, I get busy and procrastinate sometimes) is shove a sandwich or leftovers into their lunchboxes and they're set.
4. In the morning, the first one done eating gets dressed, brushes their hair and teeth, and puts their lunch and homework into their backpack. The second child follows once the first child is completely done. There is now a fifteen minute timer set. Each child has 15 minutes in the bathroom. Until that timer goes off, no other child should be in there. (Full disclosure: We do have two bathrooms. The children have rendered their bathroom downstairs not functional until Mom can get a plumber in here, so we're stuck sharing the upstairs bathroom.)
5. Given his apparent aversion to doing anything but following his brothers and watching TV, I have taken to placing a bowl of cereal on the coffee table for the King. Dry cereal, no milk, so it doesn't get all soggy or nasty. If he's hungry, he'll nab a bite or two. Once the older two boys are off to school, I'll wrestle with actually getting him fed and ready for the day.
6. At dinner time, I have set timers so the boys will hurry up and eat or at least know when they have taken too long and should be done or else they'll sit there all night. I've taken to setting alarms on my phone for breakfast. One goes off at 7:30 to announce it's breakfast time. Another goes off at 7:45 to let the kids know they have 5 minutes. At 7:50, they need to be done so they can get ready for school if they're not already. 
7. Once lunches and homework are in the backpacks, they are set next to the door so the boys see and grab them on the way out.

All of our issues aren't completely alleviated, but this has cut down on the chaos quite a bit. Kyle still throws his morning fits; Taryn is still up at the crack of dawn and unpredictable emotionally; Kyle still runs late for school occasionally due, in large part, to his meltdowns. 

No solution is 100% fool proof. Kids have bad days, too, but we're doing our best to find something that works for us. So far, so good. We'll find more things to add on or try, and find things that just don't work. We might find things that work better. Who knows. 

What do you do to cut down on the chaos on school mornings? Any tricks that work better for your kids, special needs or otherwise? Share your tricks with us, and let us know if you try any of ours and how they worked for you!