Getting a morning routine down as a family has been a work in progress. I don’t think this is necessarily a SEN thing, I think this is easily a ‘busy family’ thing.

It led to us having a ‘book of techniques’, if you will, to getting a list of quite simple stuff done in order to leave the house. At one stage we had a visual timetable with drawings on of each task to be completed and in what order, which was very helpful before the routine becoming more of a natural habit.

The pandemic actually alleviated a lot of the chaos as, prior to that, mornings required all three of us getting ourselves up and out. Now that I am stay at home mum and Matt’s work is hybrid, the focus can be on the little guy, which makes things a lot easier.

I think back to a status update I posted on Facebook literally 10 days before the first UK lockdown which read as follows;

“March 2020

For a moment this morning my only problem was dealing with a 4 year old Gruffalo who wouldn’t take pants of his head to go to nursery….then, the entire contents of my makeup bag fell into the loo. How I get to work on time each day I don’t know…”

There seems to be a theme with Lincoln and pants. I used to get a little frustrated when trying to dress Lincoln each morning as it used to take what seemed like forever. It was done in stages and what my husband noticed was that as soon as Lincoln put some pants on, he would get what I would describe as ‘happily hyperactive.’ From that point on, it was like trying to dress a kangaroo.

Matt’s comment was “who doesn’t like having a little dance in nice, clean pants?” (as I think more about this it occurs to me this might indicate that Matt might do a little clean pants dance every morning…..how have I missed this??)

So now, we let Lincoln have his little ‘pants dance’ as it is clear it puts him in a good mood! And good-mood Lincoln is a lot more compliant than his alter ego.  It made me think about how we could encourage Lincoln with the things he CAN do, rather than the things I always seem to be saying no to.  

We had some professional advice once following a particularly tricky period with Lincoln’s behaviour at school which suggested that we, and Lincoln’s teachers, give him options in order to help him feel empowered. This, they advised is an important factor in attaining compliance with everyday tasks. So instead of “NO, you can’t have pizza for breakfast!’, the response would be; “Lincoln you can have cereal or eggs and toast for breakfast, what would you like?” We also now have a box of items by the door that he CAN take to school rather than running round the house after him trying to get the item off of him that we know for sure the teachers will not appreciate in the classroom (think; whistles, bubble-guns, microphones that belt out ‘baby-shark’ etc).

For Lincoln, the ability to choose from a list of options helps him to feel that he ‘can do’ this or that and in addition, he gets to make the choice. Powerful stuff.

I am trying to apply the same principle to my life now. I find that I have a tendency to focus on the things in life that I shouldn’t do; don’t drink too much coffee; don’t eat crisps every day; don’t stay up watching nonsense on NetFlix etc etc…. All good advice but this constant preaching to myself about what I shouldn’t do naturally results in me feeling like I am missing out. But what if I focused on the things I CAN do instead?

I CAN take a nice stroll in the woods, I CAN treat myself to a mochaccino with extras every now and again, I CAN take time out to be creative. And if I really want to, after I have put some nice, clean pants on, I can do a little dance every morning. It seems to work for Lincoln 😊