The secret of the morning

I'm going to tell you a secret:

I've mentioned before that I am a morning person, and it is true: I am usually at my best in the morning. My alarm goes off, I get out of bed and my brain starts buzzing about the day I am going to have.

But let's focus on the first part of that sentence: My alarm goes off. I do not wake up naturally at 5 am (it has happened, but it is rare.) And a lot of times, I do not want to get out of bed, but I do it anyway. I have found that the secret is for me to just push myself out of bed and tell myself that returning to sleep is not an option.

My son's alarm goes off with mixed results: Sometimes he is awake and productive, other times he needs to be frog-marched through his morning routine. It depends on where he was in his sleep cycle when he woke and it depends on if it is a weekend or a school day.

The bad part of this is that I know I could actually let my son wake up naturally. His school doesn't start until 9 am, which means we are in the fortunate position of him catching the bus at 8:42 am...I should let him sleep. But there are several reasons why I wake him early:

• We all need our routines in life. He is lucky that school starts late now, but that is not going to always be the case. Better to get him used to a standard wake up time now.
• He is getting enough sleep - a little more than 9 hours per night, which is good for his age.
• I want to spend time with him before I go to work. I know this is selfish.

We are lucky. We are lucky at the late start time of our school, as more and more schools are actually starting earlier, causing their students to be sleep deprived. And now researchers are taking a look at the effects of the too early start of the day for students. It sounds like most people agree that our children should be allowed to sleep in.

What time does your child need to get up to catch the bus? Tell me in the comments.