Does going back to school mean plying your child out of bed with a crowbar? Does every morning bring a fight between them, you and the covers? Funny how on Saturdays and during the summer they can get up at the crack of dawn, but once school starts it’s game over. Try these tips to make rising and shining a little easier.

Wake up, Little Susie

Some kids need time to come awake while others snap to it. You may need to set the alarms early enough to accommodate some sitting-and-staring-into-space time. If you don’t know which category you child falls into, the week before school begins, start using the alarm clock to see if your child needs their alarm set a little earlier to provide some wake-up cushioning. Another idea to get them out of bed is to set two alarms, one on the opposite side of the room. The fact of having to physically get up and turn it off means your child is that much closer to being awake.

See if setting an alarm to a radio station works better than just a buzzer. Or you can try tuning it to loud radio static to encourage them to get up and turn it off. There are some fun Talking Kids Alarm Clocks that can ease your child awake with kiss noises or snap them awake with a dinosaur roar.

Rise and Shine
Try to wake them with their nose. Use favorite smells to lure them out of bed, such as cinnamon-raisin toast, or crispy bacon frying or coffee brewing for teens.

While I’m not this dedicated, we found one suggestion that on cold winter mornings, you can throw their clothes into the dryer for a few minutes. Pulling on warm clothes may help inspire them to leave their warm bed. (Honestly, if you do that, you are my SuperMom hero.)

Early to bed, early to rise

Tell your child that you will keep pushing bedtime earlier and earlier until they are able to wake up earlier. The thought of having to go to bed at 7:30 p.m. may be just the thing to motivate them to wake up in the morning. Getting a good night’s sleep, as simple as it sounds, may solve the problem, too. We all know that we do best on a routine.

Desperate times call for desperate measures

If all else fails, march into your child’s room, bang on a pan with a wooden spoon, singing “The Wheels on the Bus” at the top of your lungs. That should do the trick! Personally, I enjoy using those pretend toy microphones to sing them a wake-up song. My voice is so bad that they just jump out of bed to get me to stop. While this might be a little cruel, I tend to look at it as payback for waking me up in the middle of the night.

What do you do at your house to get the kids out of bed for school? We’d love to hear about it.

Want more tips on getting your kids back on track? Check out Back to a Back to School Routine