I’m working with a family whose son waits until the last minute every day to get up and thus is always 10-20 minutes late for school. He is a freshman in high school and this problem has been going on for years. Parents have tried everything from waking him up 15 minutes earlier than needed to squirting water on him. Mornings turn into nightmares as Mom nags and nags and son ignores and goes back to sleep until the last minute. Middle school tried to be patient and not worry about the tardies but high school is a different matter. Punishment of Saturday schools does not help. Rewards don’t help. Any ideas?
my son too
I have a 13 yr old who I have to basically act like a snooze alarm with, it takes 20 minutes to get him up. He wouldn’t even get up easy on Christmas morning.
(his brother had been doing jumping jacks in front of the clock for 30 minutes).
I even put a bag of frozen peas in his undershorts one time and he didn’t budge.
I don’t have a solution really, it seems a common complaint of many parents of adhd kids.
Amy
Just the oppposite
My ADHD son wakes with the son and is off and bouncing while my daughter and I are slow to wake up and do not wish any conversation until we have been up for quite a while. My son cannot understand this, until his meds kick in, and continually annoys his sister by TALKING before she is in the mood!!
I think it has more to do with factors other than ADHD, my son is simply a morning person and will one day learn to function in a house where he is outnumbered. His dad is however ADHD and is another that dislikes waking up and is terminally late for everything, much to my son’s annoyance. I am not a morning oerson but I do wake up when I have no choice. It is not uncommon on the weekends for my son to have been up for hours while my daughter and I are still sleeping at 11am.
Perhaps the location of his room in the house may have smething to do with it. I moved my son’s room to the side that does not get the early AM sun because he was waking up at 5am everyday. Moving his room moved that time to 7am. Perhaps a room with early morning sun exposure could stimulate him into waking up.
Re: Just the oppposite
Well, in our case we don’t have a choice about the windows, we live in a military stairwell where all bedrooms are on the same side. Opposite the sun. Add to that the short, gloomy winter German days, yuk.
I am like you, I love to sleep in on weekends, my older son too. My younger son is a lot like your son, pretty easy to get up and up way early on weekends.
It is a good thought though about the sun. When I move I will look into the position of the house. Couldn’t hurt!
Amy
I have heard of parents semiwaking their kids up to take their meds and letting them fall back to sleep for 30 min so the med kicks in for morning time-they feel that is the only way they can organize their routine and get out the door
Have there been enough saturday schools to truly make an impression yet? Im thinking the middle school may not have done him any favors in allowing him to be late and its going to be doubly hard to change now.
Have the parents tried making him go to bed earlier-NOT as a solution-if hes that wiped out 30 minutes wont matter. But would it be a possible deterrent? It worked for my oldest when he was that age. We told him we would move bedtime up 15 minutes every morning we had a difficult morning time with him. It worked-he was grumpy but he got up
On the bright side,at 17, he now gets up totally on his own-even to make work at 7:00am sunday when the rest of us are asleep. It was like his body adjusted to being a teenager.