“Up and At Em!”

“Wake up, Sleepy Head! It’s time to rise and shine!”...Wouldn’t it be just amazing, if those words actually worked?  I don’t know how many times I have said these exact words to my daughter, until I am blue in the face, and they just don’t work!  I’ve tried the soft approach.  I’ve tried the completely obnoxious, drill-sargent approach, and the only one who ever seems to get worked up over any of this is *moi*.

I’ve taken some suggestions from family and well-meaning people about dumping a glass of ice cold water on her head.  Actually, I never stooped to that because I knew who would be cleaning up that mess, but a nice squirt gun is pretty harmless.  So, I used this method for a while, and obviously, my daughter wasn’t too fond of it.  She woke up in bad spirits, and that really wasn’t a good start off to either of our days.  Back to the drawing board.

I’ve never been one for being a morning person, but my daughter loves a great, home-cooked breakfast.  There have been times my husband’s gotten up early to do this. He certainly doesn’t make a habit of it, especially not during the week, but when he does, he’ll mention “eggs and bacon”.  Then, watch her come flying out of bed.  Honestly, I’ve tried to encourage her to get up early and make her own breakfast...like that’s going to happen.

We’ve had this getting-up-for-school problem for over 10 years, and I’ve honestly tried all of the normal methods of getting her up.  There’s the alarm clock with the snooze.  Do you know who gets the snooze?  I get the snooze.  I let the alarm go off for 40 minutes, and she never wakes.  Sooo frustrating!  There’s always the calling out approach, “Amber, get up!... Amber, get up!!!”  That doesn’t work!  There’s gentle nudging.  Nope.  I’ve resorted to vigorous, rocking-the-boat, side-to-side motions.  That just makes her mad, and she’ll be up for a while.  As soon as I leave the room though, zzzzzzz. 

Sometimes, I’ll get these bouts of inspiration and try to do things a little different, to see if I might have a better outcome.  I’ve put on a live concert for her: (singing)“Wake up, little Amber! Wake up!... Wake up, little Amber! Wake up!”-- Do you think she appreciated that?  No!!  That’s ok.  It was more for my enjoyment, anyway.  I figure if I have to go through all of the trouble of getting her out of bed, I might as well try and get some enjoyment out of it.

My next tactic of trying to wake her was a little unusual.  I was looking at her bed and surveying the amount of space left around her legs, to determine if it was safe.  Then, I proceeded to climb onto the bed and jumped on it like it was a trampoline.  Boy, did that make her mad!

Out of the different feats that I’ve tried with her, there is one in particular that is tempting, but I avoid like the plague... Little brother!  If there is one thing that will get my daughter up, quicker than anything, it would be my sweet, little, mischievous rascal.  Sure, he’ll get her up alright.  He may not be alive, when she catches him, but she’ll be up.  It’s not exactly the end result that I’m looking for.

Recently, I conducted a survey amongst my Facebook friends about possible ideas of how to get my dead-to-the-world child up in the morning and have come up with some interesting responses.  Did you know that smartphones have an app for an airhorn?  I downloaded it on my phone, but it was disappointingly not very loud.  I did find a decent police siren app though.  I have yet to try it.  Also glass marbles in the freezer are another interesting way to wake a kid up.  From what I’ve been told, a child can’t easily roll away from them because they move with the body. Pretty clever, huh?

I am sure there are a lot more ways to wake kids up in the morning, and the list will keep growing, until the end of days.  With new technologies and clever, innovative ideas from desperate parents, a sleeping child will have no defense. On that note though, probably, a good, old-fashioned splash of water or an ice cube will continue being a struggling parent’s #1 resource.