Crying Mornings

We’re in a rut. A rut of screaming, crying, whining, moaning, groaning, yucky mornings. It’s gone on for several weeks now, more than I care to count, actually. Despite the fact that the kids are now excellent sleepers and log between 10 and 12 hours nightly, they are horrific bears in the morning. We let them sleep until they naturally wake, at about 6:30 a.m., and then Jason takes them to the kitchen for breakfast at their picnic table. So they’re rested and fed before we start ANYTHING in the morning. But it doesn’t seem to help.

Sometimes the complaining is already underway before they’ve set a foot on the ground. We don’t give in to the whinings – such as giving them different food, different clothes, letting them watch a movie – and we give them plenty of controlled choices to make, but what we’re doing isn’t apparently working either. I keep hoping it’s a phase, but as soon as we have two or three good mornings, it all slips back into the regular pattern.

Yesterday was Gavin’s all-time best. He threw a gargantuan fit right away at the picnic table, though we still don’t know what set him off. He threw himself to the ground wailing, then looked up to see if we were watching. We told him to go eat his breakfast and left the room. Then he CRAWLED, sobbing, after us. He dropped face-down into the carpet and bawled some more. We went into different rooms, told him to go have breakfast and waited. He looked up to see if we were watching and crawled after Jason with more wailing. Oh, the drama.

I think I need to work out a fun morning activity to cheer everyone up a little. They love routines, charts, stickers and choices. Now I just need a little inspiration...