Things take longer with kids in tow
#35 Why getting more organised isn't the answer to being constantly late
I was talking with a friend the other day and we had a laugh together about something that had happened to me that morning. My mum had given me a call about 5 minutes after kinder drop-off time, and asked if now was ok to ask a quick question or if I was still busy at kinder.
I laughed. Even though we’d been awake for 3 hours, we were still loading up the car to go to kinder.
Things just take longer with kids in tow.
Take leaving the house for example.
Pre-kids, it’s a simple matter of phone, wallet, keys.
With kids, you need to pack nappies, water bottles, snacks, wipes, snacks, books, sunscreen, hats, snacks, spare clothes, that favourite rock, tissues, and snacks.
You might decide to get organised and pack the night before. Surely, if everything is packed and ready to go, you can be on time!
Wrong.
In your head you may think that it should only take 5 minutes to walk the 10 steps from the front door to the car and strap kids into their car seats.
Except for someone forgot to put their shoes on. Someone went in from the wrong car door and now needs to climb over two siblings. Someone doesn’t want to get in the car at all. Then once everyone is strapped in, you smell poo and have to unload a toddler and the nappy bag, change a nappy, then reload the toddler and the nappy bag.
Late again.
Things just take longer with kids in tow.
The answer isn’t being more organised (although that does help). It’s building in buffers.
If you think it will take 5 minutes to leave the house and strap everyone into the car, allow 10.
If you think it will take 20 minutes for everyone to put on their pyjamas and brush their teeth, allow 30.
Building in those buffers will save you a lot of stress from feeling that you’re always running late. It means that the unexpected can happen, and you won’t instantly be running behind schedule.
Buffers help the kids too.
Young kids have no concept of time. It’s completely abstract. To say to a 4-year-old, ‘we need to leave in 10 minutes’ is essentially equivalent to saying, ‘we need to leave sometime in the future’. Even when they begin to develop a consciousness around time, they often don’t care about being late. They haven’t yet internalised the societal conditioning around lateness, and don’t feel shame about being late. And even once they start caring about being late, they’re still developing the executive functioning skills needed to prioritize things so they can be ready on time.
Having those buffers in place means that you can help the kids get ready to leave without being stressed yourself. Having a calm parent at the helm allows the journey towards getting ready be more fun, less rushed, and more playful.
Try it out. For everything you need to do tomorrow with the kids around (from getting ready to leave the house, to cooking dinner, to cleaning up the play area), allow yourself at least an extra 10 minutes to get the job done. That may mean you need to cut back on expected tasks and activities so that everything can fit in. If that’s the case, you probably weren’t going to get it all done tomorrow anyway. At least now you can make the decision about what things to prioritise in advance.
Hopefully you’ll be able to get through the day with less lateness, less rushing, and less stress. And you may even find yourself with extra time during the day if things go more smoothly than planned. If that happens (and fingers crossed it does), avoid the temptation to fill those minutes with more doing. Just relax and be with your kids. Enjoy the moment.
I'd love to hear your thoughts! Do you have any hidden weapons against constantly running late that I should know about? Please help. Even though I know about buffers, we’ve still managed to be late to kinder almost every day this year. At least we manage to make it almost everywhere else on time.
Oh, and before you go
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