If school mornings at your house are anything like, well, most houses, they’re hectic, and you could really use a hack to help you save some time and get your kids fed, dressed, and out the door faster (and with less hassle). Dr. Becky, the clinical psychologist who founded the parenting advice app Good Inside, just posted a video sharing one thing she does with her kids to help their mornings go a little more smoothly, and you’re going to want to steal this idea ASAP.
“This is a back-to-school hack you don’t want to miss,” she says at the beginning of her video. Holding a notepad, she continues, “I make a menu for my kids the night before, where they have to pick their breakfast options. Watch this—I literally just take out a pad, I write ‘Menu.’ Then down the side, I write three options that they can have for breakfast. So it might be ‘Bagel,’ ‘Yogurt,’ and ‘Eggs,’ or something like that. So simple.”
Showing her handwritten “menu,” which is really just a list of a few easy breakfasts she can whip up in the morning, Dr. Becky adds, “Then I go around to each kid and I just say, ‘Hey, tomorrow there are three options for breakfast. Right here: bagel, yogurt, eggs. Can you write your initials next to the option you would like?’”
For younger kids who can’t write their initials just yet, she slightly modifies the hack: “When they were younger, I would do it with them. They would put their hand on the pen and I would say, ‘Let’s make a check mark next to what you want.’”
Dr. Becky says, “This takes breakfast battles out of the equation. Because it’s on paper, instead of it being you against your kid, it’s a little bit you and your kid against a menu. And because they do the check mark or they do the initials, they feel like they have agency and they feel in control. And because you’re doing it the night before, there’s no morning rush. Try it. It’s magic.”
Yeah, we can totally see how that would work. And the comments are filled with parents who tried this trick out and reported back to say that it did.
“Okay I was our first day of school today and it went well! It worked perfectly and I am crossing my fingers that it will continue to work. The morning went much more smoothly because of it!” one mom said.
Another added, “Slam dunk Dr. B!”
Other moms came to the comments to share other tricks that they say also work well.
“It sounds crazy but we have a set breakfast schedule for every day. Mon is toast morning. Tues is cereal. Wed is Choose Your Own. Thursday is Toast. Fri is Oatmeal or yogurt. Takes the guesswork out and kids know what to do.”
That’s another great idea! And whatever it takes to make mornings easier.
