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I think we are so far lucky with our 28 month old!
Would picking out clothes niggt night before help?

What would happen if she had a fit and you just sent her to school in her pajamas, without doing anything, might she get the message that way?

The one thing I don't do is strong arm or force my kid. If he doesn't want to go to the bathroom, and he wets his pants, tough cookies, he can ask his teacher for his change of clothing. If he doesn't want to eat before we leave, there are only a few options of things I will allow him to eat once we reach our destination (I don't allow eating in the car because I still to this day worry about choking).

I would love to know the answer to this problem. DD is 3.5 and we've been struggling with it on and off for probably a year now. We mostly just bribe her with a stroller snack (she doesn't get one if she takes too long getting ready). I guess our other strategy is to just get ready way earlier than we really need. If we aim for a certain time, we are destined to be there 15 min late so we start getting ready to go with about a half hour on the clock.

I definitely see 3 and 4 year olds still wearing PJs at DD's preschool so I think this is a universal thing at this age.

@fmmtk: I think there is a difference between getting them to cooperate and forcing. I can't physically force my son to do anything. If I have to forcibly place him on the toilet or wrestle him to change his clothes, what am I really solving...that's where I am coming from.

In my view, getting my son to cooperate sometimes involves letting him make poor choices. I wish it were as easy as me doing what I need, but it isn't. So on that note, since reward chards don't make a difference to my son either, I have basically decided that he has to live with the consequences of his actions. And eventually, it did get better. It's not an issue so much any more because I have learned that he's slow to wake, so I wake him earlier than what I think it should take to accomplish the tasks and build in time so we're not rushing. I also make sure I am completely ready before he even wakes up, otherwise there isn't a chance I will make it on time.

Oh, and what about dressing her in her clothes for the next day at bedtime? If you choose soft separates and she accepts that, you've eliminated that potentially.

We just have to have everything ready for her, and really leave nothing up for debate. We instruct the entire morning ... we give 10 minutes for morning cuddles, then it's time to pee, eat breakfast, get dressed, brush teeth, and head out. We guide her through it, and remind her what's next. Sometimes she gets distracted by her chalkboard, and wants to sit and play. If she seems adamant, I'll set a timer on my phone for 3 minutes (because that won't really make or break our morning), and she seems ok with it, and is able to transition easily after that. For getting her dressed, we have her clothes all picked out, and we're prepared to help her change. She's 3.25, and this has worked well for us for the past year.

My husband gets her ready and drops her off most mornings but in general we set timers for everything. We have an Amazon echo and when Alexa goes off she knows it's time to do whatever we asked. And we let her have some control by saying "Do you want to leave in 5 minutes or 7 minutes?", "Do you want to go upstairs for bed in 10 minutes or 12 minutes?", etc. And when the timer goes off she does what she's supposed to.

@littlejoy: We basically do this.

Also, if you have multiple floors, it helps to have all upstairs activities (get dressed, brush teeth) followed by all downstairs activities (gather things, breakfast, etc.). Going back upstairs causes crazy delays.

Counter intuitively, it actually works better for us to give her less time in the mornings. Optimal is about 30 min - more than that, and she gets distracted. I've been saying "potty, shoes, coat, go" so much that now she knows what's next that she has to do to leave the house and I'll just check in with her every few minutes.

Granted, this is all scrapped if she wakes up in a shit mood.

@shabang: We also fit our routine into 30 minutes ... it sounds like it wouldn't be enough time (well, we do 10 minutes of cuddling first), but she eats in about 15 minutes, which leaves 15 minutes for clothing, teeth, coat and door.

Less time is key. If we can't be out the door in under 15 minutes, we are stuck at home for an hour. We live in a single story home so if DS gets distracted by his toys or something it's a battle. So we go straight from dressed to the car.

Also we put our son to bed at 730pm (give or take 30 minutes) every night. He usually needs about 11 hours sleep so he wakes up around 630am. We don't get him from his room until 7am so he has about 30 minutes of built in time he's hanging out in his bed and singing and talking to himself (while we rush around getting everything ready to go). Giving him this time to wake up "naturally" makes it so that he's really happy when we go get him in the morning and he's usually really chipper and wants hugs. If we have to wake him up he's a grouch. So perhaps timing bedtime so she will wake a bit earlier on her own may help?

Less time works best here - about 30 minutes tops. Dd wakes up, immediately goes to the potty and is dressed there. She then goes to the kitchen for breakfast which is waiting for her. She gets her coat, hat, boots on usually mid-breakfast and then we are out the door right after. It's so quick and structured that there's no time for arguing or getting distracted by something else.

Yep. Been there done that.

I gave up and made my husband take her to daycare for awhile. Like, months. He never cared if he was late for work. None of it stressed him out. But it made a huge impact on DD. She begged for weeks to come with me again and I said no to make the point.

When she did start coming with me again, I started waking her before I got in the shower and told her it was her responsibility to get up and get dressed before I got out of the shower. We also had a big talk about being on time and grumpy. Which had always had a big impact on her.

I can empathise with so many of these responses.

My 3.3 year old is a force in the mornings, he wakes up slowly and only if we lure him with the promise of a to show (just to add further madness to the mornings) - so we tried letting him sleep in later (7am) and doing breakfast, clothes, teeth, shoes, car - scrapping the tv. The tv caused meltdowns anyway!

He refuses to go toilet in the mornings & I've stopped fighting it! Takes too long! As long as he eats his breakfast happily and gets out the door, it's a win.

I'm constantly late to work but that's more because daycare drop off takes longer than I'd like...a whole other story 🙄

Mornings can be SO painful though. Even on he days he wakes up happy and leaves the house happy, daycare drop off can turn everything to custard and my morning at work is spent worrying about him

Oh man we've been through this with my 4 year old. Those morning battles are draining!

What I've learned and done differently:

- Give her at least an hour to get ready. In the past I would wake her up later so she can squeeze in more sleep but that would backfire because she moves so slow in the morning that I end up rushing her and we all get stressed out.

- Timer for breakfast. This use to be a major issue for us because she eats so slow. A bee on here suggested using a timer app. I downloaded a kid one with animals and set it to 20 minutes. Whatever she does not finish in 20 minutes we take away. We've only been doing this for two weeks and it's been working like a charm! She loves to beat the timer and she actually finishes everything. Game changer.

- We let her watch a little tv AFTER she's done getting ready. The faster she gets ready the more time she has to watch Doc McStuffin. Otherwise, she doesn't get to watch anything. Her choice. We also make sure to start it near the END of the episode so it stops exactly a few minutes before we need to leave. I know this might not work every kid because you risk the chance of them not wanting to turn the tv off but for DD she's been very good about us turning if off once she sees the end credits and know its done.