“Where are your shoes? Your shoes. Your! Shoes!”
It can be exhausting getting your kids out the door in the
morning. In fact, a survey by Kellog’s revealed that it's the equivalent of an extra day
of work per week for parents with full-time jobs. Kellog’s surveyed 2,000 parents and asked
them what their mornings before school drop-off were like. Many of the participants admitted to completing 43 tasks just to get junior out the door (which they estimated takes about two hours). This comes out to an
average of 10 hours per week. Speaking from personal experience, that number looks accurate.
Parents list everything from making lunches, serving
breakfast and the classic “searching for a lost item” as part of their
routine. Add that to an already-packed "Must Do" list that includes combing hair, feeding pets and starting a load of laundry. Some were tasks that parents could delegate, like
making beds and packing backpacks (or the time-sucking a** ache of helping kids finish
homework). A lot of what needs to be done, however, falls on the parents or guardians.
Then comes tending to their children and reminding to do
the stuff they need to do, like getting dressed, brushing their teeth and
putting on shoes. Most parents had to remind kids twice to do these things; by the end of the school year, parents had estimated they barked “Hurry up!” an incredible 540 times. All
this causes parents to be late for work, attempt any sort of grooming for the commute
(eyeliner at a stoplight, anyone?) and to skip their own breakfast. The survey was conducted to promote Nutri-Grain breakfast bars, but what it did was shed light on
how much parents do without realizing it.
The real kick in the pants that was revealed in the survey was that kids spilled on their clothes at least twice per week while getting ready.
In order to get their sanity back, experts advise parents to do as much of the morning routine they can at night. This includes picking out
clothes, making those pesky lunches and getting bags packed. That’s all well and good, but
knowing how equally hectic evenings are, that doesn’t always seem like a
doable option. Instead, we can just take comfort in knowing the reason we’re always
so damn tired is because taking care of kids is a full-time job, even when you’ve
already got one?