Day 2: The Stressful Transition

If I had to choose one transition we need to improve on, it would be getting ready to leave the house.  It is by far the most stressful, frustrating time of day, especially if we have to be somewhere at a specific time.  While I always feel that I have allowed enough time for this transition, it rarely is enough.  For some reason, they tend to pick this time to amp the silliness up and completely ignore the task at hand.  The end result?  I get frazzled and yell.  My anger and frustration typically carries over to the van and it takes me awhile to let it go.  I often sit there and wonder, "Why can they just not do 'x,y,z' so we can go?"

Today I vowed to do my best to stay calm when it was time to get ready to go.  For the most part, I was successful, but my stubborn, independent child did his best to set the alarms off in my brain.  I have realized this is an unpleasant, stressful time for us all, so I am going to test out a new system to see if we can make this transition more peaceful and less chaotic.

Here's my plan:

-20 minutes before it is time to go, I will start sending kids to the bathroom.
-I will only send one child to our back hallway at a time and ask them to get ready to go.
-Once they're ready, I will ask them to go out to the van and get buckled in.

I am going to give this a conscious effort for a week and pray for some improvement (and sanity!) during this difficult time of our day.