Morning Woes

Right now, am going through the classic case of morning woes with my daughter – 5 days of the week.

You see, she has ‘graduated’ from the Montessori section in her school (yes, there was a proper graduation day ceremony, complete with the cape and the certificate and all) to the Primary – all of a big class I student now, she is, and even as the transition has brought a big smile to her face in terms of being able to tell people that she now goes to Class I (a big achievement – this marks her beginning in the ‘grown up’ world), the actual transition is proving quite something!

I have always been a full-on night-bird and waking up in the early hours has never been my strength, and the worst and scariest thing right now is – to see my daughter following in the same footprints! Oops!

So even as I groggily wake up to the morning alarm, I realise the biggest and most difficult task is still to be accomplished – to wake up my daughter and manage to keep her awake enough to get ready for school and bundle her off in the school bus. It’s always a mad-rush and given the amount of days she has been missing her school bus or missing going to school altogether, I must admit I’m looking quite the ‘incompetent’ mum in school!

I remember how difficult it used to be for me to wake up at 5:30 in the morning and sit in the bus an hour later, and especially in the Delhi winters, when our school would allow us a half-hour delay and the bus would reach at 7 instead of 6:30.

It would be pure torture to take my tiny 4-year-old self to the school bus with my mother, both of us wrapped in the crazy Delhi winter fog, my fingers and face numb with the cold and hoping the bus wouldn’t come and I could go back to my blanket – that it never happened is a different story.

My hubby and I have always been discussing this ‘go to school early in the morning’ theory – is it really essential for kids to wake up early and head over to school, even while their little dreams are still lingering in those little eyes and are not quite out? My daughter was doing a 4-hour school shift till last school session, and suddenly, since this session, it’s jumped up to a straight 08-hours. This is proving especially difficult, what with the doubling of the hours and a change in wake-up time. I’m trying to cope with it, but it’s not happening yet!

So it is that even if I manage to get her in a sitting position, she will fall asleep sitting in the middle of the bed, or if I manage to take her to the wash basin for a brush, she will doze off with the brush in her mouth, her little head plopped on the wash basin and the little eyes shut in sleep.

I hate doing this to her each morning, but I guess, in order to be a good mom and in order to make her a ‘good’ student and ‘good’ girl, I will have to figure out a way.

So all the best to the both of us, and even to you, if you’re facing the same too!

Debolina Raja Gupta loves being a mommy and best friend to her 5-year old princess. A working mom, voracious reader, social activist, photographer, poet, travel freak, beauty writer and an everything-of-sorts. Best fun is story time and our fashionista time together. My blogs: The Book Worm, A Few Thoughts Here And There, My Little One And Me, Beauty Makeup And More.