Our 3-Step Strategy for Getting Your Kid Out of the Shower in Less Than 15 Minutes
AcademicAlly, LLC: December 4, 2024
Snow, holiday joy, celebrations, gatherings with friends and family, gifts….these are the images so often associated with the holiday season. In recognition of the gift-giving frivolity, we decided to gift you with some of our most effective strategies. Wishing you and yours a meaningful, peaceful, and full holiday season.
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“Come on (fill in the name of your child), you’re running late. ‘Bus will be here in 5 minutes! Let’s go let’s go!” For how many of you is this the morning mantra that marks the beginning of each day in your home? There are beds to be made, lunches to be packed, sports bags to be loaded, water bottles to be filled….the list goes on and on.
One of the biggest time sucks is showering. It’s as if your kid enters a time warp as soon as that door meets the doorjamb. They just magically disappear, “Poof!” into the rabbit hole of the shower. Some of my parents have joked they worry their child actually slipped down the drain! And I will bet for many of you, getting your fish to come out of the water is a battle unto itself. Pounding on the door; pleading for an exit strategy; negotiating a compromise of some kind that usually involves taking them to school instead of the bus.
If you’re tired of the bathing battle, here are our top three strategies to get your kid in and out of the shower in a timelier (and stress-free) manner:
- Talk it out: sit down with your child and talk about the morning/evening routine. Follow Dr. Phil’s lead and ask him, “How is this working for you?” He is likely to answer not well. The fighting and tension are probable just as annoying to him as it is to you. Together, decide what would be a reasonable period of time that it should take to shower, literally from head to toe?
- Test it out: have your bather time herself (or you can time your little ones) to see how long it reasonably takes them to get everything they need to get done. This statistic will now inform the third part of this gift.
- Music, beautiful music: have your child (or if they are too young, you can do this yourself) create a shower playlist. This playlist only gets played when the shower is taking place. The duration of the music lasts as long as the time parameter you are setting on the showering experience. So, for example, if you and your child have agreed that showers need to last no longer than ten minutes, that playlist ends at ten minutes.
This strategy is helpful in many ways: it helps your kid to develop a sense of time (ie this is what ten minutes feels like.). It gives your child some autonomy over the type of tool they use to hold themselves accountable (They get to take creative liberty with the music they choose.).
Here’s the thing: addressing a behavior, challenge, or difficult challenge does not have to result in a battle. This process lays the framework for forming a partnership with your child, and together you accomplish a couple of objectives. One, you create a line of communication that lowers the heat and solicits participation from both parties. Two, it empowers your child, regardless of his age, to take agency in this particular activity and the problem-solving process. Three, it allows for some creativity with the solution and the selection of music, further emphasizing your child’s sense of autonomy.
By opening the lines of communication and allowing for a bit of creativity, one of the world’s most angst-provoking issues can be peacefully resolved. Bubble up!