In today’s short and sweet episode, I’m giving you two simple strategies for better mornings (which I know you can use now that school is back in session!). 

You’ll Learn:

• The most important thing about mornings
• How to make a gentle handoff to school, daycare, or camp
• What to do first when you see your kid in the morning
• How to get back on track after a rough moment

I show you how to help your kids get physically and emotionally ready for their day.

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When I think about a kid getting ready for school in the morning, I imagine that they are armoring up. No matter how great their school is or how much they love their teacher and their friends, school is stressful for kids. 

They have to think, listen, and deal with other kids (and their behaviors). They have to do things on a schedule that isn’t always the way they want it, and there are a lot of expectations on them. This isn’t a bad thing, but it is a lot of work for them.

So we want to help facilitate and support them as they get physically and emotionally ready for their day.

Strategy #1: The Gentle Handoff

The “handoff” is that moment when you drop your child off at school, daycare, camp, wherever they’re going for the day. 

From the time my kids were young up to this very day, my goal when I’m dropping them off anywhere is to deliver the most emotionally regulated human being that I can to that activity. 

That means that I have created an environment for my kids that is emotionally regulated. We’re not in chaotic, frantic, stressed energy. 

…Which means I have to be in my calm energy. 

Here are some ways to work toward a gentle handoff. 

Prioritize Emotional Regulation

Our kids borrow our energy. So whatever energy you’re in (chaotic or calm) will transfer to your child. 

The key to prioritizing your emotional regulation and your kid’s emotional regulation is to start your day gently.

Some simple ways to do this are:

• Spend a few minutes silently breathing when you wake up
• Stretch your body
• Make a cup of coffee or tea
• Delay checking email, social media, or the news if these are likely to stress you out

Delay

If possible, delay the other non-kid stuff until after dropoff. If messages, problems, or stress come up, tell yourself, “I’m going to have to deal with this. But I’m going to deal with it later, because my goal is to deliver the most emotionally regulated person I can to school today.”

Know Your Cues

We all have cues that we’re getting dysregulated. When you know what yours are, you can pause before things get too far off.

Some of the clues I see when I’m getting dysregulated are:

• Talking a lot
• Barking commands
• Getting quiet and just barreling through, trying to do everything on my own
• Physical tension or sensations in my chest and belly (these signs tend to come later)

Yelling is also a good indicator that you’re dysregulated. Because if you’re yelling, you’re not calm. Period. 

If you have a rough moment or yell at your kid. see if you can do a little repair on the way to school or while you’re waiting for the bus. You may not be ready to take full accountability, but just recognizing that you lost your cool will help. 

Try saying something like, “Whoa, sorry. That was a rough morning. I got out of control of my emotions a little. We’re going to do better tomorrow.”

Say Goodbye

I know this isn’t always possible, but when it is, little kids really benefit from having you park and walk them toward the school. It slows things down and lets their body and brain catch up with what’s happening. 

And it gives you one more chance for connection. A little squeeze and an “I love you.”

Even when dropping off in the carpool lane, make sure to say a goodbye, let them know you love them, and want to hear all about their day later.

Strategy #2: Eyeballs

Eyeballs is about the reunion - when you and your kid come back together after being apart. This includes when you see them for the first time in the morning. 

Eyeballs is pretty much what it sounds like - look your child in the eyes, smile, and greet them. 

Kids often feel invisible. They feel like we forgot them or we don’t care about them. Your child is longing for connection with you (yes, even middle schoolers and teens). So, it can be really powerful just to make eye contact and say, “Good morning, I missed you,” or “Hi, how did you sleep?”

This connection and engagement is what makes the gentle handoff work. 

Handling Morning Misbehavior

Using these strategies does not mean your child will never misbehave in the morning. And the goal of emotional regulation does not mean that discipline goes out the window. You just want to be intentional with how you do it.

This isn’t the time to let frustration take over, dump all your feelings onto your kid, and bring up ALL the behaviors. 

Instead, use a strong voice and say something like, “This morning is not going well, and we’re going to talk about this. But right now, it’s time to get socks and shoes on.”

Be firm and let your child know that the behavior is not working. But then delay - delay the conversation and the consequence. If you get into correction, it’s not going to set your morning up for success. It will only create more chaos, frustration, and dysregulation. 

You won’t be perfect at this. That’s okay. Especially at the beginning of the school year, things will be forgotten, big feelings come up. It’s a big transition. And it’s a good time to say, “Yep, we’re all learning. We’re figuring it out. No problem.”

Free Resources:

Get your copy of the Stop Yelling Cheat Sheet!

In this free guide you’ll discover:

✨ A simple tool to stop yelling once you’ve started (This one thing will get you calm.)

✨ 40 things to do instead of yelling. (You only need to pick one!)

✨ Exactly why you yell. (And how to stop yourself from starting.)

✨A script to say to your kids when you yell. (So they don't follow you around!)

Download the Stop Yelling Cheat Sheet here

Connect With Darlynn: 

• Book a complimentary session with Darlynn
• Learn about the different parenting programs at www.calmmamacoaching.com
• Follow me on Instagram @darlynnchildress for daily tips 
• Rate and review the podcast on Itunes

Welcome back to Become a Calm Mama. I'm your host. I'm Darlin Childress, and

I'm a life and parenting coach. And this episode is going to be short

and sweet because I know you're all very busy. It's

September. Back to school. Getting back into sports. It's such a

huge transition for families, and

it can be really overwhelming. And so I wanted to just kind of like, pop

on here and give you some really easy

strategies to make your life somewhat simpler.

So I want to teach today two concepts, and

one is called eyeballs, and one is called gentle

handoff. So I'll start with

gentle handoff and let you know what I mean by that, and then I'll talk

about eyeballs. So just a brief, real

quick overview. Gentle handoff is the

moment that you take your child to school

when you drop them off at the thing that they're

going to go to, whether that's school or camp or

preschool or daycare, anything like that

that I want you to learn about how to create

a gentle handoff. So that's that concept. And then

Eyeballs is about reunion. When you come

back after they've been separated from you while you've

been at work or, you know, doing your home

housework and things like doing your life, they've been at school

or camp or daycare or preschool, and you are picking them

back up. This could also be true for sports

or, you know, dance or tutoring or any kind of

activity that they're going to do. So even if it's after school,

you do you do an eyeball time, which is really this

reunion, this connection. All right, so let's talk

about gentle Handoff. Whenever I

was raising my kids, and actually even now, if

for some reason I'm dropping them off at the airport or

they're going on a trip or they're going back to college or whatever it is,

I have a goal in mind to

deliver the most emotionally

regulated human being I can to that

thing. So what does that mean to me?

It means that I have created a

environment, an environment for my kids and for myself

that is emotionally regulated enough

that they don't show up at school in

a chaotic, frantic,

stressed energy, which means I have to

have in myself a

calm energy. If I'm stressed and chaotic and

overwhelmed and nervous about making it on time, and

I have a lot of anxiety and I'm in a busy rush, I'm

transferring all of that energy to my kid

in that moment. So one of the things I want you to remember

is that Our children, sadly, and maybe not sadly,

but like, no pressure here, our children but borrow

our nervous systems. So when little babies are born, they

don't really know how to self regulate. Their nervous system is like a live

wire and it's constantly zapping, you

know, and they kind of need, not kind of, they do, they need adults

and caregivers to come and help soothe them and calm

their nervous system. We do that by swaddling them,

by shh, shh, shh, you know, by, you know,

shaking them. Not like shaking them, but you know, like little babies, they

love vibration, they love to be in the swing, they love to be in an

exercise, they like to be in things that bounce, right? And

that is calming to their nervous system. And we,

when we bring our own nervous system

nearby, our children borrow it. So if it's a

really dysregulated nervous system, they're going to borrow that. If it's a

calm nervous system, they're going to borrow that. The same

for executive function, our kids borrow our thinking, they

borrow our feeling, they borrow our brain and our

body until they're ready to manage it on their own.

And that takes a really long time. Now I say no pressure,

right? Because you get to be a person, you're going to have rough mornings,

you're going to wake up and there's going to be dog poop on the carpet

and someone's going to have spilled and you're going to get an email from

your sister saying that something's going on with your family or

financial information is going to come through. I mean, a lot happens to

us sometimes, right? Even before 7am we get a lot of information.

The news can be very upsetting. And so we have

our own stressors in our life.

And I want to help you think about prioritizing

your emotional regulation in the morning and your children's emotional

regulation and really delaying dealing with things

like that until after drop off. Instead of

trying to fix it, change it, stop it, solve it, and getting into that energy

in the morning, go, okay, I'm going to have to deal with this, but

I'm going to deal with it later because my goal

is to deliver the most emotionally regulated person I can

to school today. When

I find myself overwhelmed and starting to get into

my own stress response, I have some cues

and some clues that help me go, oh wait, no, I'm

getting dysregulated. So one is I start talking a lot, like just

kind of barking commands or, you know, I can feel my

anxiety. Did you do this? Did you do that? Did you do this? Did you

do that? Right. And that can, that's an indicator to me that

I'm starting to get overwhelmed. Another indicator to me is when I

get really quiet and steely and just kind of like start just

barreling and bulldozing and doing everything on my own. That's

indication of that. Maybe I'm not in my regulation,

so kind of being able. And of course, I obviously feel stuff in my chest,

I feel stuff in my, in my belly, I notice it

in my body. But those aren't my clues. First, I don't check into my body

usually until my behavior is showing me that

something's going on for me. Obviously yelling is a very good

indicator that you're stressed. When you're yelling at your kids,

it's because you're not calm. That's just true.

So when you are waking up, getting yourself

going, doing what you need to do to calm

yourself, whether that is making sure you get a cup of

coffee or tea, whether that's making sure you spend

three or four minutes just kind of silently breathing, maybe for

you, it's kind of like I, you know, maybe you want to scroll for a

minute, check all your emails and Instagrams and all the things

and then turn that off. If that's something you want to do, do it.

I'm not going to tell you not to do that, but I am going to

suggest that if it's upsetting to you,

maybe it's not the best thing for you in the morning.

Maybe you do delay checking your social media

until after the kids go to school. Sometimes we

do have to check our email or in our text messages to make sure that

there's no information that we need for that day. And we need to kind of

like, you know, be up on the information. But for the most

part, we can start our day in a gentle way. We don't have to

start it with our phones. So waking up, doing a couple stretches,

just like, just putting your hands in the air, kind of stretching your body, brushing

your teeth, rinsing your face, putting on either your workout clothes

or if you're kind of like a lounger, just making sure

you put on something that gets you into in the mode of like, nope,

I'm ready for the day. I'm ready to show up for my kids. Now, for

me, my son always woke up before me because he was a really early

riser and he would, most of the time we taught

him to stay in his room and he would wake up around 5:30 and

then kind of come out at 6:30. And so I would

often either he would hear me up and he would greet

me or I would go in, you know, after a minute or two

and I would go get him from his room. Even all the way through elementary

school when he was a little bit older, seven or eight, he could get up

on his own, go downstairs, go to the kitchen, go to the playroom,

play toys. It just the rule was not to wake me and

my kids understood not to do that. My second son, he was a

really big sleeper and he still is. And he's a night owl.

So mornings for him I really just needed to get him up

and, you know, get him out the door. And we didn't really do.

He didn't eat breakfast or anything like that. He wasn't a morning eater.

He didn't want to eat. They always had snack at school at 10, they started

school at 8:45. So I didn't make it a big deal.

If he wanted a bar or something like that, he could have it in the

car. But for the most part he wasn't hungry ever in the morning. So I

just allowed that to be true and okay and let him go because

I don't want to fight with my kids in the morning about stuff. Really wanted

to set them up for success. When I think about a kid going to

school, I think about that

they are going to be armoring up, right?

No matter how perfect the school is and how much they love their

teacher and how much they love their friends and how smart they are and

how much success they have at school if they have a perfect

scenario. School. School is still stressful for children

because it's work. They have to think, they have

to listen, they have to have other kids

behaviors that they deal with. It's hot, it can be

uncomfortable. They have to go outside when they don't want to go outside, they have

to move their body. When they don't want to move their body, they have to

stop moving their body. When they want to move their body, they have to hold

it. If they have to go potty, they have to hold it. If they're hungry,

they have to wait to eat. So there's a lot of work that goes

into being at school. We don't need to make that mean that the school's bad

or that there's something wrong with the school system. No, it's just

true. It's a tax on our bodies and

our brains. When we go in an environment that has a

lot of other people and expectations, those are Good. We want our kids to do

that. But recognizing that they need

to kind of get ready emotionally and

physiologically, physically to go to school.

And that is what, you know, we want to help

facilitate that and support them so that when they go to school,

they're armored up and ready. So thinking

about, how can I get what I need, my needs met

enough, just enough that I can be calm in the morning. So sometimes

for some people, that means, like, making lunches before,

like, the night before. For some people, that means, you know, having

breakfast, kind of an easy breakfast every day, whatever

that is, setting the coffee maker up the night before for yourself, kind of

whatever you can do to set yourself up for success is great. I never

made lunches in the morning the night before. I've talked about this a lot on

the podcast. I was always really tired at night. I could not add another thing

to my evening. But I wake up, I usually have more energy in the morning.

So while I was making breakfast, I was also throwing together

some simple sandwiches or whatever it was for lunch.

And that was kind of like, I did all my morning, all my tasks

in the kitchen in the morning. I was usually in the morning from, you know,

most of the morning, I was in the kitchen. All right, so get your

kid up now. This is a great chance for me to introduce Eyeballs. So when

your kid wakes up, it is very good

to greet them and to make eye contact. So Eyeballs is about

making eye contact with our kids

and being able to look at them and say, like, hi,

how you doing? How's your morning going? You know, did

you sleep all right? I missed you. Yeah. Now, that

concept of I missed you is really important because kids often

feel invisible. They feel like we forgot them. They feel like we don't care about

them. That's just their preset. You love them, you care about them, you think about

them all. All the time. All that is true. It's good to just say it.

I've been thinking about you, wondering how you slept. Right?

Making a greeting. So even if your kids are,

like, up too early or they've already gotten into something

and you want to start disciplining them or talking to them about their behavior,

I would recommend pausing and just being like, okay, before

we talk about that, I just want to say good morning, hi, and

actually smile, look them in the eye, and connect.

Your children are longing for connection with you, especially

when you have been separated. This is even

true of teens and of middle schoolers. They

might not act like they care, but they still want us to

Care. They want us to be connected and

committed to showing up for them. That makes them feel safe and secure and

seen. So taking a minute, saying good morning, looking at

them in the eye, you're calm, you're regulated. You've got a good plan for the

morning, and then you are working on emotional regulation.

Now, what that means is that we don't want to be

disciplining our children in the morning. We don't want to

use the morning as a time to bring up all the

behaviors. And, like, if they're being naughty, you know,

they're not brushing their teeth or they're not sitting at the table,

and we're frustrated by all that. This isn't the time

to be like, you always do this every morning. It's so frustrating. I've told

you 14 times to sit down and eat, drink your smoothie. Like,

we want to get in their face and start to, like, really

kind of take some of that frustration that we have and dump it onto

them. And I understand the urge and the desire to

do that. And I'm going to recommend that you don't do it,

because your child is

obviously working through their own big

feelings about going to school, and they're like, you know, maybe they didn't sleep well

or whatever it is. You can say, listen, this morning

is not going well, and we're going to talk about this, but not now, because

it's time to get socks and shoes on. So if you want

to be firm and hold a strong voice and let your kids know that.

That this behavior is not working, that this is not

okay, but then delay. Delay the

conversation, delay the consequence, delay the

discipline or the correction. Delay all of it, because it's not

gonna set your morning up for success. It's going to create more

chaos and frustration, and it

will make you dysregulated, your kids dysregulated. It'll make you run out of time. You'll

be running behind. Your kids won't be connected to their bodies as well, so they

won't notice if they're. If they have to go potty. They won't notice if they

have not brushed their teeth or whatever it is that they've got to do before

school. And you are going to feel overwhelmed and stressed and

frustrated, and so are your kids. And then it's like, get

in the car, right? We all have those times where

everybody is yelling at each other and frustrated and

overwhelmed. So a gentle handoff really

requires that we don't discipline in the morning and

that we are connected. To our kids that we engage, that we get.

Give them eye contact, and that we move a little bit

slow so that we can match their brains as their brain

warms up and gets ready for school. I have

noticed through the years there's this one corner on my street,

I mean, in my neighborhood, where it's a big

intersection, and a lot of people driving their kids to

school are in that intersection. It's like the high school's one way, the middle

school's the other. The elementary schools are all this way, like, so you kind

of end up seeing a lot of parents in cars with kids. And over

the years, I have watched moms sitting in the

front seat, kids are in the back seat, and mom is just

yelling at the children because the morning went so poorly.

And I watch the kids, their faces and their eyes

kind of glaze over, and the disconnection that they have to

the almost disassociation that they have to have

in order to go to school. After experiencing

that level of anger and yelling,

it really does set your kid up for a

lot of emotional dysregulation or disconnection

from themselves when they get to school. So

if you have done that, girl, it's fine. I have done it

too. I am talking about best practice and kind

of why we want to avoid those things. And really it's because we

want our kids to be successful at school. We want them to be able to

listen to their teacher and be a nice friend and learn and

like being at school. And so what we want to do is

create an environment in our own car that is

very regulated. Committing to

not parenting your kids or disciplining or.

Or talking through something on the way to school is

part of delivering the most emotionally regulated human you can.

And having that gentle handoff. Okay, the last thing I'll

say about gentle handoff, and I don't want to

add pressure again, I'm just talking about best practices. So a

lot of times we do carpal line for kids, and

that's fine for especially, like, third grade and

up. Once they're eight or nine, they don't really need this

so much of a physical connection as they transition

from home care to school care. But

littler kids, they actually kind of need their

body to catch up to what's happening to them

and moving at a pace that is for the pace that

their brain can handle. So what do I mean by that?

I mean being able for them to part. You park, you get

them out of the car, you walk to campus, you

know, towards school, you Be able to give a hug

and, you know, or. Or like a little side squeeze

and get eyeballs again and be able to say, I love you,

I'll miss you, and I hope to hear everything when you get

back. Yeah. And just saying goodbye.

Saying goodbye from the carpal line, it's just hard.

It's hard to. To have an actual

handoff. Right. If you think about being dropped off at the airport

versus someone walking you in or even the person who drops you off, if they

just get out of the car and come around and help you with your bag

and give you a hug, it feels a lot more connected

and you feel a little bit more calm when you've had that

opportunity. But if it's really. Ah, we're running late. Get out of the car.

Hurry up. Grab your bag. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. You didn't get your

water bottle. Hurry. Come back. Come back. All that is really chaotic, and

it is something that can make it

hard for your kids to then overcome and, like, re regulate

their nervous system. So, again, all of this is just.

The goal is delivering the most emotionally regulated human

you can to that campus or to that location.

And I made a commitment to myself and my kids

to delay conversations about behavior

until after school. Now, I was just teaching this at

a live event I did this week, and a mom asked about

repair. Like, is it appropriate in the car

to say, I'm sorry for how I acted if you did

have a rough moment? Absolutely. Because

what we want to do is own our own

behavior so that our kids know it's not about them. They're not

bad. They're not naughty. Like, even though they were bad and naughty,

we want to be able to say to them, you know, hey, this morning, that

was me. I was not in control of my emotions.

I got, you know, my body. I got out of control of

my body, and I yelled, or, you know, I slammed down

your waffle or whatever you did, or, you know, I told

you you can't go to the birthday party tonight because of your behavior.

Like, I'm sorry. I am gonna calm my body,

and we're gonna talk about all of this after school.

It's not because you're naughty or bad. It's because I just didn't

have control of my body, and I'm sorry. So I would

suggest if you have lost your cool, that it

is good to make repair in the mornings and in

that car ride. But what I've noticed about myself is that if

I start to say I'm sorry, and then I Go back. But. And I want

to criticize their behavior. I'm not really ready for repair.

So you can just say like, whoa, sorry, that was a rough morning. We're going

to do better tomorrow. So if you're not really ready to like, take

accountability and own your behavior because you're

angry with your kids, I get it. You can just be like,

guys or, hey, kid, you know, this was rough and we're going

to work on this. Yeah, we're all going to work better tomorrow. We're going to

be able to get along and, you know, follow the directions and the

rules and yep, this is just one, one rough day. No problem.

Doesn't mean anything. So just kind of normalizing

and letting your kids know, like, yep, this is a one off. We're working on

it. Especially at the beginning of the school year. It's a big transition.

There's lots of stuff that gets forgotten. There's a lot of big

feelings that come up for our kids and we can really be reactive to

that. So just kind of really being able to say,

yep, we're all learning. It's back to school, no problem. We're figuring it out.

Yep, it's alright, we'll talk about it later. No one's in trouble.

Really kind of narrating that everything's okay instead of going

like, this was a big disaster. We're not doing this again. You know, don't

bring that harshness in. Okay, so

eyeballs a little bit I've talked about. I'm gonna talk about it again in the

next episode, but for this week, I want you to remember making

that eyeball connection in the mornings. And

before you separate, if you can, getting out of the

car, saying goodbye, and then creating a morning routine that

is very regulated and calm. And

if it starts to go off the rails and things don't go well,

avoiding disciplining and criticizing and lecturing

and mama logging and all those things on the drive to school

or on the drive to preschool or camps or whatever the thing is that

you're doing. Avoid doing that on the drive to

somewhere. It just never goes well. All right, mamas,

I hope you have a great week and I

will talk to you next week.