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I was always a morning riser myself, but my daughter and husband are definitely NOT! What I did was to create a morning routine for her in music. The first song is "here comes the sun" by the Beatles and the next is "I got the sun in the morning and the moon at night." The music itself doesn't always wake her, so I'll go in and give her a kiss on the ...

First of all, why are you making him take piano? Do you feel he'll gain something from it? Is he naturally good at it, so you want to foster that in him? Are you trying to make him learn it, because that's what you feel society expects? Are you doing it because it's something you enjoy and want to pass that on to him? Additionally, why are you being his ...

The idea here is not to teach him to do what you tell him the first time .. that gets old fast, for both of you. The idea is to teach him to do what needs to be done without having to be told. He is old enough for that. First, rise early enough that the morning routine is not hurried. Suck it up. As it is now, you are setting yourselves up to fail. The ...

I know of no other solution than just chugging along in your daylight-adjusted normal daily routine, as near to your normal hours as you can manage, and let the child adjust on his own. He probably has a bit of variance in his routine anyway (maybe half an hour?), so you can treat this as a variance too, albeit perhaps a little bigger. Very small children ...

Wake up earlier. This will probably mean moving the child's bedtime earlier as well; the difference between a 4yo who's slept 11 hours vs. 12 hours is amazing. I've fought the early-morning-get-everybody-ready battle as well, and the best tactic I have is to get yourself ready, then get them ready. My kids definitely have their own pace, and can only be ...

Being a parent, who happens to be a piano teacher, who happens to also teach my 2 daughters piano..... I would find out why he doesn't want to practice. Is there something he'd rather be doing at that time? Have him help you come up with a time that works for him. One of my students practices before breakfast-seems early to me-but, it's what works out ...

This year what we did was take our kids out on a day trip where we ran them ragged. We took them to a park with a big hill and let them run and play as much as they wanted to. We kept them up a half hour past their normal bedtime by getting home a bit later and going through their normal evening routine a half hour later. They were so tired that they ...

By all means try to establish a routine as soon as possible because in my experience a routine is a big help -- but don't despair if it doesn't work. Some parents try to establish routines after one or two weeks. For some of these parents that plan actually works out and their benefit is that they can plan their time better. However, some babies won't ...

There are people who argue that a child should be put on a schedule very early (Ezzo, Gina Ford) - literally days or weeks old. The American Academy of Paediatrics, however, recommends breastfeeding on demand rather than trying to stick to a parent-led schedule. There's a good article with references and pros and cons here: ...

You're making getting going in the morning your problem, not your child's. My children didn't want to get up of a morning, and that led to being late. Then I realised I didn't need them to get up, I needed them ready to leave the house. With that realisation I decided they only needed to be dressed to leave the house, so if they weren't climbing out of ...

What we wound up doing was simply keeping him awake an hour later the night before. He still woke up at his normal time (now 5am instead of 6am), but he was still tired enough that when we came in and told him to go back to sleep, he did, and slept soundly for another hour. All in all, it was much easier than we feared.

The following things motivate my 8-year old boy to practice the piano (Not in any particular order): The love of a song. The possibility to impress on his peers (I guess girls, but he would never admit it). The posibility of me learning a piece, or part of a piece faster or better than him. What I'll do when he gets stuck and demotivated is try to learn ...

There's no right or wrong answer to this as there is more than one school of though. One is that these things should be baby led, ie your baby sleeps and eats when it wants to. The other is that you start a routine as soon as the baby is born. Last are those that follow the baby led method and then transition into a routine later when they feel like it. ...

Being a terrible early riser myself, I've recently begun paying attention to my sleep cycles a bit more. Generally, the hardest part about waking up is when you wake up from a deep sleep. Most adult sleep cycles last somewhere between an hour and a half to two hours. Kids generally have much shorter cycles (possibly only 45 minutes). One way to wake your ...

Tell him he is doing better than yesterday .. for very little improvement as well .. also tell him some other children are worse than him when it comes to getting ready on time. Children like the feeling that they are good. And they can easily form negative impression about themselves when parents say something like 'you can never be on time'. Their little ...

Make it fun Turning activities into games can sometimes help provide that motivation. The easiest game is to make it a race, but that's probably a bad idea for a number of morning rituals (eating breakfast, brushing teeth, etc.). It might be an option for getting dressed, though (e.g. "Little boys who don't get dressed fast enough get tickled!"). You can ...