Waking Up My Kid, Pavlovian Style

My recently launched initiative to get up a few hours early every morning to get some blissful, uninterrupted writing time isn’t really working. I accept some of the blame for this, since getting up early has never been something I love doing, and I don’t always manage to get up when I had planned. But, the morning hours tend to be my most productive, so I know that it’s really worth my while to just roll out of bed and do it already.

Imagine, then, my intense frustration when no matter what time I get up in the morning—six, five, or even three o’clock—my daughter follows me at precisely one-and-a-half hours after my wake-up time. I don’t know what sort of internal clock she’s got going, but it’s like black magic every time. I get up, grumble, drink some coffee, and get my fingers flying. Then, after what seems like minutes, I hear some pitter-pattering at the top of the stairs. There she is, happy and ready to greet the day, demanding pancakes and a story.

Then my husband came across a very interesting article. Very interesting indeed. Apparently, you can train your kids to wake up only when you want them to with no more than the ring of a bell. You play an alarm at their normal wake-up time every day for about a week. Once they associate the sound with waking, you set it ahead a few minutes. The idea is that they won’t wake up until the alarm sounds. You secretly continue setting the alarm ahead until you control when they wake up. Like their salivating forbears, kids hear the magical ding and react exactly the way their parents trained them.

Devious though it may sound, I’m going to give it a try. I want the peace of mind of knowing that when I haul myself out of bed in the ungodly hours of the morn, I can at least spend my time on my terms. Let the sleeping begin!