Getting ready to start your day can often be the trickiest part of your day.
The additional sensory input of clothes with seams, socks, shoes, brushing hair and teeth, and the smells of breakfast can be overwhelming. Factor in the additional layers of worrying about what is happening that day, and you can end up half-naked and frozen on your bedroom floor.
The trick is finding a way to make these essential tasks a bit less overwhelming.
Here are some things we have tried to make this period easier. Some days they work, other times they do not. On the days they do not work as well, we do our exercises to reset our brains first to get regulated. You can read those here.
- Try starting your day with an early morning walk or other form of preferred body movement or something else that you find enjoyable.
- Is it easier to shower the night before or in the morning?
- Can you choose your clothes the night before, or even try them on to make sure they feel right? This doesn’t mean they will still feel right in the morning but it does increase the chances.
- What’s happening the next day? Do you need a drink bottle? Lunch box? Sports clothes? Library books? Relying on your weekly schedule can be essential. If you have room, some cubes with the days of the week and that days essentials can be really useful. Especially if you spend some time on a Sunday working out what needs to be in these cubes.
- Do you love music? Maybe there is a song you love that lasts about two minutes that you can play while you brush your teeth. You may even take this one step further and develop a getting-ready playlist on Apple Music or Spotify which has songs that last as long as a particular task, e.g. a getting dressed song, a brushing teeth song and a packing your bag song. In our house we have apple home speakers which means a song can be requested when needed. Alexa and Google have similar options. If you are someone who responds well to timers, these speakers can be used for this as well. In our house we often race the clock to see who is the winner.
- Do you like charts to remind you what needs to be done, or are they one more thing putting pressure on you?
Finding what works for you is the most important thing as we all need different things on different days so experimenting is key.