Waking Up is Hard to Do (When You’re a Kid with ADHD)

Waking up for school in the morning has to be the hardest part of my day.

They say waking up is hard to do. Have any of you noticed that it’s that much harder to wake up for school when you’re a kid with ADHD?

I’m not a morning guy. Not sure why but getting up in the morning is SO hard. Mostly I hate it when my dreams get interrupted by that darn alarm clock. The dreams are more interesting than the thought of a day in school. Routine is boring. Dreams are always different and hold my attention.

Motivation helps… a bit. My motivation for getting up in the morning is to make sure my parents are happy. They are pretty chill and support me a lot. But I still don’t like getting out of bed in the morning.

Weird , in September when school starts every year I’m excited and quick to get out of bed in the morning. What’s with that? By November I’m a slug and I used to be late for school all the time. This year I’ve had more motivation because my brother has a car and I get to get a ride with him so that gets me up. (Making sure I don’t miss the ride definitely helps.)

Come to think of it, November’s a pretty rough month for kids with ADHD — stick with me, I’ll help you get through November a bit better this year.

Yelling doesn’t help so much…. Sometimes it gets so late in the morning that my mom yells at me to get up. Waking up a child with ADHD is one of the hardest ways to start your day. As you can guess, my difficult mornings can be hard on the whole family. I try to drag myself out of bed before my mom flips, I really do. But when it gets to the point that she’s upset with me, it makes my day that much harder.

I worry about being able to be on time for work in the future. If I’m having a hard time waking up for school now, what about when I have a career and a family in the future? My trouble waking up in the mornings is a big part of what I think about when I think about what career I want to have.

I know I need to stay in school to have the kind of life I want in the future, so I try to just surrender to the fact I need to get up and just get there. Good intentions and willpower might get me out of the door in the morning, but they don’t make waking up feel any better.

Does your ADHD keep you stuck to the bed in the mornings?

This isn’t something I’ve heard a lot about from any doctors.  It might not seem like a really big problem, but I already see how it can have an impact on my whole life. My goal is to talk about day-to-day issues like this with the people that read this site, with the hopes of getting more people to think about solutions.

Am I the only one who has a hard time waking up every morning? How do you get yourself out of bed on time for school? Do you think it’s harder to wake up on time because you have ADHD?

-Jeff

Update! Check out the discussion we had about my waking up difficulties on Facebook!