I used to love early mornings — the quiet, the stillness, the promise of a day waiting to unfold.
Not anymore. Not on school days. Not with a teenage daughter in the house.
Our home has a pattern now. One alarm rings. Then a voice — mine — that I never imagined would become a daily soundtrack on a loop: “Sara, hurry up. You will miss the bus.”
It doesn’t matter whether she wakes up at 6 or 6:30. The outcome is always the same.
Her pace is glacial. And my anxiety goes through the roof.
The 5-Minute Breakfast That Takes 20
A bowl of cereal. A pancake. Even a two-bite paratha.
Anything that should take 5 minutes lasts 20-minutes minimum with Sara.
No matter how small the task, Sara will stretch it like elastic.
The more I panic, the more she floats through the morning as if she’s on a Sunday stroll.
Is it confidence? Is it trust? Or is it blind belief that “Dad won’t let me miss the bus anyway”?
Some days, I think she studies my blood pressure the way other kids study algebra.
Mornings on a Short Fuse
It’s almost always the same ending:
She catches the bus at the last possible second. I’m left at the curb, half relieved, half exhausted.
And we part ways not with warmth, but with tension.
Frowns. One-word replies. A car door that closes too hard.
Yet every evening, she finds a way back. A half-smile. A random hug. A “Guess what happened in class, Papa.”
That’s how she resets us.
I miss the version of me who loved mornings. The one who used to breathe them in. Not the one who now survives them.
Not All is Lost
On holidays, Sara wakes when she wants. No alarms. No countdowns. No panic at the gate.
And suddenly, I get my mornings back — quiet, slow, human again.
Those are the days I realise something important:
Parenting isn’t about the big milestones. It’s about the small daily battles that no one sees — and how you still show up the next day.
They stretch our patience, test our limits, and still, somehow, grow our hearts.
About Me
I am a thinker at all times. I see, I think. I hear, I think. I read, I think. Every weekend I write. I would love to know what you think.