How to Wake up the Kids
More than eight thousand years ago there was little to do once the sun went down. For my younger readers who have been educated in our government-funded public schools: that period of time was marked by a complete absence of X-Box or Cable-TV or even night clubs to keep us up late at night. I know - it boggles the mind how primitive life was back then.
It was easy getting up for work back then. If you were a hunter, the rays of first light would bounce off the walls of your cave and hit your eyes. If you were a farmer, the ducks, cows, and roosters would shake your earthen hut with a chorus of quacking, mooing, and cockadoodle-doodling. The only snooze button you had back then was to choke the rooster.
But today we live a more complicated life, with multiple jobs, multiple wake-up alarms, dozens of to-do lists, digital calendars, and terabytes of information to suck into our brain. If you are like me, you rarely wake up at the same time every day. If a client of mine in India needs to talk to me at 4 in the afternoon then I have to set my clock in New Jersey to alarm at 5:30 in the morning.
Almost any alarm sound will rouse me from even the deepest slumber; my kids on the other hand can sleep through a fire engine raging through their bedroom. Sometimes for no good reason they'll set their alarm for some ungodly hour but then let it caterwaul, keen, squawk, and ring for hours without stirring to shut it off. Amazingly the only thing that does wake them is my loud and persistent yelling: "Wake up!"
So here is the solution: I record that yell and download it as the tone for their cell phone alarm.
Now this may not work for everyone. Your kids may need to hear a dog barking, or perhaps a baby crying. My suggestion is: record whatever annoys or shakes them up and utilize that as an alarm tone.
Of course, you may also want to try a rooster-crowing tone; after all, that worked for our ancestors for thousands of years.
This article available in Danish here.
