Getting The Kids Ready For School Each Week Is Equivalent To An Extra Day’s Work

Getting kids up and ready for school in a timely manner every day is a lot. Any parent can tell you that the morning routine can be grueling, especially if they have kids that aren’t exactly “morning people.” The struggle is real and it can often feel like you’re working an extra job just getting everything done so the kids can get off to school or daycare on time.

According to a recent study conducted by Kellogg’s simply getting the kids up and ready and out of the house every morning is the equivalent to an entire extra days work at the end of the week. The study found that parents do approximately 43 different tasks before sending their kids out the door each morning according to the 2000 working parents surveyed.

So what are all these tasks that parents have to do? They include making breakfast and lunch for the kids, starting laundry and even doing some ironing, making sure there’s some out for dinner after they return home from work, and taking the kids to school or daycare. There’s also the endless things a parent must do to get the child actually ready to walk out the door, such as making sure their teeth are brushed, they’re wearing clean clothes and their hair is brushed. In fact, most parents feel like they’ve already worked a full day by the time 11 am rolls around.

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The study shows that the average parent of kids in school wakes up at 6 am to make sure they have enough time to get everything done, while one-third of parents are up as early as 5:30 am. The study found that the endless number of things a parent does before they leave the house every morning adds up to just over 10 hours a week, which is like adding an extra workday on to an already busy work week.

It’s clearly a case of wake and work for British parents who are packing in a whole additional working day every week on top of their 9-5 jobs,” a spokesman for Kellogg’s said. Because parents are so busy in the morning it’s estimated that 42% don’t even get a chance to eat breakfast themselves because they don’t make themselves a priority, Metro UK reports.