1. Choose the spot. Pick one fixed place near the front door — a chair, a crate, a shelf. This is now the Launch Pad. Everything that leaves the house lives here, and only here. Label it. Make it your child’s territory, not yours.
2. Build the morning checklist — with your child. Sit together on a calm weekend afternoon. List the morning steps. Then cut the list to five or six chunks maximum (e.g. Up & toilet → Dressed → Breakfast & meds → Teeth & face → Shoes → Launch Pad). For children under about nine, use photos of your actual child doing each step — photographs beat clip-art, and beat words entirely. Make it big. Put one copy on the bedroom wall and one in the bathroom — at the point of performance.
3. Buy or download a visual timer. One where your child can see time disappearing — a coloured disc shrinking, a sand timer, a Time Timer app on an old phone. The clock face means nothing to a time-blind brain; vanishing colour does.
4. Create the Morning Playlist (optional but powerful). Five or six songs your child loves, in fixed order, roughly matching the routine’s length. The brain learns: “by the end of song three, I’m dressed.” Music gives the under-aroused brain stimulation and turns the playlist into the clock. The playlist nags so you don’t have to.
5. Brief your child — as a team, not a sentence.
   “Mornings have been hard for all of us, and I’ve worked out that’s mostly been my fault — I’ve been doing your jobs for you, and you’re ready for more than that. Your brain finds remembering and time tricky in the mornings, so we’ve built tools that do the remembering for you. You drive; I’m just the pit crew.”
   Notice what this does: it externalises the difficulty onto the brain and the system, never onto the child’s character.

1. Clothes out, in order. Full uniform laid out on the floor or a chair in the shape of a person — underwear on top, then shirt, then shorts, socks tucked into shoes. Dressing becomes a matching game instead of a working-memory task. Child does the laying out; you inspect.
2. Bag packed and zipped, on the Launch Pad. Child packs against a simple packing card (homework, lunchbox slot, kit, water bottle). You may ask “What does the card say?” You may not pack.
3. Tomorrow’s exceptions named once. Sports kit? Cake sale money? Say it once, write it on a sticky note, and put the note on the bag — not in your head, not in theirs.
4. Breakfast pre-staged. Bowl, spoon and cereal on the counter; the decision is made tonight. Decision-making at 6:50am is where mornings go to die.
5. Screens off and lights out at a fixed time. A late-night brain is an even slower morning brain. Protect sleep ferociously — it is the foundation under everything else in this module.

1. Sort the medication timing first — talk to your prescribing doctor about the options. This single change often transforms mornings more than any chart. The options to discuss at review include: giving the dose immediately on waking (not “at breakfast” by habit — there is usually no medical reason to wait, and appetite can be managed); the “wake, dose, doze” approach — gently waking your child 30–40 minutes early, giving the medication with a sip of water, and letting them doze while it starts working, so the brain that finally gets out of bed already has its glasses on; or longer-acting and alternative formulations and timings that suit your child’s particular pattern. Which option fits your child is an individual medical decision — raise it specifically as “the morning routine is our worst time of day” at your next review.
2. One warm wake-up, then the system takes over. Curtains open, light on, music or playlist starts, a hand on the shoulder, one warm sentence: “Morning, my boy. Song one is playing.” Then leave the room. If getting up itself is the battle, the wake-dose-doze approach above usually dissolves it.
3. Point, don’t speak. When your child stalls — and they will — walk over, smile, and point at the chart. Say nothing, or say only: “What’s next on your chart?” This is the hardest discipline in the whole module and the most important. Every reminder you speak teaches the brain to wait for your voice. Every glance at the chart teaches the brain to consult the system. You are transferring the nagging from your mouth to the wall — permanently.
4. One instruction at a time, five words or fewer. If you must speak: “Shirt on.” Not: “How many times have I asked you to get dressed, we’re going to be late again, and where is your other shoe?” That paragraph fell straight through the holes in the school bag. Shirt on might just stay in.
5. Run the visual timer for each chunk. “Dressing — ten minutes on the red timer. Beat the red!” Racing a shrinking disc gives the bored brain a game; games create the interest the brain needs to switch on.
6. Breakfast and (if dosed at breakfast) medication, seated, no screens. Protein where possible. No television, no tablet — a screen at breakfast is a tractor beam the unmedicated brain cannot escape, and you will not win against it. Don’t try. Remove it.
7. Finish at the Launch Pad. Shoes, bag, out the door. Everything was staged last night, so the final step is grab-and-go rather than search-and-scream.
8. Pay the brain — immediately. Routine done with time to spare buys something now: ten minutes of play before leaving, choosing the car music, a tick on a simple chart that converts to a small weekend privilege. Then the most valuable currency of all — connection: “You ran your whole morning yourself. That was brilliant to watch.” Praise the process (“you checked your chart without me saying a word”) rather than the outcome. Connection before correction — always.

• Child frozen, staring into space? Don’t shout across the house. Go close, touch the shoulder, make eye contact, point at the chart, walk away. Proximity and touch reach an under-aroused brain; volume from the kitchen does not.
• Meltdown over a sock seam or the “wrong” bowl? The volume dial has no middle setting before medication. Don’t reason with a flooded brain. Lower your voice, drop the demand for sixty seconds, then re-enter at the last completed step: “You’re dressed. Teeth next.”
• Running genuinely late? Rescue once, cheaply and silently — help with shoes, hand them the bag — without lecture or sermon. Then at a calm moment that evening, review: “Which step jammed this morning? How do we fix the system?” Always blame the system, never the child. “The chart needs a teeth picture” keeps your child on your team. “You never brush your teeth” puts them on the opposing one.
• You lost your temper? You will; you’re human, and your own frustration, fatigue — and sometimes your own ADHD traits — are real parts of this picture. Repair beats perfection:
  “I shouted. That wasn’t fair on you. Mornings are hard for my brain too. Fresh start tomorrow.”
  You have just modelled the exact skill you’re trying to grow in them.

This is the part most programmes forget. Scaffolding that never comes down becomes the Butler Trap with better stationery.

• Weeks 1–3: You actively run the system — start the playlist, set the timers, point at charts, praise constantly.
• Once a step runs 5+ days in a row without prompting: retire your involvement in that step only. Child sets their own timer; alarm replaces your wake-up; child consults the chart unprompted.
• Every few months: shrink the chart. Six picture cards become four word cards become one card that just says LAUNCH. The teenager’s version is a phone alarm sequence and a packing list taped inside a cupboard door — externalised support never disappears entirely (most successful ADHD adults run their whole lives on it), it just grows up with the child.
• If a retired step collapses, no drama — put that plank back for a fortnight and fade again. Backwards steps are part of forwards progress.