Helping one of my teens with procrastination

[gatorsmom]

One of my teenagers who struggles with depression (but is on Prozac and works with a therapist regularly), is always late for everything. In the morning before school I can hear his alarm going off in his room and I have to come in and pull him out of bed. He's late for school, this summer he was 5-10 minutes late for work everyday, and he's even late for church a lot. I remember being like this at his age but can't remember what caused me to stop. I haven't been like that for more than 2 decades. He says he doesn't feel like doing something and just waits for the urge to get up to hit him or the adrenaline rush when he realizes he's going to be late.

Any suggestions how to nip this in the bud?

[KpbS]

I would try the classic setting the alarm for school for 30 min earlier and work and church, etc.

Does he have consequences for being late to school? Detention? Points off handing in assignments late?

[SnuggleBuggles]

I think he just needs to deal with the natural consequences of being late. They will eventually catch up with him.

[Kestrel]

I'm not clear - is he sleeping through the alarm? Or snoozing it?

I'm an extremely heavy sleeper. I adjust and sleep though alarms fairly quickly. What works for me is a rotation of different alarm clocks with different sounds; I'll change it every couple of weeks to something else. I also set two different ones at a time, one ten minutes later than the other, and accross the room from the bed.

When I was a teen, mom's punishment was to move my bedtime ten minutes earlier every time I was late getting up.

[mommy111]

I think he just needs to deal with the natural consequences of being late. They will eventually catch up with him.

That may take a long time. I know of people in their 40s where natural consequences haven’t worked
OP, he needs to make it where staying in bed is a nuisance. Maybe multiple alarms? Radio?

[SnuggleBuggles]

That may take a long time. I know of people in their 40s where natural consequences haven’t worked
OP, he needs to make it where staying in bed is a nuisance. Maybe multiple alarms? Radio?

Right but somehow they seem to have made it to their 40s with, presumably, a job and maybe an education? Maybe they’ve just found out what works for them and it’s good enough?
If there’s some simple solution like better alarms, great! But, she said her kiddo needs that adrenaline rush and i don’t know how easy that is to fix. That’s an internal vs external problem.


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[gatorsmom]

I think he just needs to deal with the natural consequences of being late. They will eventually catch up with him.

Ive tried this. Natural consequences in this case made his depression worse. Which is why I’m here.

There has to be an empowering way to teach him- you aren’t a bad person or a loser. You just have to overcome this bad habit. I was hoping more moms here had experience with this problem before.

That may take a long time. I know of people in their 40s where natural consequences haven’t worked
OP, he needs to make it where staying in bed is a nuisance. Maybe multiple alarms? Radio?

We haven’t tried the radio yet. I’ll give that a go. Thx!

[SnuggleBuggles]

Ive tried this. Natural consequences in this case made his depression worse. Which is why I’m here.

There has to be an empowering way to teach him- you aren’t a bad person or a loser. You just have to overcome this bad habit. I was hoping more moms here had experience with this problem before.

Sorry, I didn't know the extra elements. I was just thinking that if he got fired or got detention...that would be the kick in the pants that might actually work. I'm sorry that he's applying more to the punctuality! Good luck!

[acmom]

That may take a long time. I know of people in their 40s where natural consequences haven’t worked
OP, he needs to make it where staying in bed is a nuisance. Maybe multiple alarms? Radio?

Maybe try an alarm clock across the room? Then he would have to get out of bed to turn it off or snooze it.

[lizzywednesday]

Maybe try an alarm clock across the room? ...

Yeah, I had to do this one in my teens - if I could hit "snooze" easily, I'd just stay in bed, and then I'd rush through everything else ... and still show up late.

The other thing I had to do was revise my mindset about when I had to be somewhere, so if I had to be at Mass at 10am, I'd mentally prepare for 9:45am. If I started work at 2pm, I'd prepare for 1:45pm, and so on.

When I was working/commuting, I'd have a "latest leave by" time and reverse-engineered my entire schedule to leave at or before then. (This is also related to how I ended up becoming an early bird - commuting was way less stressful in the 6am hour than it was in the 7 or 8am hours, so it became a habit for my own mental health.)