10 Ways to Survive the 1-Month Slump

It's happens to all of us: one month into the school year, a new exercise plan, a morning routine and—whoops—there's a snag, a motivational meltdown, or a major roadblock. Here's how to get your best intentions (I'm so taking that stroller run this morning) and high hopes (Tommy will love his new school!) back on track.

Morning routines, in particular, can go off the tracks in a big way. The trick is to remind children exactly what they need to do in a way they understand, then teach them the process, says organizing expert Molly Gold, founder of Go Mom! (gomominc.com) and mother of three in Apex, North Carolina. She found that a pictorial timeline for her school-age sons, then 6 and 8, helped them stay the course in the mornings when she was breastfeeding her daughter. "I wrote down the times that they're supposed to brush teeth, eat, get up. They matched up the numbers with the clock to know what they should be doing at those times," she says. "It's not that you turn them loose, but if they have a sense of how things flow, you can be doing something for a sibling while saying, 'what's the next step on your chart?'"