Build the margin

The reason the method fails, when it fails, is the clock. You handed over the shoes on Monday, and on Thursday you were late, and the hand went out because the alternative was a missed bus. So the margin has to be built before the job is handed over, and it's easier than the morning makes it look.

Start at the weekend. Hand the job over on a Saturday, when there's no bus. The child gets two goes at it with nothing riding on the time, and you get two goes at watching without the clock in your chest. By Monday it's the third time and it's shorter.

Move the morning by ten minutes. The slow version of one job needs about ten more minutes than the quick version, for a fortnight, and after that it needs none. Ten minutes is one alarm. If you're thinking that ten minutes is exactly what you haven't got, I'd point at chapter 17, which is about where your minutes went. They went on the jobs. This is how you get them back, and the first fortnight is the investment.

Do the slow bit the night before. Shoes by the door, bag by the bed, the form on the table with a pen. A child doing a job for the first time is slowed most by looking for things. If the things are where the job is, the job is the job and not a search. The earlier book in this series about small admin has a version of this for adults, and it's the same trick.

Keep the standing job standing. Once a job is the child's, it's theirs every day, not on the days when there's time. The habit gets back in on the tight mornings, and one tight morning becomes the rule if you let it. If a morning genuinely can't take the slow version, chapter 24 has a way to do the takeover without taking the job back, but that should be rare, and it should feel like an exception.

Expect the fortnight. Every job handed over costs about two weeks of margin and then stops costing. If you know that going in, the second Tuesday, when it's still slow and you're still standing on the stairs, is the middle of a known thing and not evidence that it isn't working. It's working. It's just that working looks like this.

I'd add one thing. The margin isn't only minutes. It's the state you're in. A parent with nothing left at quarter to eight will take over whatever the plan says, because the hand is faster than the plan. If the mornings are the problem, hand over the evening jobs first, the plate, the bed, the bath toys, where the clock's kinder, and let the mornings follow once you've both had some practice.