It doesn’t take long to realize you're either a morning person or a night owl. We either wake up ready to conquer the day or attempt to hide from it under the safety of our covers. These preferences for day or night show up early. Parents with morning-averse children may struggle to get them up, bathed, and dressed in the morning.
For those of us on tight schedules, this can be frustrating to say the least. When one mom — an extremely popular one — shared what she does to mitigate the morning sluggishness, she was met with backlash.
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Ms. Rachel, a popular educator, caught some flak after sharing a parenting hack.
Rachel Griffin-Accurso, known by her stage name, Ms. Rachel, is an educator. With master’s degrees in early childhood development and music education, she’s taken her expertise to YouTube where she uses music, games, and other strategies to teach babies and toddlers to communicate and socialize. Her work has amassed her millions of followers and billions of views on various social media platforms.
For the most part, the feedback is positive as children are really drawn to her work. But a recent TikTok upload has people in a tizzy.
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Ms. Rachel says she dresses her son for school at night.
In this 25-second video, Ms. Rachel explains that instead of fighting to get her son ready in the morning, she dresses him for school at night. “We put on a nice new shirt, sweatpants, super comfy, great for jammies. And then when he wakes up, we just throw on sneakers.”
Ms. Rachel did acknowledge that this is not a forever solution. “Someday I’ll teach him to wake up for school and get dressed,” she continued. “And that will be a very good thing to teach but I can’t do that right now. And that’s OK. I’m doing my best and so are you and I love you,” she said.
People had questions.
She wasn’t offering this as advice, but simply sharing that things don’t have to be completed in a particular order to get done. First, people had questions. Ms. Rachel explained that her son bathes at night and doesn’t get sweaty during the night.
But if he did, she explained that they would just grab new clothes. She also shared there’s been no issue with him being wrinkly in the morning. Still, people took issue with her parenting hack.
'This isn't really a good idea,' one user said.
“Nah Ms. Rachel you wrong for this … a nice bath wakes you up, <3,” one user wrote.
Other commenters weren’t so kind.
“I would’t let my kids go to school with their pajamas on,” a Facebook user commented. “I would never let them sleep in their school clothes. That’s just the absolute laziest.”
Some thought this method would affect the child later in life.
Another comment reads: “This isn’t a good idea really. It’s teaching him bad habits. He’ll carry this into adulthood!”
'I really needed Ms. Rachel to say it’s okay to not be a perfect parent,' another commented.
But others felt validated by Ms. Rachel’s experience.
“I really just cried,” one user wrote. “I think I really needed Ms. Rachel to say it’s okay to not be a perfect parent. And I didn’t know I needed that.”
Another person reminded folks that everyone’s normal is different.
And one user commented that with all that Ms. Rachel has contributed, she’s good regardless. “It’s okay, you do whatever you want, you’re raising millions of kids,” one user wrote.
