As a parent you want to see your children succeed in obeying your instructions. You also want to see your spouse succeed in respecting your relationship. Their opportunity for that success can be greatly improved by you proactively creating an environment for them to succeed. One simple tool that creates that environment for success is the Five Minute Warning. This tool has worked wonders in our family and elevated many potentially frustrating and exasperating situations.
In a nutshell, The Five Minute Warning establishes a timeframe for obeying and honoring relationships by offering a window of compliance with courtesy and respect. Generally speaking, if you ask your children or spouse to do something, they should comply immediately out of respect and honor of your relationship. However, the Five Minute Warning provides a buffer to that compliance in certain circumstances. For example, if you are getting ready to go out to dinner and say, “Five Minute Warning”, that tells the children that they have 5 minutes to wrap up a game, clean up, go to the bathroom, and get buckled in the car. It also tells your spouse that they have five minutes to wrap up an email, phone call, or computer time and get buckled in the car.
The Five Minute Warning is a respectful courtesy that you are offering your family to help them to succeed in complying with your request or instruction. These are some of the most common situations where giving a Five Minute Warning is useful:
Meal Time – When Mom or Dad is putting in the effort to make a meal, giving everyone the heads up that dinner will be served shortly, allows everyone to be present on time when the meal is hot and ready.
Bedtime – This helps everyone to prepare to wind down for the evening; not just wrapping up an activity, but also mentally preparing for the night time routine (especially for the young ones)!
Leaving the house for school, daycare, or work – Not everyone is a morning person, so you can head off the “morning chaos” by creating an environment to prepare and succeed.
Leaving the home of relatives or friends, picnic or amusement park – Similar to the Bedtime situation, this helps, particularly the children, to mentally prepare to leave and wrap up while they are still having “the best time ever”.
Again these tend to be the most common helpful situations, but we have used it countless times in various circumstances like leaving for a ballgame, going out on date night, etc… The idea is to create a window of opportunity for compliance for a request or instruction.
Based upon our own family’s experience, these are the biggest pitfalls we’ve encountered that led to the Five Minute Warning not working properly or effectively:
Not clearly identifying the expectations – Once you say, “Five Minute Warning,” what is expected? What does it look like for children and spouse?
Five minutes is not five minutes – Five minutes needs to be five minutes give or take a few seconds… not minutes. Giving the five minute warning when dinner is on the table in 2 minutes defeats the purpose. Likewise, when you are getting ready to leave the house but leave ten minutes later, that just exasperates everyone. Five minutes needs to be five minutes and helps hold us to the standard we’ve set. For younger children, you may need to set a timer so they can learn to gauge the timeframe.
Last minute preparation – The five minute warning creates an environment to succeed by allowing the space and time to comply. Assuming you can do more in five minutes and then ultimately cramming and rushing to comply defeats the purpose. Once the “Five Minute Warning” is offered, honor that person by respectfully complying to that opportunity. Don’t try and squeeze in an extra email.
The Five Minute Warning is a simple tool that can head off a lot of potential headaches and frustrations while setting a standard that’s easy to follow and appealing to comply with. Why not give your family the opportunity to succeed? And make sure to avoid the pitfalls!
Blessings to your family,
Shelly and Rich