Three years of late mornings

A family in Dammam has been late for school for three years.

Every September they try something new. A chart on the fridge. An alarm with a cheerful song. A rule about phones at breakfast. Each one works for about a week, and then the mornings slide back to the same ten minutes of shouting at the door.

They talk about it as if the answer is out there somewhere, a small trick they have not found yet.

It probably is not. Easy problems do not last three years. They get solved in the first week, often without anyone noticing they were problems at all. A difficulty that has survived this long is telling you something about itself: whatever fixes it costs more than anyone has been willing to pay.

That is worth taking seriously, because it changes the question. A problem, unlike a situation, does have a solution. Other families with the same drive and the same number of children arrive on time, so this one can be solved. But the real solution here is not a chart. It is everyone in bed an hour earlier, the parents included. Or the father leaving later for work so he can drive. Or a school nearer home.

Each of those has a price in sleep, money or comfort. Once the price is on the table, the family can do something honest with it.

They can pay it, properly, and be done.

Or they can look at the price and decide it is too high. Then the lateness stops being a problem they are failing at and becomes a situation they have chosen, with a note to the teacher and no more shouting at the door.

Either answer is better than another September of hoping for the cheap fix.