My daughter, Zazie, and I used to always be late. Super late. Embarrassingly late. So late I’d ask myself, should we just not go to school today? Past 9:30, I mean, what’s the point?

But the truth was I couldn’t face another visit to the attendance lady in the principal’s office who had worked up a whole comedy routine around our tardiness. “Wait, don’t tell me,” she’d say between fitful laughs. “You were abducted by aliens. And they’re still on daylight savings time.”

The morning was not my friend. It seemed that every conceivable thing that could happen would happen to slow us down on our journey of four blocks to school.

There was the time I locked myself out walking our dog, and Zazie slept through my 20 minutes of doorbell ringing and shouted pleas until finally I called a locksmith. That kid sleeps like a rock.

And then there was the time that every pair of her shoes suddenly no longer fit—had her feet somehow grown overnight? Since the stores didn’t open till ten, it was a de facto personal day.

There was the time the smoke detector started going off just as we were walking out the door. I’d thought smoke detectors were supposed to go off for no reason only at 2 a.m. By the time I beat the thing into submission with a meat mallet, we were once again racing behind the clock.

I still can’t go down the streets leading to Zazie’s elementary school without experiencing a quickening of the pulse. Those withering glances I would get from her teachers…but the teachers were right. It was really my fault, this lateness, and it wasn’t fair to Zazie. I knew I had to turn this thing around—and fast. But how?

It was then that I made a miraculous discovery about being punctual, akin to my After exhausting all plausible excuses for bringing her daughter to school late, this mom figures out how to turn the tide. Now she’s early. Always. Never late again miraculous discovery some years ago about staying thin. The key to maintaining a healthy weight, I’d suddenly figured out after a lifetime of battling thunder thighs, was not eating like a pig. And the trick to being on time for school, I now discovered, was—lo and behold—getting up earlier. That, in turn, meant going to bed at a reasonable hour.

This was hard for me at first. The wee hours were when I would write and catch up on bills and emails. But I’ve found that having a curfew has made me more efficient all day.

Our bedtime regimen is now so strict we’d put the Marines to shame. It’s 8 p.m., lights out for Zazie, and 10 p.m. for Mom. It’s changed my life.

I never feel tired in the morning anymore. Most importantly, Zazie has perfect attendance. We have time now to hang out. And if some emergency occurs, we have time to deal with it. Like the time I burned the toast and started a fire. Okay, so I don’t have the cooking thing down perfectly yet. But the getting to school on time thing—I got that.