8:47am. Engine still running. Backpack on the seat beside her, untouched. You’ve said the calm thing. You’ve held the boundary. And she still hasn’t moved. Nobody prepares you for how long a driveway can feel. Here’s what nobody tells you in that moment: the goal was never “today, right now, through that door.” That’s the goal that keeps breaking both of you. The real goal is smaller and slower - don’t make the alarm louder than it already is. Some mornings that means five more minutes in the car. Some mornings it means going home again. Neither of those is failure. They’re just not the finish line you were told to expect. My daughter missed over 100 days of school in a single year. A hundred mornings that looked like this one. She’s at her first-choice university now. It wasn’t a straight line to get there, and it didn’t happen because anyone pushed harder. It happened because the order changed: body first, then everything else. If you’re in the car right now - s...