John is making his daughter?

Question

John is making his daughter ready for the school

I guess you understand what I mean by the above sentence, though it's weird and may have grammatical errors. If you don't understand the above, here is what I'm trying to say - "John helps his daughter to get ready for the school" - Here by helping I mean tying the shoes, helping her to put the jacket, etc.

So now, my question whether using the word "making" is correct in this context? If I just transulate my native language sentence word by word, I get this word "making". But for me, it's looks so weird in English and I don't know how a native English speaker will write the above sentence.

Answer 1

More natural is "John is getting his daughter ready for school" or "John is helping his daughter [to] get ready for school" depending on how much she's actually doing anything for herself.

"Making ... ready" sounds archaic or military, and might be mistaken for "John is making his daughter get ready", which implies that he is forcing her to get herself ready, against her will.

Answer 2

If John were making the spare room ready for visitors, it would be fine, but because his daughter is a person, this construction feels a little stilted. However, in either case one can say "getting" instead of "making" for a more idiomatic phrasing.

But the only thing that feels wrong about your original sentence is that we would just say "school" instead of "the school" (unless perhaps the point is that the particular school she's going to has different requirements than might otherwise be expected, but that would need a lot of context to make it clear).

A person "making" another person does carry an implication of force or non-consent, though.

She made herself ready for the meeting. She got herself ready for the meeting. She got ready for the meeting.

These all have different connotations. The last is fairly plain. The first implies that the meeting was going to be difficult or unpleasant. The middle one falls between the two, or implies that the process of getting ready was physical.