Reimagine a Routine
We’ve all been there. The bus (or car) leaves for school in five minutes, but your kids are nowhere near ready. One is rolling around on the floor in his pajamas, one is refusing to eat her cereal, and the third needs help finding a lost backpack. You’ve patiently waited, you’ve coaxed, you’ve pleaded, but now, you’re getting desperate. You start to yell—again. And when you do all make it school (late) none of you are feeling good about the day so far.
Routines like this—getting ready in the morning, starting a workday, picking up kids from school, getting to after-school activities, bedtime—are crucial to any family.
Many studies have demonstrated that families with good routines fare better. In a 50-year research review, the American Psychological Association finds that “family routines and rituals are powerful organizers of family life that offer stability during times of stress and transition.” For young children, stable routines are actually associated with better health, more and better quality sleep, and more regulated behavior. When a family doesn’t have solid routines in place to help everyone get from point A to point B, too often chaos entrenches itself. The result is high stress, more yelling and anxiety, less sleep, chronic tardiness, poorer eating habits and behavior, etc. Nobody in the family can thrive in chaos.
Chances are, you already know what routines in your household need to be reworked, because they also mark the times of day you most dread. Nobody likes bedtime if it involves a dragged-out, two-hour process of threatening, cajoling, getting one last drink or reading one final story. But with a few simple tweaks, you can reimagine that problematic routine and find a routine that works for your whole family. FamilyWorks offers a whole section of resources on how and why to reimagine your routines, but the first place to start is probably creating a checklist. Let’s use the example of a morning routine, and imagine the tasks that a particular family might need to complete:
Get out of bed at 6:30 a.m.
Shower
Eat Breakfast
Brush teeth
Get dressed
Get backpacks and any after-school gear in place
Household chores (feed dog, tidy room, clean up dishes, etc.)
Leave house at 8 a.m.
You’ll want to create the checklist together, talk about it, and probably write it down and post it somewhere visible in your home. If you want to be even more prepared, you may consider asking your kids to pack their backpacks the night before and leave them by the door, or you might prep breakfast early and pop it in the fridge for the next day. You can be even more detailed in your list, depending on the age or needs of your family. And there’s more to it than just a checklist, of course. (You’ll also need a plan for making sure everyone adheres to it!)
But by breaking the routine into manageable components, putting them in order, and talking about them together as a family, you’ve started the process of taming your crazy mornings. And you’ve also gone a long way to overcoming chaos, and instead creating a setting for respect, kindness, mutual cooperation, and connection.