School Routine: How to Make it Work at YOUR House
Back to school can be so stressful, for kids and parents. Homework, sports gear, lunchboxes, and permission slips are everywhere when you don’t want them in the way and nowhere when it’s time to get to school. You’ve tried to get everybody to be in charge of their own stuff, but it’s not working. How can you get everybody and everything together?
Back to School Routine
One way to make things easier, as boring as it might sound, is to establish routines. They can keep everybody on track and believe it or not, your kids can learn them and gain independence and make things go smoother WITH you, instead of you doing all the work. Routines might sound complicated, but they don’t have to be. They’re just a set of steps to take in the same order every time. The steps can include a time they should happen, so they’re a routine and a schedule.
Daily Routines for Kids
Some of us are natural routine-builders and/or followers, and some of us just can’t or won’t follow them. If you fall in the first group, congratulations! This skill can really make your life so much easier. If you’re in the second group, hang in there, you don’t have to change your personality to build routines for your kids.
First, most days during the school year have a steady schedule and everybody knows what to expect. You can harness the predictability by making daily routines that follow the same steps for each particular day of the week. All of your school day routines might be the same, or they might switch up, depending on extracurricular activities or other changes.
Consider having a simple routine for each part of your childrens’ day. A logical breakdown is a morning, after school, and bedtime routine.
Morning Routines for Kids
For school morning routines, it’s important to set you and your kids up for success. If you know that your little one never wants to get out of bed, or always needs to eat breakfast right away, or will need some extra TLC, build that into the schedule. Wake the sleepyhead up last after you’ve gotten the other ones up and started on their routines. Set breakfast up the night before so you can have it ready quickly. Get yourself ready ahead of time so you’ll have time to sit with the child who needs a few minutes of attention in the morning so you can get them started off on the right foot.
Write these ideas down. We’ll talk about what to do with them in a bit.
After School Routine
As you’re figuring out your after school routine, think about how your kids feel after school. Are they exhausted, hungry, and cranky, or are they pretty calm and ready for the next thing? Is homework a constant, and if yes, is it a fight to get it done? Do they have a lot of activities and on how many days of the week? Build the routine to capitalize on your family’s needs and strengths. If your kids need a bit of a break, let them have a 20-30 minute snack time after you get home and before homework starts. (Pro tip: don’t allow hard-to-leave activities like screens during break time if homework or soccer will happen afterwards.) If they run out of steam to work on projects (like a lot of us do at the end of the day), keep them on track and get them going before dinner so it doesn’t drag on past bedtime.
Also think about where all the STUFF needs to go and what your kids need to do with it as they come in the door. Lunchboxes on the kitchen counter? Backpacks emptied and hung on hooks by the door? Whatever will help all of you know where things go so you can find them in the morning, build it into the routine. Write these ideas down, too. They can be part of your after school routine chart.
School Night Routine
Finally, think about how things need to go so everybody can get to bed on time. This will help your morning routines go more smoothly, because your kids will get enough sleep! Decide on bedtime and work backward from there, building in all the tasks that need to be done before tuck-in. Include what works for YOUR family, and don’t worry about what’s *supposed* to happen. The main criteria should be what your kids need to settle in, feel secure, and go to sleep on time. Write these things down, including the times that are important.
Routines for Kids
Now that you’ve decided on the steps your routines should have and what order they should be in, write them down. This doesn’t have to be complicated. You can use sticky notes, printed pages in page protectors, customizable ones you can order online–whatever works best for your family. The important thing is to write them down and put them where everybody, including you, can see them every day, so you can follow them. Every day.
Tips for Routine Success
Here are some ideas to help you be successful in using routines to make back to school go smoothly at your house.
Start small, especially for little kids. Choose the most important 3 to 6 steps that need to be followed for before school routines, after school schedules, and bedtime routines. You can add more later if you need to, after everybody gets used to them.
Stick to the routine! You’ll be the leader here. Repetition builds habits, and habits build ease and structure. But you have to do the same things in the same order every time until they become second nature.
Keep your visual routine in sight near where you’ll be putting the steps in play. You can put the bedtime routine in your kids’ bathroom or near their bedrooms. After school routines can go in the kitchen or near the door you come in from school. Wherever they’ll be seen easily is the best place for them.
Give your kids the responsibility to follow the routine. Instead of you telling them the next thing they need to do, point them toward their routine. If you see them veer off course, ask them what they’ve finished on their routine. Even little ones can get the hang of this.
Build in a visual progress marker. If you’re using sticky notes, move them over as they’re completed. Keep a dry erase marker with a laminated or page-protected schedule so the steps can be checked off as they’re completed (all of the check marks can be erased at the end of the day so you have a clean slate for the next). The pre-assembled charts often include awesome little gadgets that let your kids slide a button to check off each step.
Hang in there. It can take a while for our brains to get used to doing the same things in the same order every day. But it happens!! And those skills can be an amazing foundation for lots of other areas.
As boring as routines and schedules might sound, they are a powerful way to get kids to do what you need them to, and as you put them together, you’re actually problem-solving and might avoid some of the struggles you’ve been experiencing.
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