It is time to establish some new routines. My family is going to spend a lot of time figuring this out today. You don't need to read the rest of this post unless you like all the details of how someone else does it. The important thing is to establish new daily and weekly routines for your family.
Here's what I know we need in our new routines:
Weekly
- At least 3 hours of school time, 5 days/week (M-F)
- 1 day of worship (Sunday)
- 1 day of relaxing, working on projects, and having fun together (Saturday)
- Family activities
- Date night for me and my husband
- Counseling and therapy appointments
- Personal hygiene and personal chores
- Family Devotional (week days)
- Meals
- Mediation
- School time (week days)
- Family work and chores
- Free time
- Time outside and moving
- SSR (15 minutes of sustained silent reading for the whole family)
- The end of the day
My family embraces and seeks to apply the principles of Leadership Education. One of the principles is Structure Time Not Content. This principle will guide us as we figure out new routines. My understanding of the principle is that one should designate time for certain kinds of activities but let the actual what be decided day-to-day and possibly even in the moment. Let me show you what this looks like for my family. Remember this is just the way we apply the principle. It's not the "right" way or the only way, it is just our way.
Worship
This is going to be really interesting. We've only done 1 week at home so far. The local congregation of our church will be offering a short live streamed service of some kind on Sunday. Then, the rest is up to us. I'm not sure what it will look like. I think it will include scripture reading, singing hymns, discussion, and maybe watching something inspiring.
School Time
We will have at least 3 hours of school time every weekday. At the beginning of school time, I will help my 11 yo twins write a school plan for the day. There are certain things that must be included in plans every day but the order in which they are done and what resources they use to do these things can vary according to my children's needs and desires. I specifically don't give them a checklist of tasks to complete or they will do it as quickly as possible and the quality will be poor. Instead I require that they spend 3 hours on school work, as defined by me. Some days it might take 5 hours to get 3 hours of school work done.
My 16 yo daughter organizes her own school time with very little help from me. She is in Scholar Phase and has several scholar project classes she is committed to (they've all moved online now) and a lot of homework for each of them. She also works on math, foreign language and her own projects. She makes a weekly plan of when and how to get it all done and I check in with her a few times a week to make sure it is happening. When she needs help or resources to get it done, she comes to me, Dad, or one of her project mentors. She has had several years of practicing and developing scholar skills. She is an advanced scholar and she happens to be a particularly skilled and mature 16 yo. Everything about schooling my twins with their special needs and learning disabilities has been totally different than with her. I expect that trend will continue when my twins transition into scholar phase (hopefully in the next 2-4 years).
Pre-coronavirus, we attended a home school co-op every Friday. Now we are doing classes online.
Saturdays
This has always been a day of relaxing and family fun for us. It still will be. It will just look a little different now. We sleep in, stay in our pajamas longer, mom and dad work on projects, kids play, maybe go to the park. We often watch a movie as a family. And at 8 pm, all kids must be in their rooms while mom and dad have a date downstairs. Our favorite at home date is Quiet Pasta. It's quiet because there are no children present, and we eat pasta, one of our favorite foods. Lately my husband has been making noodles and sauce from scratch. So good! I usually make a dessert for us to share as well. After we eat, we like to watch a TV show or movie together. It's good bonding time and we look forward to it all week.
Family Activities
Especially as our oldest gets closer to leaving the nest, we are realizing our days as a family living under one roof, are limited. Sometimes the demands of family life at this stage seem like they might kill us and at the same time, the thought of this stage of life ending breaks our hearts. So we are trying to make the most of it. One of the ways we do this is family activities. We don't do anything too elaborate. Things like taking a family walk, watching a movie together, having a family dance party. We used to go on outings to museums, parks, libraries, plays etc. but other than parks, we are staying away from public spaces right now.
Counseling and Therapy Appointments
I currently see my counselor online. My son has an ABA therapist that comes to our home twice a week. For now that is continuing and we hope it stays that way. We have stopped going to therapy appointments outside of our home. So far, all the extra time at home feels like a blessing.
Personal Hygiene and Personal Chores
Establishing a wake up time and a time when everyone should be ready for the day is critical to a successful routine. At our house, everyone is supposed to be dressed and ready for the day, sitting at the breakfast table by 8:30 am. What happens more often is, I'm waking kids up, urging them to get in the shower and calling for them to come down to breakfast. They are usually all there by 9 am. But the more consistent I am, the closer we get to the goal. Especially if I have breakfast ready by 8:30, kids can smell it, and they are more likely to show up on time. I also expect my kids to do a few personal chores in the morning. Things like make your bed, clean your room, clean up your part of the bathroom, fold your personal laundry (if there is any ready to be folded). In reality, these personal chores often get done in the afternoon but it's really nice when they are done in the morning.
Meal Time
The benefits of eating family meals together are numerous. Regular, predictable mealtimes are critical for a healthy routine too. My family aims to eat breakfast at 8:30 am, lunch at 12:30 pm, and dinner at 6:30 pm. What actually happens every day is 30-60 minutes later than scheduled but we aim for these times and that's enough to provide structure and predictability to our day. As with so many things in family life, the more consistent and prepared I am, the closer we get to the ideal actually happening. I expect all my kids to help prepare breakfast and lunch. My oldest is responsible for dinner one night/week. I want to train my 11 yos to cook dinner too but we aren't there yet.
Family Devotional
Usually during breakfast time, me and the kids have a devotional together. Dad is already working by that time. It's pretty simple. We read a verse of scripture and discuss it. We might sing a hymn, share something that inspired one of us, or listen to a chapter of scripture.
Meditation Time
I mentioned in a previous post that my family has begun doing meditations every morning to help mitigate anxiety in this time of crisis. We start school time with it. We use the Calm app and do a 10-15 minute meditation together.
Family Work
Every afternoon, after school time, we do chores. In our family, privileges are tied to responsibilities. My oldest has several significant responsibilities including part of laundry, loading and unloading the dishwasher, cooking dinner once/week, and driving siblings to things like dance class or dentist appointments. Obviously she's not doing a lot of driving right now. For the most part, she decides when and how to do her chores. But she isn't able to do the things she wants to for fun if her chores aren't done.
For my twins, we use a token system. I'll write about that in a separate post, later. I require the twins to each do 3 chores per day. What the chores are changes every day, based on what I need them to do. It could be sorting dirty laundry, taking garbage or recycling out, sweeping or vacuuming, clearing and washing the kitchen counters, hand washing dishes, or picking up a messy family room. I decide each day based on what I see that needs doing. And not all at once. Each child is supposed to come to me during chore time and ask "Mom, what's my first chore?" Then I look around and tell them what to do, based on what I see that needs doing. When it's done, it is the child's job to check back with me and ask me to approve what they have done. I frequently ask them to redo part of it or finish something that hasn't been finished adequately. Then they ask me what their second chore is, check back, and then ask for their 3rd chore and check back.
They get tokens for doing each of these steps and they cannot have free time or redeem tokens for privileges until chores are done, even on Saturdays and Sundays. It takes a lot of parental effort to teach kids to work but it is so worth it. On days when my kids do their chores, everything at home looks so much better. And we all feel better in a cleaner house. I will never have a magazine-worthy home to show but it's mostly clean at least half the time and my kids are learning to work. I call that success. (Don't ask me how I feel about it on the days when no one does their chores.)
Free Time
It is important for everyone in the family to have time everyday to do things they want to do, without agenda. At our house kids have freetime in the afternoon after school and chores are done. I encourage my kids to spend this time outside but I generally don't require that. Parents get free time in the evening after kids go to their rooms for the night.
Time outside and Moving
In a previous post I talked about how getting outside and moving helps mitigate anxiety. I'm making this a priority in our routine. At the very least I will go get the mail and invite others with me. At best, we will take a family walk together, adults and teen will exercise (we all prefer different kinds of exercise) and the kids will spend time on the trampoline, at the park, and riding their bikes.
SSR
Did you do SSR (Sustained Silent Reading) when you were a kid at school? Or maybe DEAR (Drop Everything and Read)? This is one of those magical things that seems to good to be true. But I'm telling you, try it and you'll see. We try to do SSR every evening at 7:30. We all (including Dad - this is critical) sit in the family room together and everyone has to choose something they want to read for fun. It can't be on a computer screen. Maybe on a kindle if I trust the reader to actually use it for reading. I set a timer and we read for 15 minutes. The first few times we did it, one of my kids struggled to focus and stay silent, but they are getting it now. The benefits of SSR are truly magical. Like the #1 most impactful thing you can do for education. We're talking, improving test scores and helping students fall in love with learning. More than any class, any activity, any intervention, any therapy, any teaching of any kind, SSR is the best. It's so simple its hard to believe and easy to dismiss. If you want convincing read The Read Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease and The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller. It truly is astounding. Try it. You won't be sorry. It is critical that the adults participate and that everyone chooses what to read- the content can't be assigned.
The End of the Day
It's important for our brains and bodies to get lots of signals when the day is coming to a close and it's important that these signals happen in a predictable, routine way. This will lead to better sleep and reduced anxiety. The sun going down is a nice natural signal. At our house, after SSR, we ask kids to get their PJs on, brush their teeth and then go to their rooms to read, listen to audiobooks, play quietly, draw, etc. Ideally, we would also have family prayer together and maybe do a meditation together. But I'm not gonna lie, as our kids got older they stopped wanting us to tuck them in and the prayer part of the routine went with it. I think we'll work on bringing that back into our evening routine. By 8 pm, kids are expected to stay in their rooms. Mom and Dad have some free time to talk, watch TV, read and be together. Kids lights go out at 10 pm. Mom and Dad try to have lights out by 11 pm. But often it's more like midnight. Some of our kids struggle with falling asleep before midnight which makes it difficult for us to go to sleep too. I think if we focus on following our daily routine, this will become less of a problem.
Bottom line, routines make life smoother. They are essential for mental health and happiness. Work on developing your own.
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