Why is routine so important for children?
As parents, we like routine because it helps to keep us organised and structured. We have many lives to keep an eye on and are often juggling more things than we can keep in our minds. From writing things in notebooks to accumulating hundreds of sticky notes, we all have our own way of keeping on top of things and making sure everything is on track. Routine and habits are very useful to us but they’re incredibly important for our children too. Specifically, they help children feel safe, develop crucial life skills and of course build healthy habits for their future. For parents, these routines help reduce stress and make it easier to do all the fun activities they want to do with their children!
Scheduling
Schedules aren’t just those boring things that make us complete the tasks we don’t want to, they’re actually crucial to a happy and successful household. Most importantly, with young child, schedules help them establish a body clock for better sleeping habits. With so much of a successful night relying on feeding time, play time, relaxing time and wind down time a schedule can be a great tool. We love the Loop Large Baby Nest for helping little ones wind down before bedtime.
Rules and Expectations
For older children, schedules and routines help define your expectations. For rules that you wish to instil in your home, by having a routine in place this makes them easy to follow. From those 10 minutes that are spent picking up toys before dinner to building healthy habits of cleaning teeth and healthy snacks. These also help to build both respect, confidence and authority for your little ones to continue building the best relationship with you.
Calmness
When a home is chaotic there's nothing that feels more stressful, for you and your family. As roles become assumed a calmness comes from being able to rely on each person to maintain their role, no matter how small, there's a calmness in keeping a collected and happy home. No one wants anything more than a place their little ones want to come home to every day for relaxing and being comfortable.
Confidence, Independence and Healthy habits
All of this builds confidence, independence and healthy habits for your little one. By providing them with the stability of routine when exploring new creative ideas and developing they always know what to expect when they get home. They can go and explore who they want to be whilst knowing that they are always coming home to a stable environment. They can become confident and work on being independent safe in this knowledge. It also encourages them to build a healthy relationship with important habits. All of the life skills they will need they will see you do each and everyday in a structured way that they will be involved with to. This shows them how all of these things are important to everyone's daily life!
Your health and happiness
The pressures of being a parent can be overwhelming at times. By putting in the schedule and routine you might have been putting off the relief can be huge. It brings you a structure that makes you feel more confident about tackling each day. You can learn how your expectations are often higher that what is achievable and begin to make positive steps in lowering these to have happier and more productive days.
Family Bonding
The best thing about bringing a routine that is structured to a household is that it makes more time for family bonding. Whether it simply improves how much spare time you have to do other things with your children or whether it allows you to see where the time is to be able to spend time with other family members, a routine can make things so much easier. If it’s simplicity and more time for your loved ones to connect, a schedule can make a very happy difference!
Anticipation and excitement
Another brilliant thing about being open about the routine is that it builds excitement and anticipation for your little ones. Whether there's a portion of the day that is spent every day trying a new activity with you or whether its a way to make them aware of events at the end of the week to look forward to, this type of scheduling keeps them enthused about the things that need doing too!
Here are our top 15 minute activities for both together and independent playtime for during the week:
1. Baking
We have to bake during the week, we love providing our little ones with treats that are at least a little healthier than we can buy. Your new schedule will make it clear when you’ll be doing this and allow you the opportunity to do a little prep beforehand so your little one can join you. Don’t forget your Kule Learning Tower!
2. Drawing
When you know that you’ll need a quiet moment to yourself, you can organise for your little one to be doing an independent activity. We love setting up the Retro TV Blackboard or the Medium Masa Desk & Bench for giving them their very own and unique place to create art!
3. Roleplay
For an activity for both together and independent playtime, roleplay is perfect for any time of day, anywhere. For real-time, life size play we love the Sera Kitchen and for little play we love the Casa Pink House.
We also love the Kasabam Play Mat Set for being able to take anywhere too. For our newfound time to spend time with family members, it’s ideal for being taken to other houses or even the local coffee shop. Providing hours of fun for your little one with friends, family or on their own!
We hope we’ve inspired you to make that time to sit down and make your routine so that you can have an organised, more productive and happier future. Your little one will always be grateful for the stability you instilled at this age!