One thing we’ve learned on the parenting journey is that routines are lifesavers. Imagine if everyone in the house went to bed when they felt like, woke up the same way, and did whatever popped up for an entire day, not to mention weeks on end? That would be very chaotic and overwhelming! This is why a lot of parents are overwhelmed. I remember about four to five years ago when we lived like that. The biggest impact was on our productivity. The ‘anyhowness’ affected our how much we could get done and one of the biggest wins of routine is that we get to allocate time to everything, including working from home.
The first thing we did as the summer holiday rolled around was have a family meeting to plan for summer. We aim to have these meetings at least once a week with emergency meetings allowed if something comes up in-between. We used the opportunity to teach the boys goal-setting and the oldest even shared his first presentation telling us how he plans to take charge of reminding and ‘enforcing’ bedtime (lol). He did very well!
We agreed on adjusting bed/wake-up time since we didn’t need such an early start, one academic goal each (handwriting and fluent reading), outdoor activities for each week before we go on holiday, etc. Without this, working from home for six weeks will be challenging for us and it helps that we plan the children’s outdoor activities in advance to avoid last-minute pressure. Even when you don’t need to work from home, why ignore the chaos when there’s a solution that benefits everyone?
Creating routines help children learn simple skills like time management, setting goals, and productivity cycles. It doesn’t have to be anything complicated. Decide on how often you can create experiences for them, how you want to structure the day-to-day activities, a few things you would like them to work on, and give it a try.
Cheers to a great summer holiday!