For the Family: Home and Family Routines
While it’s important to be flexible and be able to adjust to unexpected events in life, having strong routines can have many benefits for you and your family.
Sense of Safety and Belonging
When activities and schedules around the home are predictable and organised, it helps your children to feel safe and well looked after.
When family routines include spending regular quiet time together or having fun with each other, this can help to create a strong sense of belonging to the family group.
Learning Responsibility and Building Independence
When parents let young children help out with simple chores as part of the family routine, they are sending a powerful message that they believe the child is capable.
This boosts confidence and helps children feel good about themselves. As children practice simple chores they become more independent and develop their motor skills.
Maintaining Good Health
An important part of our family routines are activities such as teeth brushing, hand washing, exercising, taking medicine and bath time.
These activities not only help to keep children healthy, children also learn to take responsibility for their own health and wellbeing. Another important lifelong skill to develop.
Benefits of Family Routines for Parents
- Make it easier to achieve important daily tasks around the home
- Help you feel like you’re more in control of the demands of parenting and doing a good job
- Help with decision making and reducing conflict around family choices
The Best Routine for Your Family
There is no such thing as one size fits all when it comes to family routines. The purpose of your family’s routine is for everyone to know what to do when.
Family routines typically include activities such as meals, bedtime, bath time, housework, playtime as well as exercise, celebrations and holidays.
What works for one family, won’t necessarily work for another so it’s important to find what works best to suit the needs and preferences of your family.
The three elements that all good family routines do share in common are:
1. Good Planning: When a routine is well planned, it helps everyone in the family know that they’re responsible for and what’s expected of them and when.
2. Predictability: A routine can result in fewer ‘non-compliance’ related behavioural problems. When they know it’s just the way the daily routine goes, children can be less likely to argue.
3. Regularity: When we regularly do things together as a family it can create rituals that everyone values and looks forward to.