Routines provide children with structure, predictability, and a sense of security. Establishing regular routines for things like mealtimes, bedtimes, homework, playtime and family time can greatly benefit a child’s development and well-being. Here’s why routines are so vital for children:
Providing Structure
Routines give children’s days and weeks a helpful structure. Knowing what to expect at certain times and that activities occur in a familiar sequence helps kids feel more secure and in control. Routines allow children to anticipate what comes next, helping avoid uncertainty and stress. With a predictable routine, kids learn when it’s time to play, do homework, eat dinner, or get ready for bed. This structure helps them develop self-discipline as they come to understand what’s expected of them at different times.
Promoting Healthy Habits
Establishing regular routines encourages healthy habits in kids. Routines around mealtimes, bedtimes, and homework help children’s bodies get into a rhythm and pattern. Going to bed and waking up at consistent times promotes better quality sleep. Eating meals at regular intervals fuels kids’ bodies and minds. Routines around homework or reading after school instil good study habits. These healthy habits start in childhood and often carry into adulthood.
Allowing Time for Play and Family
Routines help ensure kids get enough time for play, family time, and other priorities. Parents can build into the routine regular slots for play dates, family meals, outings, extracurricular activities, and hobbies. Routines prevent days from filling up solely with school and homework. Kids need a balance of education, play, family time, and fun activities for balanced development. Established routines guarantee these things remain priorities in a child’s schedule.
Easing Stress and Anxiety
Predictable, repeated routines can reduce anxiety in children. Kids, especially those with special needs like autism, tend to thrive when they know what’s coming next throughout the day. Familiar routines in the morning, evening, weekend, and holidays act as stabilisers for kids and minimise uncertainty. This reduces their stress and anxious feelings about what the day holds. Routines help children feel in control, boosting their confidence.
Teaching Responsibility
Establishing regular routines provides opportunities to teach children responsibility. When it’s time to do homework, tidy up toys, do chores, or get ready for bed, it instils responsibility. Children learn that certain activities need to be completed at certain times each day or week. They also reap the rewards of their responsibility when routines give them time for play and fun too. Routines allow kids to exercise increasing independence and duty as they grow.
Making Parenting Easier
Regular household routines take the guesswork out of parenting and discipline. Children benefit when parents establish and stick to similar patterns each day and week. With a routine, parents and foster carers can clearly spell out what needs to happen when, avoiding daily battles. Routines allow parents to supervise and teach the same skills consistently. Established routines make it easier when long term and short term fostering while setting children up for success and independence.
Instituting regular daily and weekly routines provides kids with security, structure, and healthy habits. Routines teach responsibility, minimise stress and anxiety, encourage play and family time while making parenting easier. Establishing workable routines takes effort initially but the long-term benefits for children are well worth it.
MindOwl Founder – My own struggles in life have led me to this path of understanding the human condition. I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy before completing a master’s degree in psychology at Regent’s University London. I then completed a postgraduate diploma in philosophical counselling before being trained in ACT (Acceptance and commitment therapy).
I’ve spent the last eight years studying the encounter of meditative practices with modern psychology.