Chaplain's Chat

Hi all, 

A lot of us have had our lives disrupted recently and might be feeling difficultly in concentrating and staying productive. One thing that can help with this feeling, and set us up for having a good and productive day is to create a home routine. 

Routines are a sequence of actions that you do repeatedly. It is how families organise themselves to get things done. Routines help family members know who should do what, when, in what order and how often.

Every family might have their own unique routines and might vary when they do it. For example, your family might have daily routines for work and school mornings, bedtimes and mealtimes. Weekly routines for housework, like washing and cleaning or other routines involving holidays and extended family get-togethers.

Routines have several benefits for children including: 

Safety and belonging: An organised and predictable home environment helps children and teenagers feel safe, secure and looked after, particularly in stressful times.

Skills and responsibility: Having chores to do in family routines helps children and teenagers develop a sense of responsibility and some basic skills like the ability to manage time, cooking meals or maintaining a clean environment. These are skills children can use for life. 

Healthy habits: Routines can be a way of teaching younger children healthy habits, like brushing their teeth, getting some exercise, or washing their hands.

There are no rules about how many or what kind of routines you should have. All families are different, and what works well for one family might not work for another.

Your routines need to be based on your individual family needs. But effective routines do share three key features:

Well planned: in a good routine, everyone understands their roles, knows what they need to do and sees their roles as reasonable and fair. For example, your children know that they take turns with washing up and drying up each night after dinner.

Regular: good routines become part of everyday family life. For example, every Sunday is a family dinner.

Predictable: in a good routine, things happen in the same order each time. For example, you always wash school uniforms on the weekend, so you know they’ll be ready for Monday morning.

If you find things are a bit chaotic at home, and children aren’t concentrating, try coming up with a regular routine and schedule ahead what your days will look like at home. 

Stay safe! 

Angelique Vardis