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Why Are Routines Important for Children?

With the transition to learning onsite at school and all that is happening in the world, some children are experiencing a higher level of anxiety. The predictability and familiarity that comes with routine offers the perfect ‘safe space’ that children need.

Developing your own family ritual or routine will give your child consistency and security in the home, as well as setting them up with good habits for life. Many psychologists state that building routines with your children helps them to feel safe. They know what to expect when they go home, and it provides them with clear boundaries, expectations, and consistency.

School provides a form of routine with predictability of learning sessions and play times (always listed on the day board), clear expectations regarding rights and responsibilities and dedicated spaces for seating and books. New routines such as different entry gates, sanitising hands and playing in specified areas are quickly learned and adopted through explicit teaching and consistency.

A consistent routine in the home will have far fewer variables, so your kids can relax in knowing what to expect. That’s why it is so important to develop and stick with a routine in challenging times.

One of the easiest ways to make new habits stick is by pairing them with other rituals that are already in place, says Gretchen Rubin, author of Better than Before, a book that looks at the science of habit creation. So whatever habits you would like to add to your child’s routine, frame them around the ones that are already there.

For example, if you’d like them to start cleaning their room once a day, have it become the ritual before dinner time.

If you’d like reading to be part of the daily routine, incorporate it before bed time. The key to making good habits stick is to do them regularly and consistently.

So pick a new ritual, and keep with it. Make it simple, make it fun, and don’t add too many new activities to your routine at once.