Five simple steps to creating more effective routines with your kids at home or school

These steps can be done with individual kids at home, whole classrooms of students at school, or anything in-between. The process is initiated anytime someone notices that there’s an ongoing struggle with a procedure that happens regularly. It could be getting ready in the morning, lining up for recess, engaging in meaningful partner work, or any other routine that happens in your context on a regular basis. When I started as a classroom teacher, I worried that kids might not take my concerns seriously when I initiated the process, but I quickly discovered that anything that bothered me bothered at least a few kids, and my students tended to be very empathetic whenever someone—including me—presented an issue.

Part of what makes this process so successful is that everyone has a chance to feel that their concerns are acknowledged and gets to participate in developing an effective solution. To recap, here are the steps:

1. Bring together stakeholders. Evaluate your current routine--what works or doesn’t work about it? (What do you want MORE or LESS of?)

2. Determine the desired steps of new routine. Negotiate a plan.

3. Formalize the plan. (Written or photo checklist? Act it out?)

4. Try it out for a while.

5. Re-evaluate as often as needed and repeat steps 1-5.

Listen to the full episode for further explanation of each step, including an example of how my family recently used this process to improve our three-year-old’s bedtime routine.

Join the conversation below by sharing your wins with the process as well as any struggles you’ve had with the process that you want support to troubleshoot.