More on Step Two: Routines

I write about what is weighing most heavily on my heart at the time. My hope is that this blog will help others, but selfishly, it is also a way for me to work through my personal struggles. One of our struggles has always been getting anywhere on time. This is not only a struggle with my twins, but with all of my family. We are habitually late arrivals. I remember at my wedding my friend commented on how I was not even close to being ready to walk down the aisle at about 30 minutes till time to go. I told her that they couldn't start without me. This was true, but unfortunately, not everything revolves around our timeline.

After the children arrived our perpetual lateness did not improve. In fact, we were later and later. At one point my husband commented that we should just forget going anywhere at all. This was ridiculous, of course, but it did get us thinking about what we could do to help the situation. We developed a few schemes to help us, and I think they could help others as well. These steps were not only for the benefit of our boys, but also for our "normal" daughter who, honestly, suffers from the late-gene more than the boys.

Task Lists:

We would literally write down every single thing we needed to do before going anywhere, and then have the children go through these step-by-step. This was a great help... at first. Eventually the boys became so engrossed in doing everything on the list perfectly, that it became a hinderer more than a helper. So, we moved on.

Alarms:

My old cell phone has the capability of programming up to five alarms, so after the written lists stopped working to our advantage I set alarms on the phone for each step in the morning.

For example:
6:30 Wake up!
6:45 Get dressed
7:00 Go eat Breakfast
7:20 Brush teeth
7:30 Time to go

This worked wonderfully, but like everything else they eventually grew out of the need for it. Now we continue to use the "Wake Up!" alarm, but all others have gone by the wayside (although at times I feel we still need the "Time to go" alarm).

Teaching Independence:

The most important thing about using these routines, is that you are teaching your child independence. They are not reliant on you for prompting on every single task in the morning and evening. They can, and will, do these tasks themselves if only they know what is expected of them. Using these steps with our children and teaching them independence, not only improved our perpetual lateness, but also made for much happier and less stressful days for all of us. We are still a very laid back and go-with-the-flow type family, but now we can do it mostly on time.