Today we find ourselves in a world we are all unfamiliar with. COVID-19 has us all in a state of unnaturalness that sometimes we forget that our littlest humans feel all the affects of our stress.
Travel to favorite places is paused. Extra curricular activities are cancelled. School is regimented and looks very different. Some schools often find themselves with some delays or frequent quarantines. Church and shopping requires facial masks. Basically, everything that our children found routine is no longer recognizable.
The family schedule is in turmoil.
Our children are on edge.
If all of this sounds familiar and you are a momma of a couple kiddos, then you know that every thing has become a battle these days.
“That toy is mine.”
“I say the nightly prayer first!”
“Mommy, he won’t share with me!”
Kids often crave control in situations that are out of their control. In today’s world every day is completely out of everyone’s control. A child’s normal response in these situations becomes that of whining, and powerhouse statements like, “That is mine!”, “No fair!”, “It is my turn!”
Making small tweaks to your daily routine can truly add that small level of control and stability back to your children.
The Tweak
In our home, when we realized that we were all spiraling into days of chaos. We chose to regain control by simply separating things by even and odd days. On even days, our oldest gets to lead us to school on the bikes and say the dinner prayer, after he has set the table. On odd days, our youngest gets to set the pace for the same daily routines. This way we do not need to remember who went last every single time and this day by day system irrefutably simplifies things for all of us.
Taking turns naturally plays in to a kids sense of fairness and by simply labeling it as Greyson’s or Grady’s day….it has drastically cut back on bickering and allowed some normalcy to slip back into our routine.
This small sense of self control and scheduling allows your child to feel in control of their day, and eager to share the duty of the next day with his sibling. It is easy to add fun things to this list daily as well!
Do you have a suggestion for finding control in today’s chaos?