Now that kids are back to school, families often find themselves juggling new schedules and increased responsibilities. Without consistent and intentional routines, chaos can easily unfold: forgotten lunches, afternoon meltdowns, and stress for parents and children.
Predictable routines can ensure your children thrive during the school year.
Research shows that routines benefit children in many ways, such as supporting their emotional, cognitive, and social development. By implementing routines, parents can create a nurturing environment that sets their children up for success in and out of the classroom.
What Are Routines?
A routine is a set of regular activities that tell children what to expect and when. Families often have routines for activities like mealtime, bedtime, afterschool activities, and homework, which help create structure and stability for children. When routines are part of a child’s day, they can increase resilience, independence, confidence, and more.
The Benefits of Routines for Young Children
Routines play a vital role in a child’s development, offering benefits beyond just organizing daily tasks.1
- Enhanced emotional skills: Children who participate in more family routines show advanced skills in empathy and understanding. They also tend to have better relationships with peers and adults (parents, teachers, relatives, coaches, etc.).
- Improved self-regulation and executive function: Routines can help children delay gratification, develop impulse control, and strengthen working memory, all essential skills for a positive school experience.
- Superior cognitive abilities: Children whose families start routines in infancy show higher cognitive scores later in development.
- Better school performance: Routines can lead to children having more expansive vocabularies, better problem-solving skills, high literacy and math scores, and more engagement and interest in school.
- Mental health protection: Children with routines are less likely to internalize problems (e.g., depression) or externalize problems (e.g., aggressive behavior).
- Physical health benefits: Some studies suggest routines can bolster children’s physical health, from dental health to sleep quality to body weight.
Creating Effective Routines at Home
To build effective routines, start simple and small by identifying one or two core activities your family can utilize as a foundation during the school year. Since proper diet and sleep can greatly impact children’s educational outcomes, establishing routines around mealtime and bedtime is an excellent starting point.2
Mealtime tips:
- Meet your children’s nutritional requirements by following national nutritional recommendations.3
- Plan meals for the week as a family so everybody knows what to expect. Give kids choices — individual English muffin pizzas with veggies or stir fry with rice — so they can participate and exercise agency.
- Prepare healthy snacks ahead of time, like hummus and whole grain crackers or peanut butter and celery sticks, so your child can fuel up in between activities.
- Make sure your children eat breakfast before they go to school so they have the energy to focus.
- Model healthy eating to your children so they’re more apt to follow your lead.
Bedtime tips:
- Set limits on how late children can use devices so they have adequate screen-free time before bedtime.
- Help children transition from the day’s activities to rest with soothing activities like taking a warm bath, listening to music, or working on a puzzle.
- Ensure your children go to bed around the same time every night. Choose a time that allows for the amount of sleep they need for their age.4
- In kids’ bedrooms, provide a comfortable, sleep-friendly environment with soft lighting and bedding that makes resting easy.
While you are creating routines for your family, be flexible. As your children grow, they will develop new skills, preferences, and ways of expressing themselves. Encourage them to exert their independence within the routines.
Make routines fun! Being creative can help children engage with and even look forward to routines. For example, you can prepare snacks and meals together, transforming buckwheat pancakes and blueberries into smiley faces. You might read bedtime stories as part of your evening routine. Not only is this an opportunity for children to read a book they like, but it’s also a time for you to bond with them.
How Routines Support School Success
Children often need help going from activity to activity, so it’s important to consider transitions in your routines. How do you help children transition from home to school and back home in the afternoon?
Children may struggle more when transitions are abrupt. Smoothen these moments by incorporating elements of home at school and school at home. A packed lunch or comfort item (stuffed animal, letters from you, family photos, etc.) can remind your child of home while at school. Another option is to enroll your children in afterschool programs, community play spaces or outdoor park time, which provide a bridge from school to home.
Giving your children space to vocalize and express their emotions around transitions is also important. Even asking your child how they feel about the upcoming school day in the car before drop off can become a regular touchpoint that helps them build confidence. You might have drawing time after coming home from school, during which children can process their day, easing the transition.
Give Your Children a Preview
Parents can prepare everyone in the family for success during the school year with a little effort and intentionality. Introducing new activities to your kids early is one of the best ways to establish a routine that will help your child.
If you plan to enhance your children’s education with afterschool activities, such as one of STEMful’s Afterschool Enrichment Programs, you can bring the family by to check out the space. Introducing routine changes early ensures your children seamlessly transition from their school day to afterschool activities, creating a stress-free school year experience for parents and children.
- Saliha B. Selman and Janean E. Dilworth-Bart, “Routines and Child Development: A Systematic Review,” Journal of Family Theory & Review 16, no. 2 (2024): 272–328, https://doi.org/10.1111/jftr.12549.
- Sehrish Naveed et al., “An Overview on the Associations between Health Behaviors and Brain Health in Children and Adolescents with Special Reference to Diet Quality,” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 17, no. 3 (2020): 953, https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17030953.
- “Kids,” MyPlate, U.S. Department of Agriculture, accessed August 29, 2024, https://www.myplate.gov/life-stages/kids.
- “Sleep in Middle and High School Students,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, October 16, 2023, https://www.cdc.gov/healthyschools/sleep.htm.