Why is it important to establish routines for my child?

It may sound counterintuitive, but kids do best when they have rules to follow. Psychologist Jennifer Hartstein, PsyD, discusses the most important daily routines for children.

Transcript

00:00

[MUSIC PLAYING] So morning routines are really important. They start the day off right. We know that breakfast is the most important meal. Make sure that your kids are trying to sit down and eat it.

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[MUSIC PLAYING]

00:15

Routines are really important for children of all ages really, because they really do respond to structure. The more structure, the more in control

00:23

a child feels of their environment. So you want to really establish them young. We know that with babies, the more routines they have,

00:30

the better off they are, the more adjusted they are. And there needs to be a little bit of flexibility in there because do-- things do come up that really will toss

00:37

the routine off, but as soon as you can get it back in line, the better. So morning routines are really important. They start the day off right.

00:44

We know that breakfast is the most important meal. Make sure that your kids are trying to sit down and eat it. If you can, eat with them.

00:51

You can help set the tone for how the day is going to go. But have the same wake-up time every day. Have the same plan every morning of what's going to happen.

00:58

Have everything ready to go so that not everybody's racing around like lunatics, because the more chaotic the day starts, it'll stay that way.

01:06

Same thing goes for nighttime routine. You want to figure out what the plan is at night. How are they going to get their homework done?

01:12

By what time? Do they get time off to really chill out for half an hour and then they go to bed? But you want to create the most concrete plan

01:21

to go through the day, which will help your teens and your children be more successful. It's especially important to start

01:28

practicing your back-to-school routines before the end of summer, because your summer routines might be more light hearted. You might not have the same kind of structure.

01:37

And then jumping right into back to school, you're destined to fail. So a week or two before school starts, start getting up earlier.

01:44

Start helping your teenagers especially. Shift their clock so they're going to bed earlier and getting up earlier. Start having those breakfast routines.

01:52

Get back into the habit and the swing so that when school starts, everybody's really primed and ready. [AUDIO LOGO]