Resilience Series Part 3: Maintain a Routine

Article at a Glance:

  • Establishing and maintaining a routine is one of the best ways to foster a sense of stability and combat feelings of helplessness.
  • Modeling flexibility, especially in times where the only predictable thing is unpredictability is just as important as having a routine.
  • Resilience is a skill, and like any skill, it can be strengthened through practice.

In this series, we’ll be looking at ways to help teach children and teens resilience. It can be difficult to process disappointment, trauma, stress, anxiety, or depression and all of the negative feelings that can come with it. Resiliency will help children and teens deal with these negative feelings in a healthy and appropriate manner. Resilience is a skill, and like any skill, it can be strengthened through practice. 

One of the best ways to foster a sense of stability and combat feelings of helplessness is to establish and maintain a routine. Routines can be tailored to fit the needs of the individual child or teen, so younger children can have the structure they need, and teens can have predictability with flexibility. 

  • Establish blocks of time for online schooling and homework, as well as blocks of time for unstructured play for younger children and free time for older children and teens.
  • Set bedtimes and wake-up times. 
  • Have meals at set times, or as near to them as possible. 
  • Create morning and nighttime rituals, such as bathing, brushing teeth, and getting dressed for the day or for bed. 
  • If there are certain chores to be done at certain times, such as taking the trash out to the curb, work those into the routine. 
  • Keep family schedules posted in a high traffic area so that everyone knows what to expect from the day. 
  • Model your own routines and how you plan each day to show what it looks like in practice. 

It’s just as important to model flexibility, especially in times where the only predictable thing is unpredictability. With younger children, it may be more difficult to teach them how to manage their expectations and to adapt to change. Spend time considering what would happen if different portions of the routine become interrupted so that if it happens, you already have a plan for how to adapt.

A resilient life is made up of various daily, and weekly, and even seasonal routines that can be counted on for stability. Which routines could your child have input on or control over?

  • Personal Hygiene
  • Meal planning
  • Schoolwork
  • Homework
  • Pet care
  • Housekeeping
  • Laundry

How these routines have been shaken up in the past, and how your family has adapted? Did you ever have a washing machine break down and have to shift how your family handled laundry?

For older children and teens, spend time discussing with them how they might react to different changes to their routine. Allow them to establish their own contingency plans to help them retain the feeling of control.

It’s not always possible to plan for a schedule change in advance, though, and some children and teens may be more sensitive to schedule changes than others. Keep an open dialogue about how schedule changes make us all feel and what we can do to help us feel better about these upheavals.

View the previous articles in our Building Resilience series here:
Part 1: Keep Things in Perspective
Part 2: Letting It Go

View the next article in our Building Resilience series here:
Part 4: Goal Setting

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