As a parent, it’s vital that you teach your kids everything that they will need to know to become happy, healthy, successful adults. To do this, you’ll want to start out when they are young by instilling in them routines that are good for them and that they will be able to carry with them throughout the rest of their life.
To help you in developing these types of habits, here are three tips for creating healthy routines for your younger kids.
Make Your Routines Something They Can Actually Accomplish
While you might like the idea of routines where your kids can become more independent, you’ll need to be very careful about how you go about creating routines that are meant to build independence while your kids are still young. As a general rule, you won’t want to make a routine that your kids really can’t accomplish satisfactorily. If you do, your kids might end up becoming discouraged with their routines rather than being liberated by them.
With this in mind, try to create routines that aren’t that dependent on when and how something is accomplished. For example, if you want your kids to be able to wash themselves when taking a bath, make sure you’ve given them the tools to do this successfully. If you have to help them too much, they won’t really be learning what you want them to learn.
Give Your Child A Sense Of Responsibility
To create routines where your child can start to become more independent and learn how to do things on their own, you have to give them a sense of responsibility in accomplishing the thing set before them.
With responsibility given to your child as part of their routines and habits, you can help your child learn just how important it is to have healthy habits and how taking part in family routines and habits will make things easier for themselves and everyone else in your home and family.
Commit To Consistency
Just because there’s something that it might make sense to create a family routine or habit around doesn’t mean that putting this routine in place is going to be easy. Turning something into a habit rather than just something you do occasionally all has to do with being consistent in accomplishing this routine.
Even when life gets in the way and it might seem easier to just skip over this routine, being consistent when it’s challenging will help make this habit and routine even more concrete for your kids, which is exactly what you want.
If you want to create more healthy routines and habits for your kids, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you make this happen.