Last week I talked about routines and how they have really helped my family and my children. The challenge I have found with routines is that sometimes they cause children (and adults) to become stuck. We found this out the hard way one day when my son was little.
Weekends used to be really hard on our family because of the uncertainty of schedules so we would schedule the weekend and write it down for everyone. This worked well until the one weekend we had scheduled a trip to our local Zoo and then it rained. We couldn’t go to the Zoo and the reason was very logical, but it still through my son into anxiety for the entire day!
It was then that we realized we had to start teaching him how to manage change, especially unexpected change. We, as parents, started scheduling schedule changes into our week to prepare our son for the unexpected changes that inevitably arise. It worked!
Our son is now able to manage unexpected changes better (not always perfectly) and move past them. Just this week we changed the brand of paper towel we use in the house and he noticed and had no idea what to do because the sheets were now smaller – yes these little things throw him off. He took a deep breath and was able to figure it out.
Yes that example seems small, but this is the sort of thing that can throw off his routine and used to throw off his entire day, but now he is able to manage change better since we taught him how.