Are you a planner or do you prefer to wing it?
I’m a little bit of both mainly because life with kids is never predictable, but I like to know the flow of the day. I think it helps everyone to what to expect throughout the day- and MAYBE just MAYBE stop all the asking for snacks. It’s truly painful.
Here are a few thing I think about when I make my schedules:
- Use time blocks instead of hard, set times. Nothing ever happens at the same time or the time you want it to with kids. Making a timed schedule will only frustrate you more.
- Start with the things that don’t change. Naps don’t change. Lunch and Dinner times don’t usually change. Things that are normally about the same time every single day. If you have older kids, you may not have as many as those with younger ones. LUCKY.
- Think about what YOU need to do. Some of you are still working from home or just needing to get normal daily things done. Figure out when those need to happen.
- Schedule free time and screen time around what YOU need to get done. Make their down time work for when you need.
- Try to plan one fun thing for you to do with the kids during the day. Quantity doesn’t matter, but being intentional with the time you have will make the biggest difference in your mom guilt and their nagging. You can even label this “Mom Time” on the schedule so they know that this time is set aside for just them. Use my activity sheets to help give you some ideas of things to do with them!
- Create different schedules for different kinds of days. For example, I make for one for days I work and Brian’s on dad duty. This is super helpful for the kids and Brian to know how the day should go. It allows Brian to manage working from home and the kids.
- For the love of all of our sanity, put a hard time on snack time, that way the kids know that they are not getting snacks unless it says that certain time. Can you tell my kids ask for too many snacks?!
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