Bringing Sanity and Well-Being Through Rituals and Routines By Mary Ann Abbott, Parent Consultant, North Seattle Community College So, it was a hard day! There were lots of possibilities as to why. The daily commitments of work and family life! Was it the morning frenzy of getting out the door? Was it not enough sleep and eating meals on the run? Being off-schedule? How about too many evening commitments this week and too many babysitters? Was it just plain weariness? Polly Greenberg, grandmother and Early Childhood expert, believes it's routines and rituals that promote sanity and well-being with children in family life. "RITUALS AND ROUTINES ARE EMOTIONAL AND SOCIAL 'FENCES' AND TEMPLATES." "Knowing what to do (being able to predict what's coming next) makes a child feel competent -- and feeling competent is an important part of emotional contentment. This is what rituals and routines do: They help make your child feel happy and good about herself. They foster your child's social and emotional growth." A Prevention Tool An antidote for a hard day starts with prevention-a ritual or a routine in place. Most families have guidelines, but sometimes parents hit a non-compliant attitude from a child, and they are tempted to throw out the guideline, to suspend it -"just this once." Parents should hang in there. Planning for rules, routines, and rituals and then following them really helps everyone's well-being. With routines/rituals in place, the daily hum-drum, have-to activities --from depositing dirty clothes in the hamper to getting dressed in the morning (before breakfast, before TV, before coming to the living area)-slide into action before anyone has realized it. Rituals/routines can pave the way for introducing necessary changes and help cope with the unexpected events which inevitably occur. Help With Stress Days can be filled with moments of great joy and strong positive emotions. They can also be filled with times of gritting one's teeth, working very hard to be patient, and trying to remember what the expert said about gaining a child's compliance and the proper way to interact with a non-cooperative child! And, stress! Positive stress, such as hurrying to a Seattle Children's Theatre play. Negative stress, like coaxing a child to wear ruffles to the wedding, instead of her gymnastic outfit. Polly Greenberg shares the advantages a rituals and routines framework can bring: "Routines and rituals provide people with behavior boundaries, procedures for solving problems, prompts for acting appropriately, patterns for celebrations, and ways for coping with the emotions and social implications attending life's landmarks events such as losing loved ones (funerals) and creating the next generations of families (weddings)." All people need routines, from birth and on to old age! Hold on to them, and do them, even on tough days!
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