The Routines of Raising Children

boy playing with blocks

Suffice it to say that for any person who has been a parent for more than a year, the routines of raising children get boring. This is one of the facts of parenthood that other parents try to hide from you before you have kids, just to ensure you don’t change your mind. They may act all excited about attending birthday parties for toddlers who could care less on the weekends or pretend that doing endless heaps of laundry, constantly preparing and providing food to eager little mouths, changing diapers, cleaning up messes, and putting up with endless whining is incredibly wonderful. But the truth is, it all becomes routine, which translates quite easily into the humdrum and mundane! Ahhh, the joys of parenthood!

If you chronicled the life of a stay-at-home mom, it would be something like this: The alarm goes off at 6:30 a.m., and pretty much as soon as her feet hit the floor, the routine begins. Pack lunches, wake up kids, fix breakfast, turn the coffee on, help the kids get dressed, fix hair, and make sure all last-minute homework and forms are signed and ready to go. By the time that’s done, it’s not even 7 a.m., and she has to strap the whole crew into the car in hopes of getting them to school on time. If you’re lucky enough to have school buses, this step is replaced with getting them to the bus stop on time.

The Never-Ending Routine

After dropping the kids off, she comes home, feeds the baby, and cleans the house just enough to be able to utilize the kitchen and bathroom. Then, she messes both of them up again by giving the baby a bath. The routines of raising children involve a lot of clock-watching as well. The baby naps at a certain time, eats at precisely the same time every day, and of course, their favorite shows like Blue Clues or Dora come on just in time to allow mom to get a shower in.

Beyond that, it is hopefully nap time for the cranky baby, who has to be woken from a comfortable slumber every day just because she has older siblings. Then it’s time to do some more laundry, begin thinking about what to make for dinner, fold and put away clothes quietly so as not to wake the baby, and wait for the other kids to return home from school. This is when the routine takes a maddening turn. They are always starving, thirsty, tired, and cranky, and have much more homework to do than they should. The endless recounts of their day can be tiring, and mixed in with all of this chatter is incessant sibling arguing. Don’t forget that phone calls, visitors, or any other inconvenient disruptions put the stay-at-home mom behind schedule. There are bills to pay, emails to write, dogs to feed, yards to tidy up, and errands to run. Squeezing it all in is about as easy as squeezing every last bit of toothpaste from the tube. But somehow, it gets done.

The day isn’t even half over, and there’s still a long to-do list in the routine of raising children. If your children play extracurricular activities after school, it’s a matter of shuffling them around, enduring hours watching them do their thing, and worrying about getting home in time to put the baby down. Dinner needs to be served, which creates a whole new mess in the kitchen, and grimy kids need a bath, which completely messes up the bathroom again. Bedtime brings demands for tooth brushing, stories, snuggling, and hoping that they fall asleep quickly and don’t make an endless evening of popping into the living room saying, ‘I can’t sleep!’ This throws off the routine completely.

One of the problems with raising children is that any dent in the normal routine of the day comes with a hefty consequence. If the children aren’t fed on time, they want to eat junk and get cranky. This also throws off the entire shower and bedtime routine. If the baby doesn’t get a nap, she becomes miserable to be around. If the bills don’t get paid, the TV goes off—also miserable. If the kids don’t go to school because they’re sick, the routine has additions that seem impossible to fit in. Visits to the doctor, grocery store trips, and picking up any of the millions of things schools think children need each day all wreck the routine of raising children. Even so, it always happens. Realizing you’re out of toilet paper at 7 p.m., with your spouse still at work, means loading the kids into the car to get some, which also throws off the day’s routine. All of these mishaps cause frustration and anxiety for mom, because she knows there will be consequences—and 9 out of 10 times, that consequence is her lack of a shower, lack of time with her husband, lack of sleep, or lack of peace and quiet due to grumpy kids.

If only someone had shared this with you! What makes the routines of raising children so difficult is that usually, they become much more important to the parents than to the kids. So, when the routine has to be shuffled to accommodate something else, it causes parental stress. And even worse, all of this is fairly boring and non-stimulating for the adult in charge of it all. At the same time, it is exhausting, and adding some ‘me’ time, being autonomous, or even deciding to fly by the seat of your pants for a day comes with irrevocable consequences that can last for days. So, most decide that lunch dates with friends, walks by the lake, shopping adventures, or taking in an early movie are best forgotten treasures of life that will just have to wait. After all, the routine of raising children beckons day in and day out, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. This routine undoubtedly demands that as soon as mom’s feet hit the floor at 6 a.m., they are moving! And no matter how much she gets done in the day, all of it will have to be done over and over again, day in and day out—regardless.

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