Day Forty-Seven: On Routines and Motherhood Generally

One thing I pay attention to when we move to a new place is what constitutes a normal routine for people.*  I try to notice what individual people and families do, but I also try to get a sense of the broader routine.  For example, in the midwest, people tend to put their children down to bed on the early side, probably because they start their day on the early side, and tend to come home from work on the earlier side.  On the east coast, at least where we were, people tended to stay up later, wake up later, and come home from work later.  It took us a while to adjust, and truthfully, we never fully did.**  I am a morning person, but with a new baby, it takes time to get back to anything normal, and there really wasn’t time for that.  Also, I just didn’t think it would be great for the kids to stay up late.  I read some study somewhere some years ago that emphasized the importance of children getting as much sleep as possible because it helps their brains develop connections and form memories or something along those lines.  I don’t remember the details, I’m not a scientist, but obviously I thought it was important enough to remember the general idea.

About the same time I read that article, I read another one on the importance of routines.  The argument was something like, “kids need to know they have stability, and the best way to do that is to stick to a set of predictable routines.”  Fine.  I came up with a bedtime routine that has been mostly the same for almost seven years, with a few tweaks here or there as children were added and children grew up, but it really hasn’t changed much.  I hoped it would give my children a sense of security, especially given the number of changes they’ve faced, and I think it has done that.

I’m not saying every night things are exactly the same.  We read different books, we do different stretches and yoga poses, sometimes the bathroom routine comes after the books, because we were just too excited to read it to take a break, sometimes we add a special activity.  If we have a special occasion or a movie night, often we do a very abbreviated version of the routine, and if it’s an extra special night and we stay up late traveling or exploring Disney World, we don’t do the routine at all.  For the most part though, the end of every night looks pretty much the same.

Our morning routine has varied more over the years, but there is a recognizable pattern to how things are done, and when school is in session and HW is working, we are much more structured.  Daily routines vary, because we have different activities depending on the day, but there is a predictable order, so that while Tuesday looks different than Thursday, and Wednesday looks different than Sunday, Tuesday looks a lot like the last Tuesday, which looks a lot like the next Tuesday, and the Tuesday after that.

I always thought this was a good thing, until I was talking recently with another mom who knows about these things, and she was telling me the new theory is that we are making our kids too rigid, and they are struggling to adapt to change.  I think this is somehow tied to a fear our children won’t be able to compete with the Chinese.

The new theory emphasizes consistency in love and discipline, but significantly altering routines on a regular basis.  Now, again, it would be tough to argue that my children don’t adapt well to change, they do it beautifully, but it did give me pause.

I would say I worried the most about our oldest having enough structure.  There were so many changes, and we spent so much time with just the two of us, it would have been easy to just say forget it and do whatever we felt like doing at any given moment.  It was important to me, and is important to me, that she always feel safe, and I thought keeping a predictable routine was the way to go.  I couldn’t control, and did not want to control, everything, but I could create safety in routine for her, so I did.  And I would say she is the most concerned about things having an order, and sticking to a routine.  Maybe that’s just her personality, or maybe it’s because she’s the oldest, but I can’t help but wonder if it’s related to my efforts, and of course, worry that one day she will have a harder time with change.

On the other hand, our oldest son is not concerned with routines outside of making sure he has snacks and meals at predictable times and is able to sleep his normal amount, and I tried to make sure he had predictable routines too.  And maybe when the younger two get older they will be more concerned with routines than their oldest sister, and my youngest son will never want to nap in the car, because he will remember all of those mornings and afternoons of dropping off and picking up and dozing in his seat, only to be rudely awakened by the sound of noisy big kids.  Or maybe they will all grow up to be extremely rigid and hate change of any kind, or maybe they will all grow up to be total hippies and think I was some kind of tyrant.  It’s tough to say at this point.

I don’t know if routines are good or bad.  I do think, as with all things, a middle ground is the best way to go, but I’m not an expert, and who knows what my children will think about this in twenty or thirty years.  They might say the middle ground was some sort of idiotic cop out, resulting from my lack of early childhood expertise and lack of confidence.

What I do know is that the debate about routines is just one more opportunity for mothers to feel like we are doing something wrong, and we can’t win, whatever we do.  I’ve written about this before, and I’m sure I will write about it again, because it’s true, but people don’t say it enough, and they forget it even if they do.  Someone will always think I have too many routines and I follow them too strictly, someone else will always think I don’t have enough and I don’t follow the ones I do have, and if you’re honest, you probably thought both of those things, maybe at the same time, when you read about our routines a few paragraphs ago (“The same routine for seven years? What a ****ing lunatic!” “Skipping the routine to go to Disney World?  Where are her priorities?”).  And even if by some miracle, I manage to get the routine part exactly right, according to one person, there will be hundreds of other things that person thinks I should do differently.

That sounds a little whiny.  I don’t mean it to be.  This is not a “poor me, everyone beats up on moms, waaahhh” kind of post, it’s more of an attempt to recognize the reality and figure out how to best deal with it.

This is the truth.  I think I am a better mother to my children than any other person on this planet could ever possibly be.  Even if someone else spent years taking child development classes and writing books and had billions of dollars to spend, I believe, with all of my heart, that I love my children more and better than any other person possibly could.  I don’t know if I’m a better mother than you are, but I know I am a better mother to my children than you could ever be.  And I believe I am doing things the right way.  If I didn’t, I would find a way to do them differently.

If I thought being a working mom was the best fit for our family, I would go back to work.  If I thought it would be better for our family to live in Oregon, we would move to Oregon.  If I thought it would be healthier for them to eat vegan, we would eat vegan.  If I thought letting them watch hours of television would improve their lives, I would plug them in.  If I thought breastfeeding didn’t matter, I would have saved myself months of discomfort and years of inconvenience.  I do things the way I do things, because I have spent a lot of time and energy figuring out what works best for our family.  I believe most moms operate the same way.  I trust other moms to raise their children in the manner that works best for both the mom and the child, and the family as a whole, until that mother gives me reason to believe that is not the case.

That doesn’t mean we all care about the same things, or read the same books, but even if we did, it is still possible we would come to different conclusions about the best options for our families.  There is no one right way for every family to do things.  There are pros and cons to everything, compromises and sacrifices, and every person, every family, has to navigate a unique path.

For my children, right now, routine with flexibility is the best approach.  This approach seems to work well for them and it has the added benefit of closely resembling life in the real world.  Or at least the “real world” I imagine they will one day live in.  If something else works better for you, and you’ve thought about it, and tried different things, or even if you’re just doing things the way your mom did things, because you think that was exactly right, I think that’s great, and I would love to hear all about it, with the understanding that I will probably continue to think my way is best for my family, and your way is probably best for your family.

*I pay attention to a lot of different things, and I pay especially close attention when we are new, because I think it helps me figure out how to do things.  For example, if the sky is clear, but I notice everyone walking around with umbrellas, well, I’m going to go ahead and assume they know something I don’t know, and bring my umbrella.

**I am still not certain how things work around here.  It seems like every person is on a different schedule, but it seems like people shoot for the middle, with a slight lean toward doing things on the later side.