COVID-19 Blog Series: New Routines for Children
A major change that has happened since the start of the COVID-19 is the closure of schools. With schools being closed, it means that millions of children are staying home. Some school districts have assignments that children are completing at home and some are attempting to do online education where possible. Each school district is struggling to find the best solution for the students in their areas, and this, unfortunately, takes time and some experimentation.
We don’t have control over what the school districts are doing to continue the education of children. However, we do have control of what is happening at home. Here are some things to keep in mind while your children are at home.
Talk to your child about a routine. It’s important to have a routine, especially since it brings structure to your life. For children, it’s even more critical, because it makes their life experience predictable. With all the changes going on, it’s hard to know what’s going to happen next. A lot of fear can come from not knowing what to expect or being able to predict what a day will look like.
Be realistic with educational goals. Yes, your child went to school for 6-8 hours a day for five days a week. Yes, your child woke up very early in the morning to go to school. However, all of those routines will not work if you are stuck at home. Your child will likely not be able to engage in educational activities for that long, especially since the normal school day has a lot of interactions with peers and adults. These interactions aren’t available anymore. If you set a few hours for school work or study, expect to have several breaks in between. Generally, within a 1 hour block, it is good to have 45-50 minutes of study with a 10-15 minutes of break. After 2 or 3 of these hours, a longer break is helpful.
Schedule fun time. Allow there to be scheduled time where your child is free to do as they want. Whether it is to play video games, watch tv, read their favorite books, or play with their toys. Setting specific times for them to engage in it, uninterrupted, helps children know when to have fun and when to work.
Do something together. There is a great value in doing activities as a family. I have heard many families concerned about the amount of time their children spend on phones or other devices. Parents tend to tell the child to stop using their device so much. My response to the parent is, what should they do instead? A family activity time together is a great way to connect and help students stay off their devices. Play a card game together, have a quiet reading time together, put puzzles together, learn a new skill, teach your child how to cook something.
Be consistent. Perhaps the most important tip in this list is to be consistent. Habits cannot grow without consistency. If you are finding that it is too effortful to be consistent, then scale back your schedules. If you can’t get your child to do school work for 3 hours a day, then shoot for 1 or 2. Then see if they can build up from there. It’s more important that it happens regularly at the same time than the child doing it for a long time.
