A chilled morning… NOT! - The importance of Routine by Rosie Lunn

Hi, I’m Rosie, I therapeutically parent my two adopted brothers, alongside my Mum.

Although I don’t always get things right, we have seen a huge improvement in our home

since using Therapeutic Parenting and so I am sharing some stories from our life.

Routine

Routine is always spoken about as being very important when being a Therapeutic

Parent and it is, I know it helps the children feel safe, it makes the world predictable

for them when they’ve had so much unpredictability in their past and it keeps

everyone on track, but sometimes it's boring! Now don’t get me wrong I am a

planner, I never do anything spontaneous and most of the time I like having the daily

routine to follow but this weekend it was a bit much. We had all been ill with nasty

colds and Saturday morning we just couldn’t be bothered. So, we had a ‘chilled’

morning. We ate breakfast in our pyjamas and didn’t fuss too much about the

housework. I drank my cup of tea and marvelled at how lovely it was for a one off to

not be so strict and scheduled. I even commented that we really should do this more

often.

This lasted for all of about 5 minutes before the house descended into chaos.

The children very quickly became incapable of hearing a single instruction I gave and

instead stared at me blankly. Then the screaming, shouting, and banging of

household objects came. I did try to gain back some calm but the stropping off and

swearing very quickly followed and I did lose my patience and shout (and then cried

because I felt so guilty).

And so, we repaired, started the morning again with our normal routine and

everything went a lot smoother (well as much as can be expected).

Sunday morning, I made sure to get up as normal and stick to the normal routine. So

learn from me- the idea of a chilled casual morning is far more appealing than the

reality of what it caused, and routine is actually very important.