Ah, routines and rituals…such comforts against the one universal truth that life is nothing but change. Our children seem to get this sooner than we parents. When they struggle as infants to get the day and night thing down, they are teaching us how important and soothing the predictable is when tired, hungry, cranky and the like. As toddlers, we watch in amazement as they doggedly line up their shoes, trucks or dolls in the face of a little uncertainty and in search of the reassuring symmetry of order. These are not simple entertainments, but powerful and effective coping strategies that, if we are lucky, they never quite give up. Some of the uses of the psychological calendar of anticipation and predictability:
• By 18 months: Children know the routines of everyday life and are very reassured by them: dressing, mealtimes, play, school, bath time, and finally bedtime with a story and a kiss. These are an antidote to the uncertainties of this period of rapid growth.
• By 24 to 26 months: Children have a reliable sense of the week’s rhythms, and appreciate the difference between a weekday and a weekend.
• By 42 months: Children begin to anticipate the predictable patterns of the year and its changing seasons, family gatherings, holidays, and birthdays. All the while they are soaking up the beginnings of culture and ethnic diversity in such vital rituals.
Routines and rituals are especially important (and sometimes hardest) to maintain when a child is ill, or the family is going through a stressful time. Routines around food, clothing, bathing, going to school and sleep can be soothing precisely because they don’t vary in the face of change. The ultimate routine or ritual is mealtime. Children learn about what matters in life in a regular, predictable, culture-rich and (one hopes) nutritious environment. Plan it and protect it.
Ultimately, they (and we) give up most of these early comforts, going the way of the blankie and binkie. The next generation of routine and ritual comforts owe their efficacy to these early and more primitive coping strategies. So honor and promote them while you may. They disappear all too soon.
Kyle D. Pruett, M.D. is an advisor for The Goddard School®. Dr. Pruett is an authority on child development who has been practicing child and family psychiatry for over twenty-five years. He is a clinical professor of child psychiatry at Yale University’s Child Study Center.
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