I am admittedly a fairly methodical person and rely on established routines and patterns in order to remain organized and productive. At home this consists of lot’s of lists and scheduling chores, errands and down time. At work that usually entailed repetition and a detailed schedule. However, I recently quit my “real” job and jumped off the cliff into building a private practice. Suddenly all of my routines, schedules and predictability had vanished and as a result I am feeling a bit unsettled. Time to build some new routines!
This notion of routine and predictability is an important consideration for our EI families. Children crave structure (no matter what they tell you!). I have met numerous families who claim to have no routine in their day so how can I embed my brilliant ideas? The answer is simple – even the least organized families still have some form of routine to their day. Start with the necessities – eating and sleeping. Everyone (hopefully) does those two things. I bet they also take a bath and maybe play outdoors. Bingo – now we are up to four routines. With a little investigation you can help parents see that there is structure in their family life and rich opportunities for embedding strategies.
So now it is your turn – have you tried recently to step outside the family room and venture into other routines or areas of the home? Was it comfortable for you? the mom? the child? Do you have questions about how to actually weave intervention throughout the day? Let’s get a conversation started – reply to this blog post!