Episode 89 - Parenting Win! When Routines for Kids Work - Seeing it Pay Off with Independence and Responsibility with Tweens & Teens - Intentional Edit

The routines we intentionally set in our homes when kids are young help them with confidence and independence as they get older. Small changes in our daily habits will be beneficial with kids of all ages. Find out what you can do at home today to help your kids be less forgetful and develop age appropriate responsibility.

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Full Episode Transcription (not edited):

The routines we intentionally set in our homes when kids are young, help them with confidence and independence as they get older. Small changes in our daily habits will be beneficial with kids of all ages. And of course, when you make these intentional changes to your daily habits to get an end result of something that you are trying to accomplish or trying to maintain, you’re setting up these routines and systems within your home with intention. They have benefits at every single age, but what’s really fun is when you can fast forward to a couple years after you have done these things and see what it does for your kids. See the independence that it brings in the tweens and teens as they get a little bit older and the responsibilities that they take on easily that are really effortless because it’s just a part of their life.

(00:51):

It’s the habit, it’s the way that they do things. We are talking about all that today. In this episode, in episode 89, we are going to discuss what you can do at home today to help your kids be less forgetful and develop age appropriate responsibility that will carry on from whatever the age they are today into the tweens, teens, and adulthood. Hey moms, welcome to the Intentional Edit Podcast. Do you wanna stop feeling overwhelmed and finally get your home organized? Do you find yourself up late at night worrying about how you are going to get everything done and not drop the ball? You are wondering where to start and what to do. There is never enough time in the day the piles of laundry are building up and it’s already time for after school activities, homework, snacks, and carpool. Oh, again, I’m Lauren. I too want an organized clean home where my family can make long lasting memories and be present in the moment.

(01:45):

Feeling like there’s never enough time to complete all the daily tasks is exhausting. Simplicity all around a healthy meal on the table at dinnertime and a family that contributes to the chores really is attainable. Stop telling yourself that you have to do it all or it will never get done, or that picky eaters will never allow for a complaint free dinner. In this podcast, you will learn exactly how to declutter, implement systems and maximize routines that remove the overwhelming, unorganized parts of life, bringing simplicity to your life and home. Come on, It’s time to create a life you love.

(02:22):

Hey there. Welcome to episode 89. Thank you so much for joining me for another Intentional Edit podcast episode. I’m happy to have your here. I put up a question box on an Instagram story a couple days ago. I was basically asking you to share your struggle. So, or let me know what questions do you have, what’s on your mind and one thing that is still coming up as a reoccurring topic. Well, there’s a couple things. One thing is the issue with where to start organizing when you feel that overwhelmed, bogged down feeling at home because there’s too much stuff, there’s too much clutter, there’s a lack of organization, there are lack of systems and routines. What can you do about it? You know, you can do something. You have bits and pieces of information that are helpful, but where do you start? That’s something that is coming up over and over and over again.

(03:15):

So I’m going to record an episode that will come out next week to talk about that. Make sure you listen to episode. It’ll be 91. If you’re feeling like that and you’re wanting to know where do I start? How do I begin? I’m about to have a breakdown here. I’m barely holding it together. What can I do that I’m going to record? And that will be out for episode 91 because so many people are struggling that it’s a reoccurring thing. And until you get the right process down and things in place and truly purge and declutter and eliminate the things from your life that are not serving you, this is going to be the pattern. This is going to be the norm. So we’re gonna get deep into that next week. And the other thing that keeps coming up is frustration in the evening hours, late afternoon at the end of the day, deciding what to do.

(04:07):

You are pulled in too many directions, feeling guilt around constantly picking up food or having frozen meals for dinner, barely being able to have dinner, not having dinner together a lot even when you’re home numbing out vegging in front of a tv, or most of the time it’s on a phone screen with kids and adults when you could have dinner together and you could have more meals that have nutrition that are better for your family. And you know the importance and you have the desire of sitting down together at least a couple times a week and having dinner is a family, but the exhaustion is real. You feel overwhelmed and you don’t know how to get into this routine. So the answer to that is honestly to sign up for the meal planning minicourse, that is available unintentional edit.com. The course solves all of those problems.

(04:55):

It is so inexpensive, it’s a minicourse. You can finish it in a couple hours a week, it just in one week. If you have a couple hours, you can finish it in one session. If you have 20 or 30 minutes to designate to it and a few different times, you can get through it in a week or two. And then you will have a two week reusable meal plan and grocery list completed for your family that you can use over and over again and have dinners that you will actually make that your family actually likes and that the kids will actually eat in the meal plan. When I came up with this process, I have been doing this with my own family and teaching and sharing about it for over eight years. So I know that it works and it can work with any family because it’s custom to you.

(05:41):

It’s custom to your needs for your individual family for the stage of life you are in right now. So if you were one of the people that sent in those responses to the questions or sent me a message because you needed a longer space to write, then what the question box allowed this evening hour, late afternoon dinner time thing is a struggle in your household. Sign up for the master meal planning course. It’s super easy. It’s not a course that is going to give you recipes and tell you what you have to eat and what has to be eaten on certain days. You are coming up with a list that actually is full of food that your family likes, Easy meals that you can make in busy stages of life. It allows you to know what to make for dinner every single night for two weeks.

(06:30):

There’s flexibility within that. You pick and choose during those two weeks, but you create this plan that is done for you. You cut down on the time that you go to the grocery store. It significantly saves you time because you are not going to the grocery store all the time. You are getting what you need for the two weeks and you are eating that food. And then you repeat the process. It eliminates the struggle with you having to come up with what are you gonna cook for dinner at night or just pulling out frozen chicken nuggets one more time. Tossing ’em on a paper plate and letting your kids eat all over the couch or in their rooms or wherever those days if you don’t want that. If you want to be more intentional with dinner time and have some dinners together while your kids are young and at home, this helps with that.

(07:19):

Not only does it save you time, like I already mentioned, it saves you money because you are not going to the grocery store all the time. You’re not buying extra things, you’re sticking to your list, you’re buying what you need and you’re eating what you need so you don’t have to toss out expired items and you’re not wasting a ton of food anymore. You’re actually eating what you purchased to make for those two weeks. And the stress with dinner time is pretty much eliminated once you get in the groove with this and you start doing it. So you can find all of this information in a link in the podcast description. You scroll down below where you’re listening to this podcast, you will see the meal planning link or go to intentional edit.com/meal planning course. You can find all the information there, sign up. It does not take that much time.

(08:04):

It is a mini course. It is made to be fast, get to the point, not have a lot of fluff. It has all the information you need. You can make this meal plan in a very short amount of time, do a schedule audit so you know what’s realistic and what your family can have success with. Get your dinner menu done, get your grocery list done, and have this reusable meal plan to use over and over and over again. Like I said, I have been doing it for eight years, so I know that it works. So go there. Intentional edit.com/meal planning course. Get all the information, sign up. You can join our Facebook community. That’s for students only, and I will answer your questions in there as you’re going through the course, but if you follow along, it is so easy. You will have this meal plan made in no time.

(08:49):

Those were the two big things. So two things for you to do the meal planning course, if that’s one thing you’re struggling with, and go next week, next Friday and listen to episode 91. If you need to know where to start with the home organization, the decluttering, just how to start to get your home under control if that is what you’re struggling with. Now let’s talk about the focus of this episode. Why should you not be doing everything for your kids? You want your kids to be responsible. You want them to be independent and have success and to thrive on their own as they get older. You wanna teach kids responsibility now and then you will have these big parenting wins. I had one that kind of reminded me that I wanted to talk about this in an episode and then I forgot about it for a couple months.

(09:36):

So now I’m recording this because a few things have come up when our kids are struggling, when are we have things going on in our homes that are causing struggle, they’re causing irritation, they’re causing frustration, whatever it is. It could be getting out the door on time in the morning. It could be that the house looks like a bomb went off all the time because there is just constant stuff all over cups, on the tables, on the counters, backpacks, homework assignments, art projects that come home from school, shoes that never make it into the closet. Stuff is everywhere. You don’t have those systems and routines in place to put things back. Maybe the things in your home do not have a storage location, a home within your home. All of these things can be stopped and you can solve these problems by implementing systems. And you hear me use the word systems, routines and habits almost interchangeably.

(10:33):

When you intentionally set up a system or a routine to solve a problem and you do it enough, it becomes the thing you do over and over. All of a sudden it is a habit. It’s just what you do every single day. It becomes the habit. It was intentionally set up as a new system in your home, as a new way of doing thing. As as a new routine. It might involve the entire family, It might involve just one person. After you do it over and over again, it becomes a habit. If you have a home that doesn’t allow shoes, and that was a new thing that was established at one time, you made an intentional decision to stop wearing shoes in the home. It probably wasn’t perfect. It probably didn’t happen a hundred percent of the time as you were now enforcing this new routine.

(11:20):

And that was okay. Of course there’s leeway when we make a change, but eventually it became a habit. Now it would be an extremely rare occurrence if the shoes were worn inside the home because you had a reason for not wearing shoes in the home. It was important to you. You made this decision an intentional decision. You put a system in place and now the routine when you walk through the doors to take off the shoes, place them in the basket, put them on a shelf, put them wherever they go, that is just what you do. It’s the routine, it’s the habit. So what are the things, What are some things that have come up in conversations lately that I think would be helpful to you? One of them is for a kid, a tw, a teen who is chronically late. One parent I was talking to said she decided she just wasn’t going to be part of the morning wake up anymore.

(12:12):

She said, I bought an alarm block clock and the alarm clock goes off. I made sure the first couple mornings that they were getting up, when the alarm clock went off, it was set across from the room. They had to get outta bed. But there was a time that that child was having a lot of frustration and a morning meltdown daily when she would go in to wake them up and it was causing confrontation and an unpleasant morning. So the solution was, and we, I talk a lot about problems and solutions. You have to identify what is the problem that is causing the frustration that is causing the struggle in your home. And their struggle, their problem was caused because the, the routine that they had wasn’t working. The problem was the morning meltdown, the morning frustration, the unkind words that were coming out, the unpleasant events happening around waking up and getting up in the morning.

(13:10):

So you could do a couple things. Could bedtime be earlier so it’s not as difficult to wake up in the morning? Absolutely. Maybe that doesn’t work. Maybe the activities don’t allow them to go to bed. Maybe it takes a while to wind down, but the alarm clock was the solution. And sometimes we try things and they don’t work. And that’s why I am a huge advocate of gathering your information, doing your research, finding a coach or a resource that has the knowledge that can help you and that can see the bigger picture. Because when you go work with a coach or you work with someone that is not in your home, they have a large amount of information that they can pull from and they are looking from an outside viewpoint. They’re not stuck in that struggle. And in that frustration, it’s kind of like a way that they’re the devil’s advocate.

(14:02):

They can play that role. They can give you a number of scenarios and a number of solutions to try. And you try those for a few weeks and they either work or they don’t work. But you have to put in the effort and you have to try for a length of time and then analyze, is this working should, do I keep going with it or do I need to go to plan B or plan C? In this situation, the alarm clock worked. So I love that. By the time your kids are teenagers, they really should be in control of a lot of their schedule and know what time they have to leave to get places on time to arrive early enough that they can change their clothes and be ready for their sport or get out their papers and be ready when the class starts in the morning, how long does it take to walk through campus?

(14:53):

If school starts at eight, you can’t get out of the car at 7 59 and make it to your class across campus. Time management, talking about this, coming up with the solution. If your kids are older and maybe if your kids are younger, implementing that alarm clock thing. So it just becomes the norm. They wake up, you can still have a nice breakfast if you do that together in the morning. You can play whatever kind of role. But having them take some responsibility for waking up and getting up on time to get to where they need to be and having them figure out how long does it take for me to get ready and to eat breakfast and to brush my teeth and be fully ready to leave, and how long does it take to get someplace? That’s one thing that has come up. Another thing that was a really fun conversation that I kind of helped this mom through some of these struggles, and this has now been, this was about two years ago, and we reconnected, but she had a child, her son with ADHD and everything.

(15:54):

She was learning from the counselors and the teachers and all these suggestions that she was trying were not working. And her son was forgetting his backpack or forgetting a folder or significant school paper or something that he needed for school almost every single day. If he didn’t forget something, it was rare. She had tried to do the thing, and this is what the school was recommending, where if he forgot his backpack or he forgot homework or papers or a folder or a book he needed, she was not to bring it to school anymore. That was helping a little bit, but it wasn’t solving the problem. So we came up with some other things and the other things that we decided, one was to put a bright colored note on the garage door that re, which is the door, they leave the house and that note reminded him to get the backpack.

(16:46):

It was at his eye level, it was very bright and the note would change. It said, Do you have your backpack? But there would also be something else on it. It could be if the ba, if he brought the backpack to school, he got 15 minutes of whatever his favorite game was that he could play after school. That reward, if he brought his backpack for so many days, like she might say, four days in a row, if you bring it today, we can go to get a scoop of ice cream after school. There were rewards involved with this. I don’t believe that she’s doing the rewards anymore. Now it’s just the note card. It’s the bright color note card as the final reminder. The one thing that is probably the most helpful for this is the backpack was placed by the door. And you hear me talk about this all the time, place the things by the door when they are done being used in your home and they live there until they need to leave.

(17:38):

But that wasn’t solving the problem. So the shoes were placed on the backpack. The zipper was left open slightly and the shoes were sticking out of the the backpack so that every single morning when he would go to put on his shoes, and this was a shoe, a shoe free household, when he would go put on his shoes by the back door, the backpack was there. That was the last thing he did. He could put on his shoes, grab his backpack and leave. The other thing was an alarm was set on his phone and the alarm went off with its own music. It was different than the other alarms that he used on the phone. And it reminded him to get the backpack. When the alarm went off, the alarm was labeled on the phone as backpack. So he had three things and she has said these significantly helped.

(18:26):

And now going on about 18 months, almost two years later this school year, he has been exceptionally successful with bringing the backpack and has not forgot the backpack yet. This year it did not work perfectly from the very beginning it helped, but there were still times he would forget. And as time went on over the course of a couple months, then he stopped forgetting. And now we’re new, fresh into the school year, and the new teachers don’t even know that this has been a huge issue his entire life with intention, with trial and error, this problem is solved and then you can move on to the next issue. What can we do intentionally to solve the next problem? One thing that I have done for a long time, even before I had a baby, I was doing this, I was picking out my outfits ahead of time.

(19:17):

I would pick out my outfits for the week based on what the calendar was. They would be ready for me and in the morning I could just grab the outfit, get dressed simply. So I have always done that. My daughter continued to do that when she was younger. We would pick out the outfits together and then to take that even up a notch, we would also put in anything in this cubby. It was a cubby that had five designated spots that hung from her closet rod. The top one was Monday, the next one was Tuesday, the next one was Wednesday. So on through the week, the outfits will be put in there. During elementary school on PE days when you need sneakers, there would not be a mistake. Sneakers would go in with the outfit for sneaker day. Other shoes could go in on the days that there was not pe.

(20:02):

If there was a day where kids have to bring an instrument to school or something extra, and that only happens once or twice a week, you put that in the cubby or you put, if it’s a big instrument, you put a note card that lets your child know this is what happens on this day. Well, I have seen that play out in my own house because as kids get older, they usually continue to do these things that work. If something is working, they’re not going to change it because it is just a habit. And I’ve recommended this for so many families, kids and adults both do it. And there are a lot of meltdowns that happen with teenagers and what to wear to school, feeling like they don’t have anything to wear, but they have a closet full of clothing. And picking out the outfits ahead of time can be extremely helpful.

(20:51):

With this, the, at the beginning of the school year, we have to reanalyze our schedules and do we go home before we drop our kids off at activities? Do they take a bus? Do they carpool? If they carpool and they go from school to an activity, then the bags for that after school activity have to be packed, have to go with them, there has to be a snack. All of those things. And every single year or even season, if you’re playing sports or if you’re in a play, the weeks that the play practices in force, you’re constantly re reevaluating your schedule and changing what has to happen after school. So my daughter had decided based on the timeframe that we didn’t have enough time to get home. She could probably run in the house, change her clothes, and then we could, I could drop her off at dance.

(21:41):

But at the beginning of this school year, she, we were like, You know what? We’re not gonna do that. It doesn’t make sense. We’re just gonna go straight to dance. So on the first day, school had started a little bit earlier and it was the first day that we had to do this, and we got in the car and I was like, Okay, so I’m picking you up and I’m just gonna take you right to dance. Right? And I had planned to bring her a snack, so we had that under control. When I dropped her off at school, I was like, Wait a minute. I must need to get her stuff at home and put it in the car. I went in her room and her, her dance bag and like a change of clothes and stuff wasn’t in there. That was kind of a little strange.

(22:13):

But then I looked in the car, Well, she had already put her dance bag in the car. She had put an extra bag with a change of clothes. All of the things, the water bottle that she would need that comes from having responsibilities when you were little and being prepared. I didn’t remind her. We didn’t have a conversation about that, which probably we should have just to be on the same page because she was doing these things younger and in the routine and looking at the days ahead and planning out the, the outfits and the clothing and knowing the necessities for the week. Then she was able to do this and it, even though we didn’t talk about it, she put those things in the car. They were waiting for her. I picked her up. I had the snack that I told her I would bring, and she ate the snack on the way to the studio and had everything she needed to be dropped off.

(23:04):

And that is the way it has worked the entire school year. We’ve talked about it now. But that is when you get to have these little parenting wins because something that you did to instill a little habit at one time, you can see it pay off as your kids get older. You, you usually see the benefits initially after a few weeks of doing something and you notice the change if you take time to look and you can see how this change is making a positive impact on your family. But doing these little things is, like I mentioned in the last scenario with the alarm to remind of the backpack putting the shoes in the backpack. So he had to take the shoes out and bring the backpack with him. Or in this situation, by us always preparing and planning ahead and picking out the outfits and packing the bags for the activities over the weekend, getting them ready, then she was able to just do this completely on her own.

(23:59):

Another thing that is really cool to watch when we help our kids and we involve our kids in responsibilities and independence. Another mom I was talking to had taken the time and been intentional about making easy dinners with her kids. And the oldest one had taken an interest in cooking. So now that she is back working, she works two days a week away from the family and gets home kind of late in the evening. The oldest one cooks dinner twice a week and they have gone, They use actually the meal planning system that I talk about with the reusable meal plan. And the oldest one decided four meals that she wanted to make. And so four of the meals that they make over two weeks have the groceries that are on the list so that she can make those meals. And mom does the grocery shopping, the groceries are there, and she is in charge of two meals each night and she loves it.

(24:57):

She would prefer to make dinner all every single night, but she’s not home like this is something that she truly loves. When we involve her kids in things, sometimes they develop and they grasp on two things that we didn’t even know would be an interest for them and something that they truly enjoy doing. I’m gonna leave you with those really four concepts or those four different ideas. We know that routines are important, and when a routine is successful and it becomes something we do over and over, it becomes the habit, the habit that we’re doing every single day. It becomes easy. It’s simple. It may not be easy at the beginning when we are trying to make a change, it can be difficult. It doesn’t always work a hundred percent of the time every single day. But when we keep going and it’s important to us, we eventually have these benefits of that.

(25:51):

We have the benefits of the new routine. That becomes a habit. We put these systems in place with intention to solve a problem. They become part of our habits, our daily life. We don’t even think about them anymore. I have really enjoyed seeing now in my own house, and of course I get to see this with clients and with friends and family that I work with. But I’m seeing now that I have a high school student, the payoff of some of the things that you do when you take extra time and you set systems up and you set these good routines up when your kids are younger. Then as they get older, you can see the payoff where they have the independence and they take the full responsibility on their own to do things. And that is the point. We want to have kids that can have success and be responsible and be independent and have success on their own when we are not with them and be functioning members of society and contribute positively to our communities.

(26:45):

So I hope that some of those ideas were helpful to you. You can always leave me a question specifically for something you are struggling with with your family, and I will answer it on a Tip Tuesday episode. You can just go to intentional edit.com. There’s a record now button that clicks up, and all you have to do is press that button and leave a message for me like you would leave a voicemail, a voice message on a phone, and I will help solve your struggles or answer your questions on a future episode of a Tip Tuesday. If you’re struggling with meal planning, please go click on the meal planning link, sign up for the meal planning mini course, and you can get your two week reusable meal planning grocery list done so that you can use it over and over and you don’t have to stress and you don’t have to think about what’s for dinner or what you forgot at the grocery store or what you need to order on your next grocery order.

(27:36):

And of course, make sure you listen to episode 91, which will be out next Friday if you feel like you are on the brink of a breakdown and really frustrated and don’t know where to start with all of your routines, decluttering, and home organizing projects. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I will meet you back here next week for another episode of the Intentional Edit podcast. Thank you for listening to the Intentional Edit podcast. If you found today’s episode valuable, tell your friends about it by taking a screenshot, sharing it on social, and tagging me at intentional edit. I’ll be back soon with another episode. In the meantime, find me@intentionaledit.com and be sure to follow intentional edit on social platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook. To ensure you catch future episodes, click the subscribe or follow button now. I am grateful for a five star rating and review from you. Be sure to let me know what you liked about this episode and what you want me to cover in the future.

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Lauren is the founder of Intentional Edit, a home organization and lifestyle company focused on consciously editing to create efficient and organized spaces. Lauren believes that a functional home that looks and feels good has a positive influence on all aspects of life. Creating systems that allow for the home to function more efficiently, therefore, eliminating most of the clutter and chaos is her priority. While trends come and go organization is always in style!

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