After the holidays it is normal for the children to find it difficult to restore their schedules. Do not be alarmed! Here we tell you how to get everything back to normal.
On holidays everything is allowed: sleeping late, eating late, watching TV, playing, etc. However, with the return to school, it was time to recover the usual habits and return to more rigid schedules. But how can we do it?
Step by Step
1. Although routines are not new, we cannot return to the established order from one day to the next.
2. To feel healthy, balanced, and happy, children have to be in tune with their biological rhythms.
3. At the end of the summer the hours of sleeping, eating or the time we spend together has varied with respect to winter.
Four. We need to create an adaptation period. We must gradually channel our child’s rhythms towards a schedule that we can share with him, and that we can apply every day during the cold months.
When and how to do it?
We will need at least a couple of weeks. The return to routines has its own keys:
1. Anticipate the changes: at two years old he is small, but he is interested in everything that concerns his life. We can tell him that we are going to bed earlier, getting up earlier, or that we are going to start going to school. It is important to involve you in the change.
2. Introduce the changes one by one or two by two, since the routines are not totally new. As they are a “memory”, it will not take so long to integrate them, but it is still important to respect the adaptation time to each change. It can take anywhere from a day to a week.
3. Make the changes progressively: if in the summer you got up at 10 am. we can’t wake him up at 7am. One day to another. We should take our time: wake him up a few days at 9 am, others at 8 am … to finally reach the goal.
Where to start?
Time to get up, bedtime, meals …
What order do we have to follow to recover the usual routines and schedules?
1. Time to go to bed. It is the first thing we should change. To go back to bed earlier, we will organize a tired afternoon of activities, the gateway to a happy dream. If we put it to bed earlier, we can also get it up earlier.
2. Time to get up. It is the consequence of the time at which we put the child to bed. It is important that your sleep hours are of quality and that the sleep lasts more or less the same. Never the less.
3. Mealtime. Hours and meal times, place, way of doing it, menu … everything has been able to change during the summer. Mealtime is best integrated directly, with no transitions.
4. The time to enter the nursery. If the little one goes to kindergarten, it is better to take him a week before and leave him more hours as the week progresses. If this adaptation can be done in two weeks, it will be an even smoother transition for the child.