Routines & Screens

We’ve established some key routines for our adventure, in order to keep us healthy, manage our days, conquer a few biases, and develop important life skills for our 4th and 7th grade boys. Here are the details about our routines for cooking, cleaning, the “screening”, and more, and the rationale behind each of them…

BEFORE WE LEFT HOME

A few weeks before we left on our adventure, I was so inspired by the book Unschooled by Kerry McDonald that I decided I would let my kids choose for themselves how to manage each of their early summer days. I let them choose when they wanted to eat, so they could listen to their bodies, and when to enjoy their screens (ipad, xbox, iphone), so they could learn from bad choices about how much time they spend on them and begin to make healthy ones. I told our boys that as long as they could make good choices, be kind, and be healthy, they could choose their whatever/whenver each day. They were overjoyed! I was so excited to be on the path to becoming a hard core unschoooling homeschool mom.

The days would go so smoothly, passing with barely a sound while they sequesterd themselves in the bedrooms with their screens, and I got a ton of my own stuff done in preparation for our trip. Then, the witching hour would ensue… Around 4:00 pm each day, they would emerge and pretty much melt down. They would barely have eaten, or had eaten only junk food or candy, would not have done any of their chores like brushing their teeth or even getting dressed, and they were SO cranky. I would deal with whining, complaining, and the two of them arguing whilte I was preparing dinner. Dave would come home to all of that, and at dinner, we would all have A TALK. We would lecture them on how they made too many bad choices, and they needed to make better choices. We’d school them on what kinds of choices were good choices and what we wanted to see happen the next day. They would promise to do better the next day. And then it would start all over again.

Consequently, I swiftly waffled back to a quick-fix version of the model-assist-practice approach and set up charts and checklists to help them learn and remember how to make good choices, but, in their all-consuming whatever/whenever mentality, they simply ignored them. Then, pendulum swinging back to offering them unrestricted freedom, I refrained from battling with them or telling them what to do, so that they could for sure learn their own lessons about what works for them and what doesn’t. When they did eat, stuff was left out everwhere, and I’d step in spills. Their rooms literally smelled, and they couldn’t find their pajamas that they wanted because it was so messy. After almost a week, I just couldn’t take it anymore. This was supposed to be our “deschooling” period that was mentioned in the book, but it rattled me too much! If they needed to hit bottom first before making some new-found great choices, I might go insane before they get to those realizations! There was absolutely no sign of them learning from their poor choices, absolutely no sign of them laying off the screens, and I began to have nightmares of them becoming crack addicts one day, they seemed so addicted.

There is a reason why children need parents to guide them. They don’t have fully formed brains for really good judgment until they are actually over 20 years old, and research has been dedicated to studying when, why, and how children can care for themselves, especially children who are latch-key kids or home alone for periods of time while parents are at work, etc. I realized we needed some concrete routines and limits on screens in order for our family to be sane. I also realized that I need to have a routine as a person. When I was a teacher and had the summers off when I was single, I would still have a rhythm to my day and some regular habits, despite the tons of available unscheduled time. I had sound structure and routine to my day as a child myself, so maybe it stems from there? Lastly, I realized that I needed to embrace the model-assist-practice approach in a long-term way, guiding them step by step while steadily letting them have independence in a way that will last as good habits. Most of the parenting books and educator materials that I’ve come across talk about the benefit of structure and routines for kids, so there’s definitely someting to it. I began to plan for what our routines might need to be like on our adventure, so my boys can develop the skills they need and adopt some good habits to take with them into adulthood. Now that we are on our adventure, I’m so glad I did, and we’ll probably take many of them back home with us, too!

OUR COOKING ROUTINE

I love to cook. My skill of culinary reading comprehension allows me to tackle receipes with zest (pun intended!). Rather than making stuff up on my own, I enjoy using recipes to reliably produce a meal. Instant gratification for time spent working on something is so appealing to me.

Since Dave loves to eat, my love of cooking is a win for him and our whole family. Over the past decade, we’ve developed a routine where Dave picks out recipes that look yummy, and I make them. Then after we eat, we dissect the dish and make notes about what we would keep or do differently in the future, marking up the printed recipe accordingly. The recipes we enjoy go in a sheet protector and into a binder. The ones we don’t like get tossed. We now have two, fat, bright green binders filled with our yummy favorites. Hooray for non-digital, old-school organization! 😉

Knowing I would want to continue my ritual of cooking, and the boys might appreciate some familiar tastes and smells while away from our permanent home, we brought the binders with us on our adventure. To keep costs reasonable and not pursue too much of a permanent vacation, we decided all meals are cooked at home on weekdays. The fun of out going out to lunch or dinner is reserved for the weekends.

Each Friday, the kids and I complete this grid outlining which of the three of us is responsible for cooking, “bussing”, and doing the dishes for each meal. Then we make decisions for what we will eat and plan a grocery list based on how we complete this table. Responsibilities rotate with each meal. The “cook” has to either prepare solo or be my sous chef, including taking out and putting away all the ingredients as well as putting all the dishes and pans used for cooking into the sink before serving the meal. The cook also has to set the table complete with placemats, napkins, drinks, and silverware for each person. We sit down to eat at about 7:00 pm each night. With no after school activities to shuttle to and from, it’s nice to have a regular time together each night. Apparently research shows that having dinner together is one of the most important things you can do for child development, so check on that box!

At the end of each meal, each person is responsible for moving their own dishes into the sink. The “busser” is responsible for making sure the rest of the items on the table are put away, the placements are stacked up, napkins put away, the table gets wiped down, and the chairs pushed in. The person on “dishes” is responsible for loading the dishwasher (which took some tetris-like practice for the boys at first) and wiping down all of the countertops. The boys have come to value the bussing job as the most efficient, and the cook job as the most fun. No one likes dishes, but does anyone, really?

OUR CLEANING ROUTINE

Having someone come to your home to clean once per week is an incredibly indulgent privilege, and it’s something I’ve enjoyed for most of my marriage. When the boys were babies, my exhaustion was my justification for it. As they’ve grown, it continued frankly because I got used to being spoiled. I grew up in a home where someone came to clean each week, and I remember my mom saying, “Go clean your room, the cleaning lady is coming!” I’ve similarly passed this on to my boys and found myself saying the same exact thing to them over the years. Now that we’re in an 800 square foot condo, the cleaning is up to us, and there’s no better time to teach our boys how to care for their own space.

We started out doing weekly cleaning, but we realized every two weeks works just fine. Having to clean the toilet that was victim to their bad aim has been a good learning experience for the boys. They learned they prefer to wear plastic gloves for most bathroom tasks, and their aim is coincidentally a bit better!

In order to get the boys motivated to want to clean, so it wouldn’t turn into a family moan and groan session, we decided to pay the boys for the tasks they accomplish. We offered the boys a combined fourth of what we’ve been used to paying for our weekly service, transparently telling them that of course they can’t earn top dollar because they are amateurs! We asked them to assign money values to each of the different jobs up to the amount we offered. They assigned more monetary value to things like cleaning the toilet and less to wiping down the surfaces of things at first. Once they learned the undertaking required to clean the shower, they decided to change the values! I love that they are helping out, and they love that they get an addition to their allowance. Each time they complete the cleaning, they add up the money they’ve made to add to their allowance. (Sneaking more math into their activities!) They now look forward to the bigger value tasks to make more money in the coming weeks.

PATIENCE REQUIRED

I’ve learned to let go of my need for efficiency and getting things done right the first time in order to allow my kids to actually learn from doing the cooking and the cleaning. I let them splash the oil on their t-shirts in order to learn the value of wearing an apron, let them burn the chicken to learn that the heat was too high, let them swish out of the bowl and make a mess to learn that you can’t whisk too fast, all while watching close by to make sure things don’t completely go sideways. We’ve been watching Master Chef as a family, and I’ve seen Gordon Ramsey and his colleagues similarly going around to each person to give the competitors tips without taking away from them experiencing it themselves.

It took forever for the boys to figure out how to put a fitted sheet onto the bed, and it was hard not to just step in and tell them how to do it. They learned through the natural consequence of stepping on a wet floor that they have to back out of a space in order to mop. On the whole, I intervene only if there really is a special technique that needs direct instruction (the “modeling”), if they could get hurt, or if something could be dangerous. It takes longer to let them fail and learn (the “assisting”) than if I just gave them lots of instructions. We have the gift of time on this adventure, so I’m seizing the moments and taking deep breaths (the “practice”)!

ADDRESSING GENDER BIAS

The cooking, laundry, and daily tidying have always been my responsibility in our home. In part, it’s because I have more time than Dave who works full time. In part, I kind of like the tasks. Even when I had roommates when I was single, I often took on the responsibility for most of these things because I’m pretty good at them, and I enjoy having a tidy space for myself. I challenge myself to consider to what extent gender bias played a role in this for me. I’m not quite sure, since both of my parents were neat freaks, and my mom was a terrible cook, but I do remember getting lots of messages about women and the home through TV shows, books, and the media. Now I wonder to what extent my having all of these responsibilities in our home could be feeding a gender bias for my boys?

Studies and research reveal that despite our society being more evolved than in the days of June Cleaver and Donna Reed, household duties are still falling more to women, even when the women are the family breadwinners. To combat this and challenge my boys to think differently, I’m following the advice in this Harvard Graduate School of Education article called “For Families: 5 Tips For Preventing and Reducing Gender Bias”.

APPRECIATION IS A GREAT REWARD

Since the boys make their own breakfast each morning, they get really excited when Dave or I offer to make breakfast for them on the weekends. Similarly, the boys really appreciate going out to lunch and dinner more than they ever have before because it means they don’t have to do one of the jobs to make the meal happen. When we went to Las Vegas last week (on a whim, crashing Dave’s work trip), the owners of the condo we are staying in treated us to having someone clean for us while we were away. The boys were overjoyed at not having to do the cleaning themselves and coming home to fresh sheets and a clean bathroom. It’s nice to see their gratitude, and it’s nice to be tackling the cooking and cleaning alonside them. Hopefully they will continue to do that alongside their roommates and life partners someday, too.

THE SCREENS

As a result of the drama that I shared at the beginning of this post, we’ve established a rule that they can’t use their screens for sheer entertainment (as opposed to using them as a learning tool) before 4:30 pm each day, and once we all sit down to dinner, their individual entertainment screen time ends. If they don’t complete all of their requirements for skills practice for that day, and if they haven’t had a minimum of an hour or two of physical exercise (typically surfing or rock climbing) as well as some independent non-screen down time, they don’t get to access their screens for entertainment. If they have some very negative behavior during the day (oh yes, we still have sibling rivalry rear its ugly head), the screen time is less. I’m glad Tanner gets a chance to connect with his friends via his iphone, and I don’t want to prevent that since we are currently fairly isolated from other kids his age. Cole really likes building in Minecraft; since we don’t have lots of bins of legos here like we did at home, I think it’s a great creative outlet for him, and Tanner will even help him out, too. I like that they get some independent time that is valuable to them after engaging with me and each other so much during the day.

After a full day of lots of quality and learning time with the kids, having Tanner and Cole enjoy some down time on their screens in the late afternoon is honestly a welcome time-out for me. It allows me to attend fitness classes in the evenings (something I would never dream of doing with our crazy schedules back home), and it allows Dave and I to enjoy our own ritual of an evening walk along the beach, watching the sunset, on the days when he is not traveling for work.

After dinner, we have a family ritual of watching TV shows in an “old school” way together. We watch whatever is on cable live, or we watch what we’ve put on the condo DVR, Since the family room TV in the condo doesn’t connect to Hulu or Netflix, on-demand binge watching as a family is not available. We’ve been enjoying the simplicity of Master Chef, America’s Got Talent, Fixer Upper, Love It or List It, and Gordon Ramsey Uncharted, to name a few, and we’re open to more suggestions!

AND WE’RE TIRED!

All of these activities and responsibilities during the day have an outstanding benefit – the kids are actually tired when it’s time for bed! Unlike when they were attending compulsory school, there are no complaints around 9:00/9:30 pm when it’s about time for bed. For me, I love that there is no stress about getting them to bed in order to wake them up after my own alarm clock! The entire family is pretty beat in the late evening; we’re all relaxed from watching a show together, and off we all head to our respective pillows to wake the next day, ready for more. I’ll keep you posted on how these routines continue to play out once homeschooling and daytime field trips are in full swing soon…

🙂 Carolyn