A friend’s “perfect routine” has me wondering if some families are just built differently

[GlowWithBalance]

A friend of mine was telling me recently about how smoothly evenings go in her house. Her kids apparently finish dinner without fuss, go upstairs when told, get ready for bed, read quietly, then fall asleep without any drama. She talks about it like it is the most normal thing in the world.
I was happy for her, of course, but it left me thinking about how different families can be. In our house the evenings sometimes feel like a small storm. Someone cannot find their pyjamas, someone needs a drink, someone remembers urgent homework just as I am turning off the lights. By the time they are finally asleep I feel like I have run a full race.
It is funny how you can be doing your best and still feel like you are missing a secret manual that other parents somehow have. Talking to her made me realise that many of us only see the calm version of other families, not the chaos behind the scenes.

My contrast, it took 2 days to potty train DS1 and about 3 days to train DS2. I could be smug about the brilliant method I used. Or I could just accept we got lucky on that aspect of parenting. Never once had an accident.

Older two were nightmares and I got heavily judged - even now they are bad at getting singals they are hungry or thirsty - youngest was striaght forward.

Apparerently it was taken as a sign I'd finally got my act together rather than I finally had a child who didn't struggle with body signals.

I'm so envious of the calm evenings. Mine are 4 and 6 (plus a newborn) and we have an ingrained routine but the 6 and 4 year old are agents of chaos and get the zoomies before bed running round the house and up and down the stairs. I'm very firm with them but the 6 year old has no stop button and it's very frustrating.

YANBU.

To balance the calm I’ll admit it’s chaotic in our house, DD doesn’t sleep much and neither do I and I’m always running round trying to find something, wash something and do homework or reading. No time to watch tv or anything like that.

I blame myself for always working (out of home) and getting back late but also having an unequal partner.

Some families / people are just different.
I have a friend with one daughter who is late for school nearly every morning and others who have 3 or 4 and look totally in control of everything.

Routine. Routine. Routine.

Since they were tiny we always had a very calm, but very organised bedtime routine. And I'm very tidy by nature, so always had a place for everything and everything in its place.

Homework requirements discussed on way home from school. School bags checked and repacked ready for the next day soon as we got home. Bath/shower after dinner. PJs always under pillow. Quiet reading before bedtime.

Children need and thrive in a calm, orderly environment.

There really is a secret. it's called having neurotypical children.

Yeah our bedtime routine is calm 3 under 5 husband works away mon to Fri so just me , and the reason it has to be !

Ya, I did all that.
Still didnt work when my 3rd came along.
Why do people not see that its not routine routine routine?
It just isnt.

Surely one of the key things here is what else you have going on in your life. Mum at home all the time folding pyjamas is very different from the mum that gets in from work makes tea checks homework throws washing in gets washing out frantically dries washing for next day finds sports kit etc etc

I do think it's rare what you friend is describing, unless she has 2 very, very calm and obedient kids. Our kids know what is expected of them, but I still have to instruct them a lot, remind them about stuff like homework and remember what is where. However, they know they have to be in bed by 8:30 everyday.

Ah working mum here. But the reason it is less frantic is that DH also steps up and always had. He’s a great cook, doesn’t need to be told what to do. Doesn’t need a list or instructions. So yes it is a bit busy in the evenings, i.e it’s not calm but it’s efficient.
And when the kids were younger he did one job and I did another. We had a rule that no one sat down till everyone sat down, so you don’t get to watch TV while I am running around frantically.

Same

Utter fucking chaos.

We have the same routine and have done for about 10 years.

Upstairs, PJs, teeth and loo, story in bed. Simple and predictable and enforced daily and consistently.

And my DC go absolutely mental in the evenings. Hoon around shrieking and being silly and laughing hysterically after dinner, EVERY day. One is almost a teen now so it's not toddler time. There are fights, daydreaming, dallying / avoidance of getting ready, occasionally tears and anxiety about their days, etc. It takes forever and DH and I have to man-mark them too.

They are both ND.

Yes, routine, planning and organisation are great things, but you need the 'right' children to make it work. I think we don't consider enough that some people just naturally have well-behaved, compliant children.

I was one of them, my parents gave themselves a pat on the back and congratulated themselves on their excellent parenting skills. Then my sister came along and they realised they just got lucky the first time around

I think it’s natural to have to jolly them along a bit and help them. Sometimes you help one and then another. The key is do they go along or are they resisting etc. That’s when the chaos starts. I don’t think you can just tell them: do X and expect they will do it till much later. Even my teenager needs direction and some ‘come on, have you done x’? That’s just normal family life.

NOW I have a controversial question. I am not English/British. I don’t understand what PJs under the pillows mean. Are your kids wearing the same PJs night after night?!

My daughter is starting to get out of bed and demand things (drink, wee, cuddle) which is very annoying as she’s usually been a great sleeper. I don’t know what we will have to do but something needs to change

We have routine. We have everything organised and in place. But we also got a child with low sleep needs who struggles to switch off.

Many many of us find routines inexplicably hard to maintain. Just wanted to say this for anyone feeling a failure for not managing it.

Yeah our bedtime routine is calm 3 under 5 husband works away mon to Fri so just me , and the reason it has to be !

I had this as well - DH was away all week just before DD2 was a year old and DD1 was still 4 and DS inbetween -went on till we finally moved here DD2 was 5.

I aimed for calm - planned for it - and tried very hard to acheive it - and I think it helped didn't change the two older ones being chaos - and I now know for one it was ADHD - and frankly looks increasingly likely it was for middle one.

I think all the work really paid off when they were slightly older - and were more able to work out what needed to be done themselves - they'd work though a verbal check list at secondary school age to make sure they had everything before leaving in the mornings-- something we'd started doing when they started school.

It may have taken them longer to learn how but they're actually pretty good at getting themsleves sorted as teens and adults. So maybe think of it as a work in progress OP - few more years and calm may start happening at bed time.

I think this is just a different family cultures thing tbh.

Personally we've always taken sleep really seriously, had a set bedtime, prioritised sleep at the same time each evening, the same bedtime routine and wake time, since being a baby. So my kid knows every night at the same time we go upstairs for a bath, read a book, and bed. It might vary by 10-15m here or there but the routine is the same. We've never had complaining about bedtime, he looks forward to going to sleep. Now he's school age we have the odd later night, maybe until 8pm, but for the first 5yr bedtime came before everything.

I know other families where from babyhood everything has been very relaxed and easygoing, late nights often, bedtime ranges from 6pm if they've nodded off in the car and are transferred to bed to 11pm after a party or on a weekend, even at toddler age. So the kids have no real expectation of bedtime as it changes all the time. Which leads to a lot of resistance most nights and overtired kids.

Different things work for different people. It probably wouldn't occur to your friends kids to try push back against bedtime because that just isn't a thing. And why would they want to, when they know going to bed is a given and they probably enjoy it because it's a nice calm experience followed by sleep?

Sounds like what you're currently doing isn't really working for you if you feel so exhausted after putting them to bed, so it might be worth thinking about practical things you can do to stop the faffing around, and how you want to come across to them in terms of being stricter/no-nonsense about bedtime. It's fine to want to be able to have everyone in the house go to bed and sleep at night without a drama.

I've been thinking about it - our mornings run very well, our evenings I'm happy with but there is some chaos and it definitely isn't the well-ordered routine that many other people here are describing. I think the difference for me is that the morning we just do the routine, there is no other element, and no expectation from anyone involved that there is time for leisure or fun - we get up, get ready, go. I don't want to run our evenings like that, though. It's our time together, I want it to be capable of adapting, of one of the kids asking 'can we...' and the answer not always being no. Some of the routines described here clearly work brilliantly for those families but I would find them stifling, and there are some requirements for some of them (e.g. no extracurricular activities in the week) that would be, for me and my family, a bridge too far. Again, I know some people can have both the free time and the routine, especially with older children or if everyone is home early and so there is a lot of time to play with. My kids are fairly young and no one is in the house before 5.30 Mon-Thurs, so for us I think it is either/or in terms of strict routine or unstructured time and spontaneity, not and/both.

Calm here too, usually, but this wasn't an accident. We realised it was something to prioritise and my DH really worked at a routine from a young age.
It helps that our kids love reading.

Planning and routine isn't the whole story. We fall somewhere in the middle of your two scenarios despite only having child and the same routine most nights. The parents and the children are quite significant variables.

It's all about the child Some kids don't like being told what to do. Some kids want a bit of extra attention. Some kids are scatterbrains. Some just have a lot of energy and don't want to go to bed. Just like adults. Maybe her kids will grow up to be accountants, but yours will grow up to be rockstars!

I am ND and so are my boys, the only reason I can keep on top of their routine is we’d all lose our minds without it 🥲😅 I wish I could be less of a control freak, allow more leeway, but my brain short circuits

My daughter is great at knowing she has a routine but she needs either a tick list or someone to tell her bit by bit what to do. A lot of children can't hold the steps in their mind, sometimes due to neurodivergence but also sometimes not, sometimes it's just their age and developmental stage. So it's very normal, no matter how organised you try to be, if bedtime is more chaotic.

DD1 - easy child, always a smooth bedtime.
DD2 - ASD, she likes routine but last night had a meltdown at 7.30 which I definitely couldn't have avoided with organisation.