Creating Rhythms to your Days as a Stay at Home Mom or Dad

When Anika was a newborn, she didn’t sleep for more than one hour long stretches. The days and nights quickly began to blend together. Days of the week were ill defined. Sundays looked no different than Wednesdays and in general time meant nothing anymore. It was disorienting. Combine this with the shock of abruptly changing from a career and lifestyle that constantly had me on the go and “busy”, to days being spent alone at home soothing a fussy baby and cleaning up poop and spit up was a bit of a shock. Add in some postpartum hormones, breastfeeding hormones and sleep deprivation and its fair to say I struggled.

I absolutely loved being a mom and my daughter so much. More than I ever could have imagined. I was so grateful for this opportunity to stay home with her and be the one to raise her, but two months in my brain and body were already burnt out. Constant broken sleep cycles and isolation from other humans wore on me. I was exhausted physically and emotionally. I knew things needed to change.

I sat down with paper and pen and did what I love to do, planned. My organized personality needed order. It needed structure. It needed some consistency to the day and a plan for it other than staring at my beautiful newborn, cleaning up poop and spit up and breastfeeding. Something to ground me in my days, weeks and months. Something to center me and create a consistent flow to our day. From this moment on I created a rhythm for our stay-at-home days.

I also quickly learned that for my sanity I needed to leave the house every day, even if only for a walk around the neighborhood or a drive to get a cup of coffee. Being cooped up, especially when it’s cold outside, didn’t work for my mental health.

One of my funniest memories of this time period in my life was when Anika was about three months old. I was exhausted. I couldn’t get her to sleep and decided it was time for an outing and hopefully the beloved car nap. I grabbed Anika, the diaper bag and my sunglasses. As I was putting the sunglasses on one of the lenses popped out. Anika was screaming so I put them on anyway, one lens and all and just drove. She immediately fell asleep; I was relieved and decided to keep going to the McDonalds drive through. Quickly forgetting about the one lens sunglasses I was wearing, I ordered, paid, picked up my food and only after leaving the drive through, having interacted with multiple employees did I remember the missing lens. I must have looked insane. But who cares? My baby was asleep, I got out of the house for a bit and I was going to eat a meal with two hands. It was a good day.

Creating your Daily Schedule

Let’s start with how to create a daily schedule. Do not make this more difficult than it needs to be. No perfection is needed here. Also, don’t feel like just because you’ve created it you have to rigidly stick to it. That’s the opposite of what we are going for. The point is to provide some loose structure to your day, not to make your life harder because you can’t stay on schedule.

Step 1: Anchor your day around sleep and food

When creating your daily routine, anchor it around sleep and food. Those are things that are going to stay semi consistent every day and the other stuff can work around it. Grab a piece of paper and start by listing what time your child wakes up, this is when the schedule will begin. List that time at the top of the page and then write hour increments down the left-hand side all the way down to the time they go to bed. Next, fill in their nap times. Then fill in time for breakfast, lunch, dinner and maybe snacks. This is going to look very different depending on the ages of kids and how many kids you have. It also needs to to be repeated every three months or so as the child developmentally changes.

Step 2: Plan for a daily outing

Once you have those basics filled in, decide where you can fit in a daily outing around naps. I was always a big fan of the morning outing and then hanging at home in the afternoons, but do what’s going to work best for you. Whatever works for you and the season of life you are in with your kids. This might look different depending on the day of the week too if there is something special going on in your community that you would like to attend. Just plan to get out of your home in some way every day, even if it’s just a walk around your neighborhood or a drive to put gas in your car.

Step 3: Schedule Reading time

Schedule a time for reading with your kids. Hands down the one thing any child educator will tell you will set your child up for academic success is to read to them. Start when they are young and read to them often. Make it cozy and fun and something that the child will associate wonderful, warm and loving feelings with. I found after an afternoon nap or quiet time to be a great place in the day for this. Kids who have a hard time waking up can slowly ease back into life and it’s a great way for parents and kids to reconnect with each other. We would spend hours a week, sometimes a day even reading. We’ve gone through so many books and would have gone broke if it wasn’t for our library.

Step 4: Loosely plan out your time spent at home

When creating the routine to your day it’s all about finding that balance between the structured things and the open free time at home. My kids and I need both. You’ll figure out what works for you. You don’t need to be out of your house all the time and definitely want plenty of home time too.

Time spent at home provides moments for Anika and Jacob to have free time to explore their environment as they choose fit, unstructured times with no planned activities.

But I also plan activities for them, nothing fancy, all simple. This if for when boredom strikes and they need a little inspiration to get them through. The internet is full of these activities, just don’t overcomplicate it. It could be as simple as filling one of those white plastic dish bins from the dollar tree with some rice, dropping in some plastic toy dinosaurs and letting them have fun. Or hide magnetic letters of the alphabet around the room with a small treat next to it. The child finds the letter (or number, or shape or sight word, depending on their age and ability level) and correctly identifies it to get the treat. Shaving cream sprayed on the table that they can play in and write letters and shapes is also always a hit around here. None of the activities I do with my kids are super labor intensive but I always like to have a couple in the back of my mind ready to go the next day. It’s also fun to create a theme for the week, like they do in formal childcare settings. An example of this would be apples. In advance I would check out fiction and nonfiction books from the library about apples, one of our outings that week would be apple picking (this would be seasonally done of course) we would bake apple crisp together and do experiments with apples, like do they float in water or we would dissect and apple and look at the parts. Maybe we would find a TV show, YouTube video or movie where they do things with apples. We could practice counting with apples. Such an easy way to add a little order to your week.

Step 5: Schedule independent play time

I’d also schedule some independent play time where the child is left to entertain themselves for a bit while you are nearby supervising, but not actively engaging with them. This is a muscle that needs to be worked in some children, so you might have to start small and increase the amount of time doing this. I find this happens more easily after a period of time that you have spent providing them with some more structured time, when you lead the child in an activity of sorts.

Step 6: Formalize it

Type this schedule up and stick it to the fridge. If they are old enough, show it to your kids so they know what to expect from the day. Kids thrive in the comfort of a schedule. There is so much in the world that is out of their control and that can be scary. Predictability and routine are comforting. 

Sample Daily Schedule