Several people have asked me lately if we will be taking a "break" this summer. (At coop you can tell that all the moms really want to pick each other's brains about the nitty gritty of their day-to-day lives but are too polite to say, "Sit down and tell me everything. But first let me get a pen and paper." The physical therapist just wanted to know if we had school every day from 8-3, and if so, weren't we going to take a break from that? I hope she wasn't discouraged by the look of horror on my face when I contemplated a seven hour "school" day!)
My answer to "will you be taking a break this summer" usually runs like this:
"Well, my kids don't consider a lot of the stuff we do to be "school". I read aloud to the kids a lot, and of course we keep that up year round. And my kids are always involved in lots of projects of their own, which they don't consider "school" either. As far as more formal academics go, we might not work on them as intensively as we do other times of the year, but my kids really need their routine. And they don't like having to go back and review things because they've forgotten them over a break."
What I don't have time to explain to people in a thirty second sound byte is that when I say the kids really need their routine, what I mean is, a change in our routine can really make Gareth fall apart. And when Gareth falls apart, our house can be a very unhappy place.
This isn't to say that the rest of us don't benefit from the routine. I have seen homes without routine, and I wouldn't want to live in them. People of all ages and dispositions like to know when meals are, for instance. We all benefit from having a regular bedtime and a quiet time in the afternoon. But Gareth is one of those children termed "chronically inflexible". For him a fairly unchangeable routine is the lifeline that gets him through his days. A change in plans can be frustrating even for those of us with more laidback temperaments. But for children for whom even the slightest bit of frustration can be overwhelming, a change in plans can be a catastrophe.
Unfortunately, it is easier to slip out of a routine than to get one going. In case I didn't already know it, I learned it again this week when I forgot that the kids were supposed to do their chores right after lunch before going outside. It was one of the first warm, sunny days in weeks, and my stated goal all day was just to get the kids out the door. But as they ran outside to play, I looked around at all the dirty dishes lying on the table and realized I had made a mistake. I couldn't do the dishes or wipe out the sinks or get the laundry myself because I had to feed the babies, and I wanted to get them outside, too. And I knew it was going to be really, really hard to get the kids to do chores at 2:30 when they were used to having a rest in their rooms.
The real trouble, however, didn't show up until the next day, when Gareth wanted to go outside right after lunch. "No," I said. "It was too hard yesterday. Do your chores now. It will take thirty minutes and you'll be able to spend a longer time outside."
But the routine had been broken, and the next thirty minutes was taken up by stomping and shouting (and unfortunately, not all of it was Gareth's.) The next day was a repeat, and the next. By the fourth day, we had an uneasy truce about chore time again, but if I hadn't thoughtlessly broken the routine, none of those battles would have been fought.
So that's why we don't really break for the summer. On the one hand, if you were to tell my kids that we weren't going to have read aloud time in the morning because it's "school", they would wonder what horrible thing they had done to deserve such a punishment. And on the other hand, Gareth and I would be faced with a battle come fall when we tried to get back into math and cursive.
Of course, our routine does change a little with the seasons. (It's too cold here during the other seasons of the year for us not to take advantage of summer!) But if we don't retain the underpinnings, the whole structure has a tendency to fall apart.
Why is it that it takes months to get a good routine going but only one day to kill it? My oldest daughter comes unhinged when her routine is changed. She sounds a lot like your Gareth.
Posted by: Wendy @ WMF | June 19, 2006 at 07:33 PM
I think we are in the process of killing ours. I had good intentions, but the driving was so rotten this past week that even when we were home everything just kind of fell by the wayside. Except our read aloud time, of course, but that's so ingrained and enjoyable that it's just part of who we are by now.
Posted by: Angel | June 26, 2006 at 06:13 AM