Kids’ Morning Routine Chart (5 Important Tips)

A kids’ morning routine chart helps families have calm mornings. Teach your child how to use the morning routine for better mornings.

The school bus is about to arrive and your daughter still doesn’t have her shoes on.

You needed to pile into the minivan five minutes ago and your son can’t find his backpack.

Your daughter’s online class starts in ten minutes and she’s still in pjs with fuzzy morning teeth.

If this sounds like your home on school mornings, read on. There is good news.

Using a morning routine printable with your child can help make school mornings more manageable. Here are five tips for using a kids’ morning routine chart.

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Tip #1 – Routines Give Your Children Security

With this global pandemic and modern life, things keep changing so rapidly.  If you use a kids’ morning routine chart, it will give your children security.

They might not know whether distance learning will return to in-person class. They might not know if their Zoom call with glitch out.

• Related: The Most Important Way Parents can Support Distance Learning

They might not know if their school will close or if their teacher will get sick.

However, your children will know that they make their bed as soon as they wake up.

They will know that they brush their teeth when breakfast is over.

We take these things for granted as adults, but having a clear sense of how things are going to go is very comforting.

Routines are a type of boundary and they tell children that this is your expectation.

When your expectation is clear, your child will feel more successful and secure.

Tip #2 – Imperfect Routines are Better than No Routine

Listen – don’t worry if your kids’ morning routine chart doesn’t have every single step on it for your child.

Don’t get so caught in perfect that you don’t use the good.

Imperfect routines are better than no routine.

The truth is a kids’ morning routine chart should have no more steps than your child’s age (give or take).

It’s simply too much for them to focus on.

So unless you have a child with extreme inflexibility, a general morning routine printable will probably work well.

Your child will learn that even though your routine says, “I will comb my hair,” that means she needs to first spray her hair with detangler. Then she needs to come and ask you to help brush it because she hasn’t mastered that motor skill yet.

Or your child will know that he doesn’t need a lunch box because he buys hot lunch at school.

The bottom line: it’s easy to convince ourselves that we shouldn’t print out a free morning routine printable we find online because it’s not perfect.

But something is almost always better than the ideal perfect (which usually ends up being nothing).

Tip #3 – Teach Each Step on the Kids’ Morning Routine Chart

Just printing the kids’ morning routine chart isn’t enough. You do need to teach each step.

On the free morning routine printable, one step is getting dressed.  But getting dressed is still its own routine.

My five-year-old son knows he needs to get dressed but gets distracted by the steps involved.

So I teach him those steps with the getting dressed printable.  This printable is available in the Ultimate Routines Printable Pack.

We practiced following this printable routine with his stuffed Mr. Bear based on an activity from Days with Grey.

We’ll need to work on this individual step until my son can master it.  So plan to teach each step.

Tip #4 – Morning Routines will Reduce Your Stress

You have too much to deal with right now.  You’re under a lot of stress managing school, work, your home, your health, and all the things.

As you teach your child the morning routine, your stress level will decrease.  Your child will gain valuable independence.

As you have to remind your child less often, there will be more calm in your household.

Parents need to remember that we set the tone. If you are anxious and stressed, your child is more prone to being anxious and stressed.

So find the strategies you need to reduce your stress and anxiety.  Deal with your mental health.

Consider therapy or meditation or journaling to deal with your own unprocessed emotions.

But then use the tools available to you to reduce your workload by shifting the responsibility to your child.  This is where routines come in.

If your child needs help with managing emotions,
check out the Social Emotional Learning at Home Pack.

Tip #5 – Expect Morning Meltdowns – Just Fewer of Them

Morning routines are not a magic wand that will remove all problems forever and ever. But there will still be meltdowns

Your child will still occasionally struggle in the mornings.  There will be tantrums and big feelings – because that’s what children are wired to do.

School this year is stressful again. We thought it would be more normal but we’re still in a global pandemic.

Will your child go to school in person where the desks are 3 feet apart and the teacher is wearing a mask?

Or school at home on the computer or with a parent teaching homeschool for the first time?

This is going to provoke anxiety in all children – and frankly for all parents, too.

But by having the kids’ morning routine chart, there will be fewer meltdowns.

You won’t need to nag.  There will be less of the raising your voice that leads to children getting upset.

The morning routine printable will also help you see if your child is having a morning meltdown at the same time each day.

You could find your child is having meltdowns over the getting shoes on part.  This will help you narrow in your discussion with your child.

Ultimately, having the routine will reduce meltdowns and give you more bandwidth for when there are big feelings.

Free Morning Routine Printable

This free morning routine printable is available for you to download and use immediately.

Here are the supplies you need:

• Printer and Ink (read Is HP Instant Ink Worth It?)
• sheet protector
• laminator
• clipboard
• washable dry erase markers

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Sign up to get the free morning routine printable.
2. Print out the kids’ morning routine chart.
3. Place it inside a sheet protector and then on a clipboard (or laminate it).
4. Use a washable dry erase marker to check off activities as you go.
5. Write in additional steps (if needed but don’t overdo this as I mentioned above).

Recapping the Kids’ Morning Routine Chart

Here’s what busy parents need to know about a kids’ morning routine chart:

• A kids’ morning routine chart will give your child security in these unpredictable times.
• Understand that some morning routine is better than the perfect routine.
• Realize you’re going to need to teach each step in the morning routine chart.
• Morning routine charts will reduce your stress by making your child more independent.
• Expect morning meltdowns – just fewer.