Four Tips for Staying Home with Young Children Without Losing Your Mind

In case you missed it, about 18 months ago I wrote a post about how God was teaching me how to stay at home.

And now here we are and everyone has to stay at home. Who could have known? God. That’s who. I am very grateful to have had almost two years of practice to teach me how to be happy at home.

I’ve been rather surprised by the fact that this quarantine-like situation has not rocked our boat at all.

I have learned ALOT in the last 2 years of staying home, but here are the things that I feel have made the most difference:

The Game-Changer: Figure Out Your Daily Rhythm

Schedules are great if you’re a naturally time-oriented and disciplined person. I am not. Our daily rhythm is what keeps us afloat. Even before the coronavirus started affecting daily life, we had about 6 weeks of colds and no one felt good or like doing anything. Our daily rhythm kept us sane and kept our house from being a complete disaster.

Here’s what I mean by a daily rhythm:

We have our routine cards that show us what an ideal day would look like, however we rarely have an ideal day, so our daily rhythm is the bare basics. Our anchor points for the day. The five things that keep us afloat:

1. Eating
2. Exercise/outdoor time
3. Rest
4. Intentional Family Time
5. Maintenance

For our family (with an almost 3 yr old and almost 5 yr old), our daily rhythm looks like this:

Morning:

• Clothes on
• Start laundry
• Breakfast
• Clear the table
• Family Bible Time
• 30 minutes of quiet time (“reading” books in separate rooms) -sometime around 9:30 (usually when I can tell they need it)
• Walk/bike ride around the neighborhood – sometime before lunch

Afternoon:

• Lunch
• Nap-time (quiet time for Samuel)
• Snack (before 4pm)
• Outside time if the air quality is decent

Evening:

• Dinner
• Kids play with Dad
• Clean up living room
• Kids’ bedtime routine
• Clean up kitchen

As you can see in the picture of our routine cards, we have other things that ideally would happen everyday, but when we AT LEAST do our daily rhythm it keeps everyone happier and we all get along better.

Everything else that we choose to do fits into this daily rhythm, and it’s not tied to a time schedule so we’re never “behind”. We just pick up where we need to.

Recently, we’ve had a lot of “bare minimum”, just-the-daily-rhythm days, and my kids have been just as happy staying home.

The Not-So-Secret Key: Screen Detox

When everyone was sick, we watched a lot of TV. That habit continued even after everyone was better and we ended up having a lot of behavior problems. Specifically the four year old. I don’t know if it’s just his personality, his age or WHAT but it was ugly.

It’s tempting to just turn on a show or give the kids a tablet because it’s a quick fix and a guaranteed 15-20 minutes of peace, HOWEVER, the behavior issues made it not worth it to me. So we had a week-long detox and the temper tantrums have all but disappeared.

We do a “family movie night” with popcorn every weekend and save TV shows for sick days. It makes our days MUCH more peaceful.

Obviously, with bigger kids and online school, a complete detox may not be possible.

This also applies to me and my phone screen time. I’m a better person when I have set limits on when and how much.

For Your Own Sanity: Fewer Toys

We are a mostly-minimalist family and the best decision we ever made before we even had kids was “battery-free toys only”. We didn’t even know how important this decision was going to be. It was mostly because both of us are sensitive to noises.

It prevented us from having annoying toys, but also made me realize that kids don’t need a lot of the crap that is marketed toward them. We’ve extended that rule to no more plastic toys because all plastic is pollution that just hasn’t made it to the ocean yet. We still have some plastic toys from before the rule was instituted (lego blocks, dinosaur & animal figurines, etc). However, we’re not buying any new plastic, and I’m trying to be very intentional about limiting the number of toys we own.

As an educator, I understand the pull of toys for developmental or educational purposes, but kids learn from experiences and people, not toys. So many toys promise to engage kids, but studies show most lead to less independent play. We did an experiment where I put ALL the toys in the guest room and locked the door for a WEEK. The kids didn’t even bat an eye. They had friends over (who never even noticed) and they all played bear hunt together and when the friends left there was no clean up.

We still have more toys than we “need”. Mostly because I can’t part with them, not because the kids need them. However, clean up at the end of the day, whether or not the kids are helping, takes about five minutes. All the toys fit into our IVAR cabinet (minus Samuel’s legos and train tracks for quiet time) and we try to do a one-in-one-out rule so everything doesn’t get pulled out at once.

Right now, the kids’ favorite and most used “toy” is a large cardboard box.

I’ve found the fewer toys my kids have the better they get along and the longer they can entertain themselves. Their imaginations are phenomenal and I am not constantly stepping on or picking up toys. Win-win.

For Everyone’s Mental Health: Get Outside

The great thing about getting outside is it’s a great replacement for screens or toys. Rocks, sticks, dirt, bugs and bikes are some of my kids favorite pastimes. I wish we had a trampoline. Someday. We’ve been bird-watching, eating lunch on the porch and spending some time soaking up the sun.

Being outside is good for the soul.

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I have learned so much in the last two years that now I actually LIKE staying home. The pre-kids me would not believe that I just said that.

There are a lot more things that I have learned about how to stay at home successfully (and a lot of things that I’m still learning), but those are the four biggest keys I’ve found to having more peaceful days.

Good luck out there.