The Importance of Being Scheduled

Having little ones on schedules is really important.  We live in a scheduled society, and unless we are fortunate enough to design our days without input from life's demands, they are good for us.  Rigidity is not good, but as our children grow, the notion that things just happen when they happen, doesn't serve them.  It hinders them.  (Refer to the beginning of sentence #2:  We live in a scheduled society.)  They become people who arrive places--like work--when they feel like it and lose entire days without accomplishing anything.  I am not opposed to losing a day here and there as a mental health fix, but if some type of order isn't followed, a day becomes several, becomes a week, a month, a year, a lifetime.

I have found that having the grandboy here helps me keep a schedule.  I don't think his mother will be very happy to know that he goes to bed much later than he's used to and, thus, sleeps much later.  You see, I am a morning person and she is a night owl.  I need the wee hours to make things happen in the house, and in my work.  That way, I belong to my family when they wake up.  We do keep regular mealtimes for both the kids and the animals here at Open Hand Farm (that's us) but most activities tend to start later and wind down later here.

In the bigger and extended-out sense, kids who don't value compartments of time, will become adults who don't value compartments of time.  I declare this entire discussion null and void as it relates to the people predisposed to completing tasks--I think they will naturally create the schedule that works for them.  I also know that if you give a baby the opportunity, he will create his own schedule and, initially, it will revolve around the basics--sleeping and eating.  (Could you see a little baby's TO DO list?  Wake up, eat, drift back off to sleep, wake up, play, poop, eat lunch, sleep, wake up, eat, play with sibs, cry while the rest of the family tries to eat supper, play with Daddy, bath, late night snack, sleep.)  My mom came from the school that told mommies to wake their babies up EVERY FOUR HOURS on the button or they would grow up to be delinquents.  Guess what?  I still grew up to be a delinquent.  (I'm much better now.  LOL)  I don't actually think the schedule had anything to do with it.  

All this to say:
1.  Schedules are good.
2.  The schedule that suits your family is the best one.
3.  Like it or not, we live in a world ordered by time and, thus, schedules.