Routines, Rigidity, and Changes

This week was a really chaotic week where we’re adjusting to a new routine. Shamus got a new job (yay!) which means I’m now fully responsible for our morning routine (boo!). It got me to thinking about how I always say that my kids thrive with routine, but how easily they adjust to big changes. I actually probably have more trouble adjusting than they do.

While they’re able to adjust fairly quickly to new, big changes, the small ones make a huge difference to them. They like order and predictability.

This week we made a huge change for Penny – her bus now picks her up first in the morning instead of last, so she’s on the bus for about 15 minutes longer. I explained the change to her in words I thought she could understand. I asked her questions, and she seemed to enjoy the prospect (although I’m not sure she fully wrapped her head around it). She loves the bus so she was so excited that she woke up early on Monday and was ready for the bus 10 minutes earlier than she needed to be (which was 30 minutes earlier than usual).

Then…the bus came down the road from the right instead of up the road from the left. It hadn’t occurred to me to warn her. She yelled out a “NOPE!” and she looked up at me with pure disgust. She reluctantly crossed the road with me and she climbed the stairs to the bus on the opposite side than she was used to. She turned around to look at me when I said “good bye” (which she never does), and I could tell that if she knew how to flip me off, in that moment, she would have.

I had assumed that when we had to change her schedule dramatically with barely any warning, that she would be upset. I thought that she’d be upset by being on the bus for longer, getting up earlier, having me get her ready instead of her dad.

Nope – she was upset by the direction of the bus because it was familiar but still completely out of the ordinary for her. Most of the changes probably didn’t bother her because we had pretty much done her exact morning routine, just a half an hour earlier (with me instead of Shamus). But every morning she looks to the left to see the bus, and it came from the right. So small, but such a big deal to her. (That probably also highlights why not straying from regular routines is important.)

Last Christmas, I put up the Christmas tree and at the same time, I changed a picture that was on my photo wall. A huge evergreen in the living room did not phase her, but good Lord, Penny obsessed over that new photograph. Standing in front of it, staring at it from all angles, covering one eye and then the other. She knew there was something different there, but it was so subtle, it drove her crazy. Big tree – huge change, but doable. New 4×6 picture on a wall of 11 other pictures – that’s a “NOPE!”.

In the same theme, I changed around some furniture in the living room last month to put all the toys back down in the playroom. Rory will not agree with his dinkies or car launcher being anywhere but in the middle of the living room floor. I don’t mean that he brings them there to play, and just doesn’t clean up. He just puts them there. That’s where he thinks they belong. Nothing else bothered him about fairly big changes to the living room, but those two things belong there and there’s no convincing him otherwise.

It’s funny, because I often don’t realize that something has becomes so rigid and predictable for them until something changes by circumstance. As a general rule though, I think that unless their preference is severely affecting them, I don’t believe we should intervene.

One that Shamus and I have often disagreed about is Penny wearing socks to bed. It’s never really bothered me, but it bothered him. I could see his point about how strict she is about it, but in my opinion, a lot of people wear socks to bed. I don’t think that’s going to affect her in every day life, even as an adult. However, when she was obsessively wearing socks – not even taking them off to bathe or go swimming – we did work on that with her. (Anyone ever watch Arrested Development with Tobias as a never nude who always had to wear cut-offs? It reminded me of that, except there was much more screaming.)

 

In that picture, Penny had been in the sprinkler in the backyard. You can see how messy her socks are – we would have to hold her down to change them. I barely saw her toes for like, a year. (The other picture is Tobias from Arrested Development, just because I love him.)

It was partly sensory for her, and part rigidity. It’s not like I could just take off her socks one day and never give them back to her. She was incredibly anxious about it. Even now, 2 years since, she still doesn’t like the feel of anything on her feet. She hesitates to take her socks off until the very last minute, and hates putting her feet on the ground without socks covering them. However, having socks on forever and refusing to wash her feet, while not the worst thing in the world, raises the questions of hygiene and like, foot disease, for example.

I used to believe (and I was told) that when something became too strict for the kids, that I should change it up. I see the point in some cases, but not all. And the longer I’m parenting them, the less I think that. Just because we have a lot of resources to work on some of their obsessive and rigid behaviours, doesn’t mean we always need to use them. They’re people with preferences. Like, I would be pissed if someone told me that I couldn’t have my tea from Tim’s on my break because I have it every day – I need to start ordering coffee instead and also need to go to a different Tim Horton’s because they need to know that I can generalize across different environments. Bitch, no.

So, if Rory wants to play with his cars in the same place every day, I’m gonna let him. There’s so many other great things he’s doing – like, playing and socializing. Identifying the colour of each car and using eye contact. Maybe we’ll work on it later but, eh. Maybe not. If he started getting anxious about ever playing anywhere but that area and works himself up into a frenzy, I’d probably do something about it then. He might just grow out of it. I’ll revisit it again if it ever impedes his every day life.

Like, last year Penny got very rigid about only playing with her “tabby” (her Samsung Tablet) in mine and Shamus’ bed. It really bothered me and I was trying to figure out how we could break that routine – but she broke it herself. She prefers to be up there, but she’ll come down every now and then and ask us to read some words from Youtube. Before, her tabby was never, ever allowed to leave that room. If it did, it was an immediate upset. The other night she even went to bed with her tabby left downstairs in the playroom.

We like progress, not perfection.