Cleaning Routines

One of the things that I am very proud of is that I never had any trouble putting my kids to bed and getting them to go to sleep. This was so simple and took an hour at most each night, but once they were in bed, I then had my time to myself, without hearing whining and crying or having to yell upstairs for them to go to sleep. I simply followed an easy routine that made them go to sleep and also enabled them to have plenty of rest for school the next day.

I set a bedtime early on. Before bed, they would each take their showers and then proceed to have cookies and milk. This was something that they looked forward to every night. After cookies and milk time, I took them up to bed and we would go into one of the kids’ bedrooms for a story. We alternated between rooms for this purpose. I then proceeded to read to them a story every night. When they were little and their attention spans were short, I would read quickly, sometimes just thumbing through the book and explaining pictures. As they got older, I began to read other books to them. I read them everything from the Berenstain Bears series of books to classics for children such as the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. The Berenstain Bears we got through in one night. The longer books would take us several nights to read, but each night, they would look forward to hearing more of the story.

Then I would tuck them into their beds, give them a kiss goodnight and they would go to sleep. I did this roughly at the same time every night, altering only the books and the type of cookies, and I never had any trouble with them going to bed or even arguing that they didn’t want to go to bed. Never underestimate the power of routine when it comes to children and how much easier it can make their life and yours. This routine not only made my kids sleep well at night and not have to make me threaten them to go to bed, but it also made them enjoy reading and as a result of getting enough sleep and learning to appreciate books, they both did well in school.