This post is part of a series of 31 Day to Cultivating Heart Connections with Your Child as part of the 31 Days of Five Minute Free Writes Challenge.
Children thrive on routine. Just try to rearrange the order of bedtime stories, and you will know exactly what I mean.
In our efforts to cultivate heart connections with our children, we can use that love of routines to our advantage.
Even science agrees. From the American Psychological Association
“The 50-year review…finds that family routines and rituals are alive and well and are associated with marital satisfaction, adolescents’ sense of personal identity, children’s health, academic achievement, and stronger family relationships.”
https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2002/12/rituals
We can use the daily rhythms of waking up, mealtimes, comings and goings, naptimes to speak love to our children. Through the flow of regular weekly activities, we can establish routines of love. In the holiday rituals, we can cultivate deep bonds from shared traditions.
Even though my children share a bedroom, I have tried to use our bedtime routine to cultivate heart connections individually not just as a whole. One of my children loves backrubs while another prefers hair tousles. So when I go into their room to put them to bed, I make sure to give the right child the preferred affection, and when I pray with them, I specifically thank God for each child and a specific trait that the child has exhibited each day. It’s become our bedtime routine.
As mothers, we have a beautiful opportunity to be creative in establishing routines that speak love to each of our children and thus, cultivate the heart connections we are striving for.
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