Slaves to Schedule? - by Dea Birkett

Routine, routine, routine. When you first have a baby, that’s all the advice everyone gives you. You must get them into a routine.

Discussions around routine have been big in the news recently. Childrearing guru Gina Ford, who recommends parenting works best when we strictly observe the clock, is at loggerheads with, among others, a new father named Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats. Clegg has spoken out against the strictures of the author of The Contented Little Baby Book, saying instinct is as good as instruction.

I agree. As a family that travels much of the time, we have to throw routine to the European, African or Asian wind. It’s wonderful. And it definitely doesn’t damage the kids. In fact, it does the opposite. Without a routine imposed from above, kids develop their own rhythms. This sets them up far better for life than any timetables and ridiculous rules they are forced to adopt but don’t understand.

My lack of any regularity began with my first born, who first went abroad at ten days. Slipping between time zones, I had no idea whether she’d had her afternoon nap. I barely knew when afternoon was, and she certainly didn’t. It worked out so much better for all of us. She could sleep when she was tired – a rather simple idea that seems to have escaped Gina Ford. And we weren’t in fear of missing the Prada in Madrid because the Sunday opening hours would coincide with the time she was supposed to sleep.

Yet many friends of mine with small children plan their holidays around the ridiculous mantra of routine. They have to leave to drive to Cornwall at the strangest of hours, to keep in with their toddler’s ‘sleep routine’. They have to take a short haul flight in the late afternoon to make sure their four year old doesn’t miss his ‘daily afternoon snack’. Then, once they arrive, the joys, surprises and unexpectedness of a new place are all squashed by trying to squeeze their kids’ routine into a very differently shaped day, with different hours of light and darkness, different customary mealtimes, different bedtimes expected of children to those at home. But their kids have been so regimentally brought up, they find it impossible to adapt. They still have to have their biggest meal at supper in Spain, even though everyone else has a giant lunch. And though petit Jean and Francoise seem to stay up later than their British counterparts, my British friends still tuck up their kids early when they’re in Paris. Then they moan that they’re imprisoned in their hotel room for the night, when they could be enjoying an evening out with their children.

So don’t drill a routine into your kids. Take them travelling instead, and let them feel the different rhythms of the world. We can’t be slave to schedules.

Now, is it bedtime yet?