SEN Family Routines: Why Predictability Matters More Than Perfection

Most mornings in our house start at around 6am.

Not because we want them to. And certainly not because we have one of those beautifully organised morning routines where everyone gets up early, eats a nutritious breakfast and calmly prepares for the day!

It's because Devan is an early riser.

It doesn't seem to matter what time he goes to sleep. 6–6:15am is pretty standard. Anything after 6:30 feels like we've won the lottery. So, quite a long time ago, we taught him a routine. When he wakes up, he goes to the toilet, takes himself downstairs and watches TV.

Is "let your child watch TV at 6am" going to appear on many lists of recommended SEN daily routines? It is not.

Does it mean he doesn't come into our bedroom at 6:02am and wake the entire household? Yes.

And honestly, that sums up quite a lot of what I've learned about routines as a SEN parent.

The best routine isn't necessarily the one that looks good on paper. It's the one that makes your family life easier.

We Don't Run a Military Operation

When we talk about routine for neurodivergent children, I think it's easy to picture visual timetables, colour-coded schedules and every part of the day happening at exactly the same time. Our house isn't like that.

I'm naturally an organised person. I love a list. My phone is full of notes and calendar reminders. But our family routine is actually fairly loose. What we do have are predictable anchors throughout the day. In other words, the kids know roughly what happens next.

On a school morning, one of us will make breakfast at around 7:30. Alyssa and Devan will eat, get dressed and usually carry on watching TV while Ant and I get ready for work.

Again, I'd love to tell you that our mornings involve educational activities and wholesome family conversation instead of screens. They don't.

The TV keeps everyone occupied, stops the twins winding each other up (most of the time), and gives two working parents enough space to actually get ourselves ready and out of the house. Right now, that's what works. And I think sometimes we need permission to let "what works" be enough.

Reduce the Battles You Can Predict

Our mornings are generally pretty straightforward. Unless Devan decides he's not taking his medication.

He goes through phases where he'll take it without an issue, and then suddenly we'll have mornings where he runs away, clamps his mouth shut, refuses and negotiates until what should have been a simple part of the routine has descended into chaos and everyone is shouting.

There are some things routine can't magically fix.

But I've found that the more predictable the rest of the morning is, the fewer opportunities there are for additional battles. And that's really what routine gives us.

Not perfection. Just fewer moving parts.

After School Isn't the Time to Demand More

When the kids come home from school, they generally want two things immediately: food and screens. And they get both.

They've spent an entire school day listening, learning, socialising, following instructions and managing everything that comes with being at school.

Ant needs to get back to work. I may still be at the office, or I've just walked through the door myself and need five minutes to decompress. So we don't immediately launch into homework. They usually get at least half an hour to switch off first. And I've learned the hard way that if I do try to go straight into homework, I'm basically inviting an argument.

That downtime matters.

Afterwards, I'll call them one at a time to do whatever homework we're tackling that day. I also try not to make myself do reading AND written homework with both children in one evening. Add spellings into the mix and suddenly I've somehow got my own evening shift as unpaid teacher.

No thank you.

I even tell them in advance who I'm calling first. Nine times out of ten Devan volunteers. Occasionally he'll suddenly realise that he's always first and be deeply offended by the injustice of it all.

But knowing what's happening beforehand generally makes the transition easier. So that's become one of the simplest habits in our house: Don't just spring the next demand on them if you don't have to.

Sometimes the Routine Is Simply Knowing "When?"

Those of you who have been on this journey with me for a while will know that food is a big deal for Devan. He likes - and needs - to know when he can eat again.

Sometimes I'll tell him he has to wait half an hour and he'll accept it without a problem. Other times you'd think I'd told him food had been permanently discontinued.

The same happens after dinner. He always wants dessert. Sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes it's no. And that can become a whole thing.

His reactions can still be unpredictable, and we're also navigating the fact that his medication seems to wear off somewhere around 4:30–5pm, which can make that part of the day harder.

So I can't prevent every reaction. But sometimes simply being able to say:

"We're having dinner at six." or "You can have something after homework." gives him something concrete to hold onto.

Routine doesn't always mean doing something at exactly the same time. Sometimes it just means knowing when something is coming.

Routine Doesn't Have to Mean Rigidity

Our evening routine is probably the most established routine we have.

Dinner is usually somewhere between 6 and 6:30pm. Sometimes we'll watch The Middle together as a family. Then it's showers, pyjamas, a story, bed, the same songs I've sung to them since they were tiny, a kiss goodnight and I leave the room.

The basic structure has stayed remarkably similar over the years. They know what bedtime looks like. They know what comes next.

Weekends are much looser. Devan doesn't need me to hand him a detailed itinerary every Saturday morning, but he does like to know what's happening. If we've told him we're going somewhere or seeing somebody and then it doesn't happen, we can definitely get the sulking and moodiness.

Unless, of course, we offer an alternative that's sufficiently exciting. Then apparently all previous disappointment can be forgotten.

That's the difference, for me, between routine and rigidity. Our children don't necessarily need every minute planned. Sometimes they just need enough information to feel like they know what their day looks like.

When Routine Changes, Create a New One

Every six to eight weeks or so, Ant travels for work and I'm on my own with the kids for a couple of nights. Rather than trying desperately to make everything exactly the same, I create a slightly different routine for those days.

I tend to structure the afternoons more. If I can, we'll go to the park. Otherwise I might get out a board game or do some art. We'll often do a bath instead of a shower as a little treat, and I'll try to get them into bed slightly earlier.

They probably don't even realise I'm doing it. But I'm creating a temporary framework that helps all three of us get through those couple of days more easily.

We did something similar during the school holidays. Each week looked quite different, so we created routine within whatever that week looked like.

We also try very hard not to overschedule. Back-to-back activities are something we avoid wherever possible because downtime between things makes an enormous difference.

Luckily our social calendar isn't exactly bursting at the seams, so we're doing very well on that one.

And when plans unexpectedly change, Devan actually handles it reasonably well a lot of the time now - particularly if I can redirect his attention afterwards.

Creating predictability isn't about making sure our children never experience unexpected change, because life isn't predictable. It's about giving them enough predictability in everyday life that they're not constantly having to work out what happens next.

The Systems That Keep Me Functioning (Imperfectly)

Routine isn't only about the kids.

I'm naturally quite organised, but life still gets the better of me sometimes.

I write lists. I leave notifications unread on my phone so I see them and they prompt my brain to remember what I need to do. I put things straight into my calendar because if I don't, there's a very good chance they will disappear from my consciousness entirely.

I used to have a wipe-clean calendar on the fridge where I'd write down extracurricular activities, PE days, playdates and everything else happening that week. It was actually brilliant. The kids could see what was happening too.

Then I stopped updating it. That was the end of that highly successful organisational system.

I'd also LOVE to meal prep. But I don't. I simply don't have the capacity for it anymore. Our kids' dinners are often very simple. Fish fingers. Chicken nuggets. Pizza. The reliable beige foods that I know they're going to eat.

And I'd love to tell you we make use of considerably less screen time in our house. By now you know we don't. Screens are part of how we manage two children, two jobs, homework, a household and life without any outside support.

Could some of our routines be "better"?

Probably.

But if creating the supposedly perfect routine requires so much work that maintaining it becomes another source of stress, then I'm not convinced it's doing what a routine is supposed to do.

A routine should reduce your mental load - not become another thing you're failing to keep up with.

Write Down the Things You Don't Want to Carry in Your Head

For everyday life, my phone calendar and endless notes do most of the heavy lifting. My Don't Just Survive: Thrive Journal serves a slightly different purpose.

I use it when there's something I specifically need to keep track of rather than relying on my memory - particularly school communication. A teacher catches me after school. I get a phone call. There's an email. Something happens with Devan that I know I need to remember. Without writing it down, a week later I can remember that we had a conversation... but the details? Gone.

And when we're going through a more difficult patch, I'll use the journal to record meltdowns or behaviours I want to understand better too.

Writing things down means I don't have to hold every detail in my head and, when I need to, I can look back and see whether there's actually a pattern.

It doesn't need to be another daily task. It's simply there when I need it.

Your Family's Routine Doesn't Need to Look Like Ours

Some SEN children genuinely thrive with detailed visual timetables. Some need to know exactly what will happen throughout the entire day. Some need countdowns and warnings before every transition. Others need much less structure.

There isn't one perfect SEN family routine. The question I've found more useful is: Where are the predictable stress points in our day - and is there anything we can put in place to make them slightly easier?

Maybe it's laying clothes out the night before, a visual timetable, always having a snack ready after school. Maybe it's 30 minutes of complete downtime before anyone mentions homework, telling your child exactly when you're leaving rather than repeatedly saying "in a minute", or teaching your 6am riser to go downstairs and watch television so everybody else gets another precious hour in bed.

I'm certainly not going to judge.

Our routines aren't perfect. They're not particularly impressive either. But they give our days enough predictability that everyone generally knows what comes next.

And in a home where emotions can already run big, I'll take anything that removes one unnecessary battle from the day.

Sometimes reducing stress isn't about adding another strategy. Sometimes it's simply about making life a little more predictable.

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