The routine has started to settle in. My daughter has begun to find her stride as she attends high school, and public school, for the first time in her life.

The routine is falling into place for the rest of the family as well. We are getting into the swing of things as we figure out who needs to be up by when, who helps make lunch, who makes the pick up after volleyball practice is over.

It’s hectic, but at least it’s a predictable hectic.

As we start to normalize, we realized that there are a few things we’ve done that turned out to be essentials. We didn’t intend to factor all of them into our week, some we did. But all of them have already been lifesavers, and will continue to be, I’m sure.

These are three things we’ve placed into our daily or weekly routine. You may want to do something similar, if you haven’t already.

Review the schedule

This is something my wife and I have done for several years. But now, we’ve started including our oldest daughter in to the conversation. She has as much going on as we do, so it made sense. Each evening, my wife and I take a look at our calendar for the next day, going over things that we need to know and share. And each weekend, on Sunday evening, we take an expanded view of the week, looking at it as an overview.

We would see what meetings or church functions were happening, doctor appointments, haircuts, or plans to go to the store. Including our daughter in this has added a sports schedule, tests and homework into the mix.

We’ve found it to be a crucial element of our planning. When my wife knows that I will be headed out of town for a meeting with a couple of other area ministers, she can plan her day accordingly. Knowing that Hannah has a volleyball game next Tuesday helps us see our week in more detail.

Schedule family meetings

In this habit, we gather all of our family together, and talk about severe different things. Some of it includes the calendar, as I just mentioned, but this is more discussion of things that flow through the family altogether. This is the time my wife and I encourage and build up each of our kids, or address some attitudes or behaviors if necessary.

This is a weekly event, and sometimes more frequent than that. Often we do this over a meal together. Many times, we gather after dinner is finished and cleared from the table. It’s usually pretty lighthearted and upbeat.

Morning prayer time together

With this being the first time ever our daughter has attended a public school, we started off the year by taking the time to pray together as a family before she heads out the door. We pray for her to be strong in an environment that may not be explicitly Christian, although many of her teachers are strong Christians. We pray for her friends and teachers. We pray for our other kids and their homeschool studies. And we pray for my day at the church, and my wife’s day at home.

This has been such a positive start to the day, I don’t know why we didn’t apply it sooner than we have.

Enforcing “Quiet Zones” and “Quiet Times”

The day starts much earlier than it did before public school. This means that we’re all headed to bed earlier than before, too. We’ve instituted some quiet zones, so that those with homework (or sermon prep) can have a place to do this. This is usually downstairs in the basement.

Quiet times begin shortly after dinner, as the younger kids are headed to bed. This also helps facilitate study times, and keeps the older, non-public-schooled kids quieter so that the little ones can go to sleep.

While all these things take some structure and intentionality, they are all worth the effort. It’s given us more structure than we’ve ever had in our family. In the past, we’ve had no need, since we operated on whatever schedule we found necessary.

These have helped us tremendously. And I wonder how we operated without them to begin with. I’m sure there are other things we’ll consider adding to this list in the future, but for now, these are a great start.

You might want to consider implementing them in your daily or weekly routines, if you haven’t already.

Be deliberate, Dad!

What other habits have you found to be essential in your back-to-school routines? You can leave your thoughts in the comments section below.