How Important Is Consistency, Really?

My colleague, Kelly Guthrie, and I are hosting our workshop on how to get onto the same page as your partner when it comes to parenting your little kids tomorrow! (If you haven’t already, check out the details and register to attend live or receive the recording here.) As we’ve been preparing, one topic we’ve been discussing is how important is it really to be on exactly the same page? Often the argument in favor of being in agreement is the importance of consistency to young children. So in advance of tomorrow’s workshop, I thought I’d share a little about how I think about consistency.

A little less than two years ago when covid shut down everything for the first time, a huge topic on every “pandemic parenting” presentation was the importance of routine. A lot of the suggestions were to have a daily routine for your children and for yourself - schedule in your reading time and your art time, plan your outdoor time, your self-care. You probably remember hearing how much it helps to have “something predictable during unpredictable times.”

I really appreciate what this advice was getting at: routines, consistency, predictability are really important for all humans, and especially for young children. Toddlers and preschoolers already have so little control over their worlds – it’s important that they at least have an idea of what’s going to happen when. It’s why preschool classrooms have “visual schedules” and why teachers do things close to the same way every day. It works for me: it helps me feel a little more even-keeled to know what I’m going to be doing and when. Maybe that’s true for you too?

We create routines and schedules to have consistency and predictability around things for which we need order and control. That describes a lot of the experience of parenting little kids. (Not to mention many an important meeting and its agenda.) We need order and control a lot. So many seemingly simple things (breakfast, getting dressed, saying goodbye for the day, weekly staff meetings) have the potential to bring up really big feelings, whether those are the feelings of the child or the adult. By helping us do these in the same way every time, routines work to ensure that the feelings don’t take over, at least not usually.

For some parents (and I know quite a few), implementing a routine in March 2020 felt like survival: the only way to make sure everyone could get through the day. For other parents (myself included), implementing a routine in March 2020 felt like one more new and stressful thing we had to do and therefore one more thing to mess up and one more thing to make us frustrated, angry, and sad. 

Here’s what I think all that early pandemic advice about predictability left out: the most important thing to have be predictable and consistent is not a schedule but a caregiver. Look, I’m not talking about never having an off day/week/month and embodying some Buddha-level of calm and zen. This is about providing a consistent feeling of love and acceptance. If routines are going to help you be consistent, stay calm, stay in control, stay loving (as much as possible - again, you’re not a robot), that’s wonderful and they will be a great tool. If a schedule or routine is going to make you flustered or frustrated, if it is going to make you feel like a failure when it occasionally doesn’t work, it is a) definitely the wrong routine and b) not worth it. 

And here’s what can happen with parenting partners: often the “agreed upon” routine/discipline strategy/technique is not quite right for one parent - or both! Not because either parent is doing anything wrong, but because the emphasis is on doing it exactly the same, as opposed to recognizing the ways individuals will necessarily be different. This struggle with the mismatch and the trying to squeeze into the agreed upon strategy has the potential to increase feelings of inadequacy (especially because there’s someone to compare yourself to right there), possible abandonment of the agreed upon strategy, and the fall out of more conflict about not doing “the thing we said we would do.” If aiming for consistency means you and your partner are constantly fighting, maybe it’s worth considering how to be predictably inconsistent with each other. 

So sure, give routines a try: maybe you haven’t found the right routine, maybe you’ve been focused on the differences as opposed to the similarities. And also know it’s ok if every day looks different, if each caregiver does things a little differently as long as you show up in a relatively similar way. Yes, even for those kids who seem to need more consistency and more routine. Will you have to tolerate some big feelings? Absolutely. But they might have been there anyway! And if you’re already drained from trying to be something you’re not, to do something that doesn’t work for you, how available can you possibly be to help your child with those big feelings as the loving, accepting parent they need?