INKLINGS

SAME OLD, SAME OLD

The foster parenting classes we took stressed over and over again that kids need structure and stability. They told us that kids love routine.
Man, do we have routine.
We leave the house every morning a 7:40 a.m. as the same teacher with his children ride by our house on their bikes to school. We see the same cars in the same order driving kids to school, the same crossing guard helping the same kids at the same corner, the same school bus making the same left hand turn onto the same street, the same man walking out of his house to drive the same car to work.
We come home and the kids watch the same cartoons on tv while I do e-mail, then get ready for the day in the same way. I do laundry and meals and dishes at the same times, run errands to the same stores.
The two little boys take naps at the same time. I read the newspaper at the same time.
Kids come home from school at 3:40 and sit down in the same places to do homework, then do the same things until the same time for dinner, and then they play the same video games until they go to bed at the same time.
The only variation is the myriad of appointments we have had lately, but even they have a sameness. I shuffle kids to the therapist, eye doctor and dentist who all have the same kinds of waiting rooms, where the kids act up in the same ways.
Today the 6 year old couldn't find his backpack (and went to school without it) so we left 5 minutes later. Kind of funny to see the kids who crossed the crosswalk a little further up the street, the bus driving a little ways closer to the school, the man already gone to work.
You do realize that you can spell "RUT" from the same letters that make up "ROUTINE", don't you? You can also spell IN and OUT.

posted by Inklings @ 8:00 AM