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Daily Rhythms: A LIFESMART Perspective

Daily Rhythms: A LIFESMART Perspective


Routines provide structure and predictability. However, life is often unpredictable. Rhythms are more flexible and fluid. What would a healthy daily rhythm look like?
Does your child have a balanced and healthy daily rhythm? What kinds of activities should be included in the day?
This post is an updated version of an earlier post on daily rhythms. I have updated my earlier post to show how to analyze your child’s daily rhythms using the four LIFE components and four indicators for each of these components. Read the post and complete the worksheet at the end of the article. Email me at lifesmartlabs@gmail.com if you want to discuss your child’s routine in terms of these elements.

Artwork by Morpheus Nag


Discovering daily rhythms that work means the process of finding the right combination of activities for the day. For example, we start the day with long walk. Dance is an important part of Ananth’s daily routine. A list of some activities to include in the daily rhythm is given below.


Tips
• Include movement daily
• Include visual and performing arts
• Include activities of daily living
These activities support overall development. Include them as part of your child’s daily rhythm!
Walk
Activities of daily living
• Hanging up clothes
• Folding clothes
• Setting the table
• Cleaning tables
• Making the bed
• Cooking
• Putting things away
• Watering the plants
• Loading Laundry in the washing machine
• Helping in sorting vegetables and grocery items and putting them at proper place
Structured movement activities
• Swimming
• Cycling
• Running
• Karate
• Skating
• Yoga
• Playing a sport like – table tennis, football, badminton etc
Arts
• Drawing
• Painting
• Crafts
Performing arts
• Singing
• Dance
• Instrumental music
Theater Arts activities
Integrating
• Movement and dance
• Music and Rhythm
• Storytelling
• Drama
• Arts and Crafts
Academic learning
• Language and communication


Daily Rhythms for LIFE
I am not the first one to talk about daily routines or daily rhythms. The activities listed above are familiar too. What I can add to this discussion is the LIFESMART perspective.


L: Learn daily
Four words to start thinking about how to support daily learning: imitate, repeat, memorize, improvise. Starting with imitation and evolving to own exploration (improvise) is the way I see the progression of learning.
Practice the imitate, repeat, memorize, improvise steps daily. This is an important component to build into the daily routine.

I: Interests
The words I chose are motivation, initiation, commitment, and effort. Initiation is an important indicator of interest! Not everything we learn is interesting to us. But we are likely to be motivates, initiate, commit time, and put in effort when are interested.
Interests are discovered during daily learning. Encourage exploration of interests daily. However, the daily routine should include activities of high interest, medium interest, and low interest. Everything in our daily routine cannot be of high intrinsic interest!
F: Family interactions
Safety (physical and emotional), encouragement, support, and enjoyment are the words I chose for family interactions. The four words spotlight the role of parents. Ensuring safety, encouraging children in varied experiences, providing support as needed, and enjoying experiences together are the foundations of parent-child relationships.
Family interactions are the foundation for daily rhythms. Parents discover ways to engage their child in varied activities. Parents play a key role in discovering and implementing daily rhythms.
Family interactions are of particular importance for neurodivergent children and for much longer than for others because educational and other systems pose numerous challenges for them.
E: Engaging communities
The words I chose are acceptance, inclusion, expression, and co-creation. All four components are linked. Learning daily, discovering interests, the right types of family interactions enable our children to find the right inclusive environments for expression and co-creation. Being part of such environments daily is something that is happening for us only now.
While access to the right environments for neurodivergent children and adults continues to be a challenge, I believe systems are evolving. By being proactive, we can discover the right environments, facilitate inclusion, and change the system for the better.


Activity for Parents
Use the LIFESMART Parenting Worksheet below to analyze your child’s daily routine in terms of the four LIFE components and the four elements of each of the four LIFE components.
Based on these sixteen indicators, what changes do you think are needed in your child’s daily routine?
Every parent is a change agent. Every neurodivergent child and adult is a change agent. Change begins with discovering the right daily rhythms for yourself and for your child!


Author Dr.Dasaratha Rama

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Resources

Magical Visual Calendar

A video tutorial by Monika misra (special educator) on the importance of Visual Calendar and how to teach it to our kids.

A concrete visual calendar is an effective way to show our students exactly what is going on. A calendar is a good way to help your child understand what is happening on a larger scale than a daily schedule.


Unusual events which interrupt the regular routine can confuse children, resulting in behavior problems. Calendars allow you to present these changes in a clear, simple way well in advance using a picture symbol such as going to the doctor on Thursday or to the mall on Saturday.

A calendar can also be used to show:
• When someone is coming to stay for a visit
• When the family will be taking a trip
• When your child might be staying at another house
• Doctor or dentist appointments

Author Monika Misra

Monika Misra
Founder of Deific Skill Portal, Lucknow
Special Educator at Sunrise learning, Noida.
Parent counsellor at Kant Brain Center, Lucknow.

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BloggerSaathi CreativeSaathi

Discovering Daily Rhythms that Work

Daily Rhythms: A LIFESMART Perspective

Routines provide structure and predictability. However, life is often unpredictable. Rhythms are more flexible and fluid. What would a healthy daily rhythm look like?

Does your child have a balanced and healthy daily rhythm? What kinds of activities should be included in the day?

Artwork by Morpheus Nag

Discovering daily rhythms that work means the process of finding the right combination of activities for the day. For example, we start the day with long walk. Dance and/or yoga are part of Ananth’s daily routine. A list of some activities to include in the daily rhythm is given below.

Tips

  • Include movement daily
  • Include visual and performing arts
  • Include activities of daily living

These activities support overall development. Include them as part of your child’s daily rhythm!

Walk

Activities of daily living

  • Hanging up clothes
  • Folding clothes
  • Setting the table
  • Cleaning tables
  • Making the bed
  • Cooking
  • Putting things away
  • Watering the plants
  • Loading Laundry in the washing machine
  • Helping in sorting vegetables and grocery items and putting them at proper place

Structured movement activities

  • Swimming
  • Cycling
  • Running
  • Karate
  • Skating
  • Yoga
  • Playing a sport like – table tennis, football, badminton etc

Arts

  • Drawing
  • Painting
  • Crafts

Performing arts

  • Singing
  • Dance
  • Instrumental music

Theater Arts activities

Integrating

  • Movement and dance
  • Music and Rhythm
  • Storytelling
  • Drama
  • Arts and Crafts

Academic learning

  • Language and communication

Daily Rhythms for LIFE

I am not the first one to talk about daily routines or daily rhythms. The activities listed above are familiar too. What I can add to this discussion is the LIFESMART perspective.

L: Learn daily

Four words to start thinking about how to support daily learning: Imitate, Repeat, Memorize, Explore. Starting with imitation and evolving to own exploration is the way I see the progression.

Practice Imitate, Repeat, Memorize, Explore daily. This is an important component to build into the daily routine.


I: Interests

The words I chose are Initiate, Commit, Practice, and Experience. Initiation is an important indicator of interest! Not everything we learn is interesting to us. But we are likely to initiate, commit time, practice and deepen our experience when interest is there.
Interests are discovered during daily learning. Encourage exploration of interests daily. However, the daily routine should include activities of high interest, medium interest, and low interest. Everything in our daily routine cannot be of high intrinsic interest.

F: Family interactions

Safety (physical and emotional), Relationships, Love and support, Expression are the words I chose for family interactions. Family interactions are of particular importance for our children and for much longer than for others because educational and other systems pose numerous challenges for them.

Family interactions are the foundation for daily rhythms. Parents discover ways to engage their child in varied activities. Parents play a key role in discovering and implementing daily rhythms.

E: Engaging communities

The words I chose are acceptance, inclusion, co-creation, and enjoyment. All four components are linked. Learning daily, discovering interests, the right types of family interactions enable our children to find the right inclusive environments for co-creation and enjoyment. Being part of such environments daily is something that is happening for us only now.

While access to the right environments for neurodivergent children and adults continues to be a challenge, I believe systems are evolving. By being proactive, we can discover the right environments, facilitate inclusion, and change the system for the better.

Every parent is a change agent. Every neurodivergent child and adult is a change agent. Change begins with discovering the right daily rhythms for yourself and for your child!

Author Dr.Dasaratha Rama

An amazing creative representation of all the daily rhythm activities is beautifully done on demand for my blog by CreativeSaathi Morpheus Nag.

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parentsaathi Story

Daily Rhythm …

“We are what we repeatedly do”

We are a creature of habit, good or bad. And we all know how our kids thrive on habits and structures. They like predictable patterns. They like sameness and repetition, and repetition builds not only physical but mental strength too.

The problem arises when our kids get stuck in sameness, and that’s when Co-regulation helps. We do things repeatedly, and when they get comfortable with that, we add small differences for them to notice but not get eager to get into either fight or flight mode. We don’t want to overwhelm them with the change but want to give them a taste of change, which they may or may not like, but again “Repetition” of change in Routine or Structure helps them to tackle it, to handle it. 

Few activities in the structure make our Daily Rhythm. I remember, there was a time, when I could never stick to one thing. Then, I started 100-day-projects, and got into a Daily habit. 

Our Daily Rhythm can be anything. 

  • Getting up and sleeping on time can be a rhythm, 
  • eating all meals at the same time can be a rhythm,
  • Doing certain activities everyday can be a rhythm.    

Our life is filled with rhythms, we have seasons, which bring certain festivities, and doing certain activities year by year, eating certain food is nothing but rhythm, which brings joy and happiness. This Rhythm trains our brain to trigger happiness associated with them. 

Likewise, our Daily Rhythm 

  • instills confidence in our kids, as when they repeatedly do things they get better and confident in that and get motivated to learn or do more. 
  • It builds a strong connection between parent and child,
  • brings order to their chaotic world,
  • reduces stress and power struggle.

How we can make our Rhythm depends on our goals as well what mode of communication child prefers or understands. We started with picture boards. We struggled a lot in movement based activities, but putting a picture card in our daily schedule made it predictable and repeatedly doing it made us better with it and reduced both of ours stress. Doing a 100-day-project really helped us stick to our schedule and we made so much progress in skills and built strong connection with each other, a connection of trust, a connection of respect for each other.