For over the past decade my teaching philosophy has been rooted in routines and relationships. These two fundamental aspects of my classroom allow my students to feel confident and comfortable in their learning environment. My students know what they can expect from me and our student-teacher relationship and they know what to expect from my consistent classroom routines. Once the relationships and routines are in place, aside for the minor learning bumps in the road, the rest of year is smooth sailing. While my teaching philosophy often results in me wearing the labels of Type A, hard core, or OCD to name a few, the truth of the matter is, discipline problems are virtually nonexistent in my room. So I'll wear these labels as badges of honour as long as learning takes place in my classroom. Once the Turkettes made their appearance and the "shock" of parenting had subsided a little, I began integrating my teaching philosophy with my parenting philosophy.
Building a relationship with the girls was the easy part. All the love, attention and care they need are joys of parenting. With that being said, we went through quite a period of time when I had NO IDEA what the girls needed. They would cry or fuss and we would helplessly look at one another and attempt to troubleshoot what problem could be. But, very early on we started implementing a routine. Same bedtime everyday, same nap time everyday, same bedtime routine everyday. With the creative, skillful help of my friend Adam Dunn, I tracked the girls sleeping and eating habits on an intense colour-coded excel sheet for all hours of the day. My Type A/OCD was considered to be in overdrive to some. Then a funny thing happened, suddenly patterns started emerging at an alarming rate!! The girls consistently needed a nap around 9am and 1:30pm. They started eating consistently around 7:30am, 11am, 3pm and 6:30pm. They were in bed around 7pm almost on a daily basis. WE HAD A ROUTINE!! The best thing about our routine finally being established was being able to understand what our girls were trying to communicate to us. The fussing or crying was no longer a mystery, instead it was often an indication we were close to bedtime or feeding time. Since we could now understand what the girls were trying to say, the fussing and crying drastically reduced because the girls needs were being met.
Parenting is a funny thing. If it's your first baby (or babies!!) you basically have no idea what you're doing. Sure, pre-baby you have grand ideas of what you THINK you'll be doing, but that was a rude awakening for us as we adjusted to what we were ACTUALLY doing once the girls arrived. With modifications, I was able to adjust my beliefs into a new distorted reality and I now feel fairly confident we know what we're doing. While part of my naive grand plans pre-baby included the concept that the girls would be very portable and would adjust to our social sport-filled lifestyle, the reality is a compromise was met. The girls do get carted around, and passed around for that matter, from friend to friend at all of our social gatherings, but the routine is SACRED. Appointments and plans are made with the girls schedule in mind. Doctors appointments happen after nap time, social gatherings happen after bedtime, car rides are planned during nap times. While this often creates scheduling difficulties for us, or causes us to miss out on a few events, after a few months of trying both a routine and no routine, the routine wins. We have to make some sacrifices here and there because of our girls routine but which parent doesn't? Every day just after 9am I know I can grab a shower, work on my blog, make a few phone calls, and clean up around the house. Every day by 7:30pm I know my little girls will be fast asleep not to be heard from (minus the odd teething incident) until some time after 6:30am in the morning. Am I a slave to my kids routines and schedules? I proudly answer YES, because let's face it, sleeping through the night is just AWESOME!
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