How Routines Benefit Children’s Mental Health

Dr. Joseph Kenan is a psychiatrist whose experience spans treating patients, holding leadership roles with national psychiatric organizations, and delivering expert testimony in court trials. As the owner of a San Francisco, California, practice, Dr. Joseph Kenan works with children, adolescents, and adults.

Mental wellbeing depends on a lot of factors: how you’re feeling, how well you can cope with the daily challenges of life, and how positively you see your future. For children, these factors are often not under their control, and they cannot always take steps to directly impact them. For this reason, their guardians are the ones who need to step in and make changes to protect the child’s mental health.

Regardless of any difficulties a child faces, one step a parent or guardian can take to support their child’s mental health is establishing a routine. Predictability helps children grow and flourish by providing stability and creating a sense of security. What might seem monotonous to an adult can reassure a child, many of whom find comfort in consistency and fear the unknown. If the routine does need to change, guardians need to communicate them ahead of time to the child and help them mentally prepare for alterations that might cause stress or involve unfamiliar circumstances.