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You heard that right, the other day I brought my two kids, 4 and under, to not 1, not 2, but to 3 appointments!!
It happened to be a day that we had free and past Kayla thought-yes, let’s put 3 appointments on the same day.
However, I planned and it actually went quite smoothly and I never had to throw my phone out towards them to calm them. Let’s go over the 4 steps that I did to have a successful day of errands.
I prepared them with clear expectations
The second we woke up in the morning, I told them something like, “Hey, we got a loooooong day ahead of us. We have some big appointments today and a lot of driving. Some days are like that. What toys or snacks should we bring if we are feeling bored?”
Even if their response was “NOOOOO I don’t want to do that!!!” I would have told them, some days are like this, but we can plan on doing something fun together after!
Setting clear expectations is so important for everybody!! Adults and children need to know what is expected of them, their day, the outcome, because then we can try to respond as best as we can to the unexpected behaviors happening around us.
I also really love setting clear expectations like, we are going to walk through the parking lot, we are going to wait in the waiting room, we are going to not eat things off of the doctor office floor.. so then when my kids start to do something, I can say, "uh-oh! Is that what we are supposed to be doing?"
Ok, moving on. Second,
The diaper bag was full of easy-to-clean snacks, books, and toys to entertain them.
I also don’t always bring in all of the snacks to each place so I can honestly say, “oh no, the rest of the snacks are in the car, once we are done here, let’s get back to the car and have another snack!”
Other favorite toys, fidgets, a drawing tablet, small books, bracelets, small stuffies.
Next, we took our time between appointments.
I did plan about 30 minutes between each appointment and I assumed one of them wouldn’t last the entire hour it had in my calendar. We used this time to find a park near us. Which was also fun, yay new park alert!
We also had some snacks sitting in the trunk of the car, which I feel like is a special treat in itself.
But even with all of this, I had verbal affirmations for myself.
To be clear, my two children did not obey my every wish. They didn’t diligently walk back and forth, sit while waiting for doctors, and walk safely from stop to stop. My kids are like the frog from frogger but they can’t get past the first row of cars..
Verbal affirmations that kept me sane (yes, a lot of deep breaths were taken):
You are doing great, kids are kids.
We are in no rush, we can take our time.
This is a long day, they are allowed to be bored.
You get a treat when you get home too.
I am a good mom
*turn on your pump up jams
Lastly, have a treat, for us some chocolate as backup bribery.
I definitely had a moment about halfway through that I told them I brought their favorite chocolate treats. I told them that once we are all done, we get to have one. And even though I do not think food bribery is healthy as a common practice, I personally celebrate a long day with some ice cream. Healthy boundaries.
Bonus tip/reminder. When we got home, we had some fun one on one time together. We played with play-doh and went outside and roller skated and really made sure to get in that fun play time together after a long day of listening.
What did I miss? What would you add?
Kayla Co
Inclusion starts with you and I just want to help.
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