Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day – But I Bet they Had a Plan!
This is Part 2 of a series of 7 blog posts that are intended to help you successfully walk through creating All Done Day plans for your family.
There is no greater long-term project than raising kids. But too often we allow the immensity of the job to overwhelm us. You’ve got to break down this life-long endeavor into daily chunks. All Done Day plans help you do this in a manageable, empowering way for both you AND your kids.
I raised 4 kids and designed daily plans for them that helped them to build healthy daily habits, equipped them for life, and built in personalized challenges along the way.
In my last blog post, I explained how essential it is to have a master plan – what I call a Family GPS. The Family GPS creates a practical picture or map of the key skills and habits and character traits that you want to build into your children before they leave home one day.
Those elements that we identified as most important in our Family GPS became the building blocks – the foundation of our kids’ daily plans.
Let me show you just how I walked this out in the real-life process of putting together my daughter, Lauren’s, daily plan.
Here is the list of Building Blocks that I put together for my daughter, Lauren, when she was 10 years old.
I wanted Lauren’s All Done Day plan to:
- Help teach her to work by taking on daily household chores
- Help her to learn specific skills to be equipped for life
- Develop certain character traits
- Set some goals for her to achieve that require daily discipline
- Build healthy daily habits
- Develop moral character
- Foster being a life-long learner
Stop and notice! Each of these were building blocks or essential parts of our Family GPS.
From these building blocks, I got more detailed:
- Building block of “work”: Daily chores like making her bed each morning, floor picked up by day’s end, emptying the dishwasher
- Building block of equipping skills: Do her own wash. Start to learn to cook some simple meals. Babysit for short periods of time.
- Building block of goals to achieve: Daily disciplines to achieve goals, like regular piano practice
- Building block of healthy habits: Build a practice of daily exercise – riding bike, walking dog, playing outside
- Building block of moral character: Build a daily practice of daily devotions and prayer
- Building block of being a life-long learner: Set a time of daily reading, and intentional learning via screen-time
This list helped me to create a personalized All Done Day plan for my daughter that fit HER. It also checked the boxes on the Family GPS I had formulated. It wouldn’t all happen at once. This was going to unfold day by day, year after year, with many adjustments to her plan. Now we had a plan and a direction to head with great purpose.
Let me tell you – we got AMAZING results! Not just because we made lists. Not just because we had thought and purpose through our Family GPS. We super-powered our All Done Day plans with a secret ingredient that created staying power, something that spoke to each of our kids.
Come back to find out how we discovered how to make this all really work!
If you can’t wait, go buy my book, All Done Day: How to Win at Everyday Parenting. Or, better yet, I know you will love my Online Course. They provide the stories and the “step-by-step” help that you need to implement this in your home. You will be glad you did!
Next up – Step 3 – How in the World Can I Motivate My Kid?
Questions: email me at ann@alldoneday.com.
