Transform Your 2-Year-Old's Day with This Simple Checklist

So you want to start checklists with your kids. I know it's something that's... okay so first, let's back up. I have been posting several routine videos showing how my... if you can hear my kids, it is because they are downstairs and this is life. I'm a mom and my kids are just around me so please just excuse them. I've been posting a lot of routine videos showing my kids doing their checklists in the morning, after school, in the evening, and I've had a lot of questions. I've had a lot of you asking, how do we even start this? Where do we begin? What does the process look like? How did I start my processes? Did we just one day wake up and be like, hey, we're going to start checklists? But I can tell you right now, no, we didn't. This has been years in the making. It is quite the process. They each took their turn going through this training process, if you will, where we introduced checklists, where I worked one-on-one with hands-on, just completely invested in them, and then got them to the point to where now the checklist is something that my kids just wake up, they go to it first thing in the morning, it's just check, check, check. Honestly, to the point to where now, even especially with my older kids, they don't even need to refer back to the checklist. They're just going. So that's just where we're at with checklists. But because I know it's really hard to know, where do I start? Where do we begin? If you've been following me for a while, you know that River just turned two years old, and two years old is typically about the age that I start them on the checklist process. I've started anywhere between like 18 months and even two and a half to three years old, but I find that my favorite or my sweet spot is about two years old. So he had his second birthday and we started the checklist system with him right off the bat. I wanted to just film the entire first day. So we started when he woke up in the morning and we went through every task item in his checklist all the way until the end of the day when he went to bed. So that's what we're going to be going over in this video. I'm going to walk you through the entire checklist, how we're starting, what this process looks like, and how it's going. If you want to watch the full video without me interrupting it and stopping you throughout the whole process, then I am going to link that as well. Hey River, come here. We got to do our checklist. Which one's yours, River? Red. Red. Look at this one. Good morning. Okay, now you can check it. You did it. What's the next one? We got to go get dressed. Look. Grab your diaper. Like that. I love it. You look so handsome. Okay, wait. So introducing your child to the checklist for the very first time. You want to have as much excitement and joy surrounding the checklist as possible. This shouldn't be something that they start to dread or hate. So the biggest key in switching that or changing that for your child is making it something that's fun for them. Almost like a game where they get up in the morning and it's like, let's go do your checklist. He has no idea what that means. He doesn't know what he's supposed to be doing. He can't read. So as I'm going through each task item, he doesn't know what he's doing, but he's here for it. He's just like, let's go. This is fun. It's a game. Now you can check it off. Now you get to do this one. And he's like, okay, let's go for it. Even accentuating that he's big now, he's doing all of these tasks like his older siblings, like he's seen them do for the last two years of his life. Just trying to keep that excitement and what is the word? It's not just excitement. It's like hype him up. Just keeping that motivation and enthusiasm around checklists and each of these task items really helps them want to do it. It helps turn that's fun. I get a lot of questions asking, well, what do you do if your kids don't want to do it? Or what do you do when it's time for checklists? And everyone is like, Oh, I don't like again, we don't want to do checklists. And of course that's going to happen. But the very best way to prevent that is to focus on all the positive and joy that the checklist is that it brings, especially if you introduce it when they are young, it becomes a part of life. And it's always just something that they see as fun or exciting, not a chore or a task or something that's like, Oh, I don't want to do this. Did you get dressed? What is this one? Let's go make your bed. It's your bed. There you go. That's nice. Go check it. This is what I mean. Like half of the tasks, he's not even doing it. I'm getting him dressed. I'm basically making his bed for him. Yes. I'll put him on there. And he like, why can I not find words? Like just the fact that he gets to do it, even a little part of it helps him be like, Oh, I did this. Like, this is the job that I was supposed to do. So it's not even him doing the tasks. It's just me in order to get to the stage where he can see a task item and then go and complete that task by himself. This is kind of a huge part of it. It's essential. And I've been getting a lot of questions as far as what is the device on my wall? What are they using? What's the screen? What's the app? So I'm going to just explain that really fast. This is the skylight calendar. It is its own device. It is also an app, but this is the calendar device. I have it mounted on my wall. I have the 27 inch. I have also used the 15 inch. So that's the system that we are using for checklists, but I have tried several systems before the skylight as well. I've done paper and pencil. I've done magnets and whiteboards. I've done markers and whiteboards. I've done my own flipping checklist where they do a task and flip up the task list and anything really can work as long as it makes sense for your child. So what I mean by this is, like I said, I tried the paper and pencil or marker and whiteboard. That's not as ideal for a toddler because they don't know how to write very well. So don't recommend that. I've also done magnets. That's also a safety hazard, having magnets around the house. So that wasn't as effective as I feel like the skylight has been for my family. So I guess all this is to say the skylight is the system that we are using. You can still use anything else, but I have found the best results for me, my family, my kids with the skylight calendar. What does that one say? Say your prayers. Amen. What's that one? Notice when he goes to the checklist, then I will ask him, what does this say? I know he doesn't know what it says. If I ask him instead of just tell him what each task is, then it kind of makes him have to figure it out. I think it's called like verbal scaffolding in like psychology terms. If you're a psychologist out there, let me know, chime in on this, exactly what is going on. But I've just noticed it helps so much to be able to say it, show them what the action is, bring them back and then help them to relate it. Okay. What's this one? Teddy bear. We've got to clean your room, clean your bedroom. Okay. Run, run, run. With each of these tasks, because they have an emoji, I'm trying to help him relate the emoji. He can't read right now. And I know that I'm not expecting him to read. So I'm helping him relate the emoji to the task item or the activity that he's supposed to be doing. So for tidy your bedroom, I show him it's a teddy bear. He knows what a teddy bear is, but I say, okay, the teddy bear means we go clean your room. Let's go do it. Now we do the action of cleaning our room and we bring it back to, here's what the teddy bear means. Yes. Take care of that one. See the book? Go pick it up and put it away. You did it. Good job. Your room is all clean. Okay. Let's go check it out. I mean, I feel like that there's so much to unload or unpack in all of this, but I'm trying to keep it really simple. I hope you notice the amount of times that we go up and down these stairs each time. I already have this whole checklist memorized. I could have just gone through each of these tasks and had him do it at the same time. Just clean up his room while he was up there anyways. I knew what was coming next, but that defeats the purpose of him being able to see the task, go and complete a task, and then come back and check the task off. I can speak. I know I can, but I'm just saying the belly's getting there and I'm running out of breath. So going up and down these stairs several times and each time it's like, okay, let's go. Keep going. The energy is high the whole time. He's excited the whole time and I am exhausted, but that's when you know you're doing it. Go, go, go. Bye-bye, mommy. Bye-bye. What's that one? Okay, check it off. Good job. Okay, what's next? Yes, fix your hair. Let's go fix it. So handsome. Okay, let's go check it off. Okay, look at this one. What does that say? Hair. Yes, you did. Good job. Now, what's the next one? Brush. Brush teeth. Let's go brush your teeth. Run, run, run. Right here. Ready? Big bite. Let's go check it off. Go, go, go. Okay, where's yours? Slide it over. What does that one say? I'm also helping him to see which one is his checklist based off of color coding because, again, he can't read. So now he knows his is red each time that he goes to his tests. He's not looking at... Oh, hold on just a second. I'm mom duty again. Roman, you okay? Did you get a snack already? If you didn't get one, go get one, okay? So when he's going to the board to check him off, he's looking for his red color. So he goes straight there, finds his red, and then he goes to check it off. Brush your teeth. We did. Now you can check it off. We got to go clean up your breakfast. Wash the table. Now you can go put it in the sink. Good job. Let's go check it off. What does that one say? Clean up breakfast. You did. Now check it off. You're all done. You did it. You're all done with your checklist. Good job. Now you can go play. Okay, so that was our entire morning checklist. Let me run you through the tasks that are in our morning checklist. We start with good morning. That means they tell mom and dad good morning. They get dressed. They make their bed. They say their prayers. They tidy their bedroom, fix their hair, brush their teeth, clean up after breakfast, and then that is done. So that's eight tasks for the morning. You can do really whatever works for you, for your kids, for your family, but one thing that I always try to keep in mind is try to keep it to tasks that are completely their responsibility. So for example, like eat breakfast. That's not the responsibility of my child to go and make sure that they get themselves some breakfast. I consider that my role as a mom. I'm going to make their meals for them. I'm going to get it ready for them. Sure, I can try to teach them how to cook. That's part of the process too as a mom, but it is my job. It's my responsibility to feed my kids, right? So I'm not going to put it on their checklist as a task item for them to complete. However, it is their job or responsibility to clean up after themselves. That's something that I want to try to train them as it is a habit or a good life skill to have, right? Getting up in the morning, getting dressed, fixing their hair, brushing their teeth. I want these to be the habits that they just start doing. The purpose or the goal for the checklist for my kids is to cry to create. I'm so dumb. It's to try to create habits. We're trying to create a consistency to where when they wake up, like I said, they don't need to go and look at the checklist to tell them what to do. They just start doing it second nature. Why do you force them to say good morning to you in the morning? Okay. Why do I force my kids to say good morning in the morning? Here's the thing. I didn't used to have this on my task list or on their checklists and I felt like they often started the day on the wrong side of the bed. They would wake up in the morning and they were like, grumble, grumble, grumble. But as soon as I put that on the task list, that good morning or say good morning, it used to be called wake up happy. If you could wake up in the morning happy with a smile on your face, you could check it off on your checklist. Because I was trying to encourage my kids to wake up with a happy, a joyful attitude. They don't usually wait until they see it on their checklist to say good morning. I greet them in the morning. Good morning. How did you sleep? Did you sleep great? I'm part of what helps them to wake up happy, but I want them to learn to reciprocate that. Right? So they see it on their checklist. Hold on again. What's the matter? You're right. Step over. So when they see good morning on their checklist, I have just found that it helps them start their day off so much better. If the first thing that they do is something so easy, so simple, just to be like, Hey, good morning. Check off. Now keep going. So now that morning is done, the next part of our checklist doesn't start until after school. So when the kids come home from school, which is about three or four o'clock PM, then we start our afternoon checklist. So from four o'clock to 7 PM, our task list that we have to do during that, during that time is homework, talents, which for us talents is like hobbies, soccer. It can be playing outside, running around, gymnastics or dance. It's basically a hobby. Chores, tidy bedroom, bath and get pajamas on. So that's six tasks and that's all done from 4 PM until 7 PM. Okay, so let's get into it. Let's see what's next on your checklist. What does this one say? Read a book. Let's go. One, two, point and see if you see anyone. Let's match it. Ready? Purple. We need a purple R. Homework for the little kids is something educational. Reading books, playing educational games, going over colors, talking about letters, opportunities to learn through play. Say R. R. Let's go check it off on your checklist. Run, run, run. Good job. You did it. What does that say? Books. And you read your books all done. Hey, what's the next one? Ball. A ball. You can color or you can get on the mat. Okay, let's go. Good job. Now tip yourself over. Okay, so for this night, then River for his talents, he sat down and he painted or he colored on his mat because that's a talent, right? Sit down and color art, artistic abilities, not just here, come home, do homework. Now do jobs. Now do this. Now do this. And so structured, but rather here, let's add some variety into our evening. Ready? Put your head down on the floor. And now you can check it off. The white dot. What is that one? That means it's time to do your job. Yes, but we have to eat dinner first. So after dinner, then we get to do your job. Usually while I'm cooking dinner from four to 5pm, then that's when they're focusing on homework, talents, extracurriculars, things like that. We gotta go see what your job is. Let's go. Yep. Your job is family room. Yay. Let's go downstairs. Let's go clean it. Now let's get into chores. Okay. I have had a lot of questions asking what can I expect my child to do and at what age? So when it comes to cleaning around the house, I have done this so many different ways and what I have found that has worked the very best is to take my house. What I do is I take all the community living space anywhere that all of the family uses as a general rule and then I divide it between how many kids that I have a part of our chore checklist. I usually start to add them to the chore rotation or to checklists or to all of this system that we have going at around two years old. So right now we have seven kids. So we have taken our community living space and I have divided it into seven sections of the house all with equal difficulty if that makes sense and we can get into all of this. I'll break down the whole chores, the system, how we do it in our house, how we break it up because that's that's like a whole video in and of itself. So we will get there. I don't assign the chores based on age. All of the chores get rotated for all of the kids. Chores is like a whole other thing. I keep trying to get into it and I just it's a whole other thing. All I'm saying is no I don't assign based off of age or abilities. We'll get into it. No it's not my age. You gotta get all your pens and all your markers and just like I had him do when he was upstairs cleaning his bedroom, I kind of do the same thing with his job in the house. So for this evening he was family room. So I take him downstairs and I show him each of the things that he needs to pick up and he'll go and get it, bring it to me or he'll go and put it where it goes. It's mostly just training him what it looks like to clean a room in the house. Go ahead pick up the crayons. Whoa that was a lot. Okay get more. Tony's box. Good job. Got your job all done. You did your job so you get to check it. Now what's the next one? Go clean your room. Go go go. Let's go see. Because we have tiny bedroom in the morning and in the evening there's not a lot to do each time but I have really liked putting it in both the morning and the evening. I've tried it just putting it in one. It starts to become a little bit more of a job or overwhelming and especially if they have just finished their tour in the house and then it's like hey go clean your bedroom now but it's a bigger mess because you didn't clean up after yourself in the morning. Again I'm trying to create habits for them so having them pick up after themselves in the morning makes the job in their room so much easier to do at the night. We're all done. It's all clean. We're gonna go check it off. Where's yours? There it is. All done with your bedroom. What's this one? Take a bath. Go get some jammies and jazzy wool. Some of the emojis really help and he just knows. Go River go. Also thank goodness for big sisters who love to help their little brothers. I don't know what I would do without them and a lot of times I'll see these things and oh shame on you. How dare you have your older kids or you make your older kids take care of their younger siblings. I have to beg for the chance to be able to bath my little kids sometimes because the older girls just love it and I'm not just saying this. They truly love their little brothers and sisters. Jazz had already come up to me and said hey can I bath River tonight and I was like I mean sure thank you. We're gonna take a bath. Did you say thank you Jazzy? Check it. Good job. Did you get your pajamas on? Let me see. Where's your jammies? Right here. Let's check it off. I am constantly relating the task item to what he has already done. Helping to confirm or see it in his mind. Connect that that's what it means that he has done it and now he can check it off because he did it. So as I'm asking him where are your pajamas he can show them to me. I showed him they are on you so you are done now. You get to check it off. Verbal scaffolding. All these cool techie science words. Tech science awesome words. Now I'll admit my kids do not bath every single night. We try our best. If we don't make it to a bath that night, bath just means clean up. So wash up. Wash up your hands. Wash up your feet. Get cleaned up at least before you get your pajamas on. We try for that bath every night. Just you know life happens. Okay so that was the afternoon checklist from around 4 p.m. to about 7 p.m. Now we move on to the evening checklist and this happens from 7 p.m. to about 7 30-ish to 8 o'clock when the kids get in bed. So we've got take vitamins, brush teeth, prayers and good night. So it's basically just a quick little here's your list of things to make sure they're done before you climb into bed at night. So after we've had baths before they can take their vitamins we have to have snacks. So there's kind of like a natural break in there where if they've finished their baths before 7 p.m. before our snack time they just play. They've got free time. Go play but don't come and take your vitamins yet. There's kind of like a natural separation or a break because the vitamins happens after snack time. As soon as snack time happens at around 7 o'clock p.m. they know okay it's time to start taking vitamins and then the evening routine or the evening checklist happens. Candy? No vitamins. It's candy basically. Did you eat your vitamins all that? Check it out. I have had a lot of questions asking what vitamins do I feed my kids. B vitamins, C vitamins and D vitamins mostly and then on occasion we try to do some fish oils of some kind. Now what's next? Brush. Brush your teeth. Good job. They take their vitamins now we can brush our teeth. We're not going to be eating anything else for the rest of the evening so there is that natural separation between those two checklists. What's this one? Check it out. Yay now what? Go say your prayers. I do like to have my children and us as a family start our day off and end our day off with prayers. I feel like it really just brings us peace as a family. It's very valuable and something that I love to include in our daily lives. Amen. Amen. Now check it off. Good job. What does it say? Sun. Sun? Yeah. No that one's the moon so we say night-night. Night-night. Come here. Night-night. Night-night. I love you. I force my kids to tell me good night too because we start our day off telling each other good morning and it's that simple reminder. I like to close our day off with the same type of thing. Good night. I love you. Hugs. Kisses. Things like that. Obviously at the beginning when I'm trying to introduce them or start them with the checklist a lot of the tasks happen at the screen. So for example good night. We stopped right there. We said good night but I still will go to his room. Tuck him in. We'll have our moment. Sometimes we'll read a bedtime story. Sometimes we'll sing a bedtime song. We It's going to be more intimate, more close. Something that is more valuable and meaningful. It's not just a task item that we just check it off. Kiss. Now you can check it off and then you'll be all done. You did it. Puppies. Puppies. All done. You did it. Good job River. Okay. Night-night. Night-night. I love you. Okay so that was River's entire first day of his checklist. Obviously he's been watching his do this all the time but he's never himself been able to do it. Never been able to go and look at the item and be like okay here's the one that I need to do. Check. Check. Check. Check. So this is just full checklist. I want to address some things as far as like checklist. How do we start? When do we know when to start? As I said the purpose for checklists for me, for my kids, for my family is to encourage habits, routines, things like that. It would be so much easier if I didn't have the checklist. If I just did everything by myself. Like I said I was up in his room anyways. I'll help him make his bed. I'll help him clean his room. I'll get him dressed. I'll fix his hair. I'll brush his teeth. I could do all of that really quick in like five, ten minutes. Why would I go through the process of doing this in 30 minutes to stretch it out like this? It is entirely for them. It is to try, like I said, to teach them their own independence, their own autonomy for having themselves having responsibility for themselves. It is a huge investment and it is for them. Yeah I can do it for them when they're two, three, four, but what happens when they're five, six, seven, eight, twelve, sixteen? I don't want them to be reliant on me for all of these things forever right? Because I start with my kids around two years old, I can usually have them doing it on their own completely by about three. And I don't want that to scare you because I know it's like an entire year of going through this checklist with my kids and I can't. That's too much. It doesn't look this way the entire time. They get so much better. The first day doesn't look like the second day. The second day goes so much smoother, as does the second week that they do it, as does the second month. They start to get familiar with their checklist enough that they can start to do several task items and then come back and go check, check, check, check, check, instead of having to go refer to it every single time. Being consistent with this and being like repetitive helps so much and they really, really start to pick this up really quick. It just does take a lot of time and investment but I can guarantee you the results are so worth it. Okay so that was the entire intro for how we start checklists, what the process looks like, and everything, everything. So thank you so much for watching. If this was valuable or helpful to you, please let me know in the comments. If I didn't answer any questions that you had, please leave those in the comments as well. I will try my best to get to each of you and I mean this isn't going to be the only video that I'm going to be talking about checklists and our routines and our systems and things. I've got a lot coming still because this is a lot. I know it's really overwhelming and it's just going to take some time to go through each of these things so if I missed anything, please leave it in the comments and please share this video, like it. Thank you so much for being here and I will see you next time!